Priest burns himself to death over Islam

A retired priest committed suicide by setting himself on fire in a German monastery in protest at the spread of Islam and the Protestant Church’s inability to contain it.

Roland Weisselberg, 73, poured a can of petrol over his head and set light to himself in the grounds of the Augustine monastery in the eastern city of Erfurt, where Martin Luther spent six years as a monk at the beginning of the 16th century.

Witnesses said that Weisselberg climbed into a building site next to the monastery church, where a Reformation Day service was being held. He shouted “Jesus and Oskar” before the flames engulfed him. The latter name was an apparent reference to Oskar Brüsewitz, a priest who burnt himself in 1976 in protest against the Communist regime in East Germany. Monastery staff tried to put out the flames and Weisselberg was still conscious as a nun prayed with him before he was taken to hospital.

He died a day later, on Wednesday.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2434625,00.html