The horrendous murder of three Xaverian Missionary sisters in Burundi last weekend at first seemed to be the result of a robbery gone awry, but new and grisly details about their deaths are raising serious questions about the motive behind the killings.

Breitbart is reporting that the murder of three elderly Italian sisters occurred in the convent of the San Guido Maria Conforti parish in Bujumbura, Burundi over the course of last weekend. The tragedy began to unfold on Sunday afternoon when 79 year-old Sister Bernadetta Boggian called Father Mario Pulcini, head of the Xaverian Missionaries in Burundi, to say she had discovered the bodies of two of her elderly colleagues who appeared to have been murdered.

When Father Pulcini arrived, he found Sister Lucia Pulici, 82, with a slit throat and Sister Olga Raschietti, 75, whose head had been smashed with a rock. Both women appeared to have been raped.

“The police came. They took the bodies to the morgue and the four remaining sisters went to their rooms to rest,” Pulcini told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper. “I insisted that they not spend the night in the convent, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”

At around 2:00 a.m. Monday morning, Father Pulcini was awake and struggling to document the details of the double homicide for his superiors when he received another call from a frantic nun who whispered, “The murderer is still here.” She explained that the nuns heard noises in the convent and were hiding in their rooms.

When Pulcini arrived at the scene, he found the door unlocked even though he distinctly remembered locking it when he left earlier in the day.

He found Sister Bernadetta dead in her room. She had been raped, beaten, and decapitated.

What was at first believed to have been a robbery gone awry now looked much more sinister, especially because money and other valuable religious articles were not stolen. Father Pulcini told Vatican Radio that given the brutality of the attack, it now seemed more like a vendetta or something more personal that may have been behind the murders.

The sisters work was mainly to support children, the mentally ill, and female victims of domestic violence. Police in Burundi have reportedly contacted the husbands of three women who were protected by the nuns after incidents of domestic violence out of suspicion that the nuns may have been killed by one of those men out of revenge.

Misna.org is reporting that one man, Christian Claude Butoyi, 33, was arrested earlier this week in connection with the murders after he was found to be in possession of a key to the convent and a cell phone belonging to one of the victims. Apparently, he sold the phone to a young man who became suspicious after seeing text messages in Italian. Butoyi was picked up and eventually confessed to the killing, saying he committed the murders because the convent was built on land that belonged to his family.

However, according to Agenzia Fides, the nuns don’t believe what they’re hearing from police.

“We do not believe in the police’s version. The person arrested is an excuse to divert the investigation into the killing of our nuns”, said Sister Delia Guadagnini, former Regional Superior of the Xaverian Missionaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi, who knew the three nuns very well.

“We do not think that this horrible crime was committed by a single person,” she insists. “The Lord will judge. However, we will continue with our mission.”

The three sisters were well known and loved by the people they served.

Raschietti had just turned 83 years old and had been in Kamenge, Burundi, since 2010. According to a statement from the Directorate-General of the Xaverian Missionaries , Olga declared in July, 2013,: “I am about to turn 80 years old. In my last trip to Italy, my superiors were uncertain whether to let me leave. One day, during worship, I prayed, ‘Jesus, Thy will be done; But you know that I still want to go.’ In my mind I heard these words with crystal clarity: ‘Olga, you think you are to save Africa? Africa is mine. Nevertheless, I am glad that you are going. Go and give your life.’ From that moment on, I no longer doubted.” Sister Olga’s brother told ANSA News today: “She died for her vocation, and despite the pain at the human level, as a Christian I am proud. She is already in heaven.”

Lucia Pulici would have turned 76 this week. She was born on September 8, 1939 in Desio, near Milan and became a missionary in 1960, at the age of 21. Last October, according to the statement, she said: “Now I am returning to Burundi. Though at my age I am physically weak and limited, inwardly, I think I can say that my drive and desire to be faithful to Jesus’ love expressed in the mission is very much alive. The mission helps me to tell Him in my weakness, ‘Jesus, look, it’s my gesture of love for you.’”

Bernadette Boggian was 79 years old and had been working in Burundi since 2007. The order’s statement relates that in August 2013, on the eve of her departure for the new Burundi, she had written: “We need to nurture in ourselves a gaze of sympathy, respect and appreciation of the values of the cultures, traditions of the people we meet. This attitude, besides giving peace of mind to the missionary, helps us more easily find the appropriate language and gestures to communicate the Gospel. Despite the complex situation and conflict in the countries of the Great Lakes, I seem to sense the presence of a Kingdom of love that is being built, growing like a mustard seed.”

Sister Delia was comforted by the thousands of people who came out to pay their last respects to the sisters whose funeral Mass was held yesterday.

“Yesterday morning in Bujumbura, at the funeral of our sisters, we felt comforted by the presence of a vast number of people, from the simplest to the authorities. Immediately after the funeral the journey of the funeral procession began. We were escorted by the police of Burundi to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Then, once we crossed the border, we arrived in Luvungi where all three of our missionaries had worked for a long time. There we stopped to celebrate a Mass of suffrage.”

The sisters were buried in the Congo.

Francis expressed his shock and sorrow to the Apostolic Nuncio in Burundi and the Superior General of the Xaverian Missionaries, Sister Ines Frizza, calling the murdered nuns “generous witnesses of the Gospel.”

“May their spilled blood be a seed of hope for building authentic brotherhood among peoples,” the Pope wrote.

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