(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Father Emmanuel Francis Ribeiro, one of the most famous Zimbabwean Roman Catholic Church priests who contributed to the country’s liberation struggle has died at the age of 86.
Fr Ribeiro, a theologian, music composer, educationist, writer, media activist and nationalist, died Thursday morning, hours before Zambia’s nationalist founding father Kenneth Kaunda also died later in the day in the neighbouring country.
Fr Ribeiro died at St Anne’s Hospital in Harare where he had been admitted. In the Zimbabwean political circles, he is famed for having been the patron of prisons in the country during the time when President Mnangagwa was jailed for 10 years for torching a Rhodesian train.