Vietnamese government officials have said that the man who brutally murdered Father Joseph Tran Ngoc Thanh on January 29 was “mentally unstable.” But some Vietnamese Catholics fear that the killing may have been intended as a warning, to deter Catholic missionaries from working in the country’s Central Highlands region.

The murder has received virtually no coverage in the government-controlled media, and the Church has been under heavy political pressure in Vietnam. According to a rumor circulating in the village where the murder took place, Nguyen Van Kien, the man who was detained at the scene and charged with the killing, had warned his mother that if she went to Mass, “someone will have to die.”