Fr Mariampillai Xavier Karunaratnam, known by everyone as Father Killi, spent a lifetime helping war victims in northern Sri Lanka. A year ago on 20 April, after celebrating mass in the Maangku’lam Church he set off for his parish church in Vannivi’laangku’lam. He was killed on the Mallaavi-Vavunikkulam Road at 12.30 by an explosion. Army and Tamil Tiger rebels have blamed each other for the death. A year to the day after his death friends, clergymen from the Catholic and Anglican Churches, parishioners, civil society activists and members of the Christian Solidarity Movement (CSM) gathered in the capital to remember him in a memorial ceremony.
Reverend Sathivel, Anglican, who opened the service, said in killing him the “assassins sought to kill truth, love and understanding.”