null / Credit: Pixabay / Public domain

CNA Newsroom, Nov 9, 2022 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

A hand grenade was found among the donations sent to the Association of the Beatitudes, a shelter that serves the elderly, orphaned children, and the homeless in Peru.

Father Omar Sánchez Portillo, secretary general of Cáritas Lurín and its director, said the package with the explosive was left last weekend at the collection center in the Miraflores district in Lima.

However, it took two days for the grenade to be discovered by a volunteer at the association’s headquarters located in Tablada de Lurín.

“At least 100 people could have been in danger,” Sánchez told local media.

“In fact, in the area where we put things, 30 ladies work at the same time as volunteers helping to sort out the clothes, and the box was in their midst,” he noted.

The priest said that at the time he received the news of the explosive he was at the hospital visiting a patient, so he asked the association’s volunteers to isolate the device to avoid any accident.

“They put it there. I arrived and I removed the grenade myself,” he said, adding that they called the Explosives Deactivation Unit of the National Police.

So far, local authorities have not found those responsible for the possible attack. 

It’s too early for any motive to be established, and while it may be unrelated, in May 2021 prior to the presidential election in June between Pedro Castillo of the Free Peru communist party and Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force party, Sanchez received death threats following a homily in which he said communism is the enemy of the Church. Castillo won that election.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.