n a mysterious twist of events, a married woman has died in a Catholic priest’s house. She had lied to her husband she was going for a funeral. Yet she was heading to the priest’s home.

Newsmen reports that the woman is a member of the Catholic Women’s league from St Maurice Catholic Church in Lusaka

The Church in the end suspended Father Abel Mwelwa and also forced him to pay for the funeral expenses following the incident.

Father Abel Mwelwa invited the married woman to the parish house on the night of Holy Thursday. Archbishop Alick Banda eventually suspended the clergyman as the judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Lusaka moments after the occurrence became public.

Father Mwelwa had ceased being the parish priest of Kaunda Square parish. An official memo from the church also stated.

“I hereby wish to inform you that I have with immediate effect suspended the Rev. Ringford Abel Mwelwa from the priesthood indefinitely. With this suspension, he ceases to be Parish Priest for Kaunda Square Parish. Secondly, the priest also ceases to be the Judicial Vicar of the Archbishop of Lusaka.” A part of the memo read.

An unconfirmed source, however, said that the priest reportedly injected some substance into the deceased. This was in an attempt to abort her pregnancy.

The diseased’s family however mandated the clergyman to pay for the funeral expenses. A source close to the incident revealed. The woman’s family urged the police to investigate the real cause of her death.

Such incidences where church leaders sleep with female members of the congregation have become common. The Catholic church is no exception. A number of catholic priests across the world have been accused of pedophilia by a number of people.

A case in point is Father Roger Sinclair who was consequently removed by the Diocese of Greensburg in Pennsylvania in 2002 for allegedly abusing a teenage boy decades earlier.