Shot priest is 'out of the woods'

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A Belfast missionary priest seriously injured in a shooting in South Africa is "out of the woods", his family has said.

Father Kieran Creagh was shot twice by robbers at the hospice he founded to help Aids sufferers in Johannesburg.

Surgeons removed a bullet from his lung on Friday and his brother Liam said he had now been taken off his ventilator.

"My brother Paul says that he is in brilliant form he sounds and looks like himself again," he said.

"So the whole family can breathe a sigh of relief... he's going to be OK and that's official."

He told BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence his brother had been shot in the arm and chest.

His father and brother Paul are at his hospital bedside and have told the family in Belfast of his progress.

"He's talking to them. He doesn't remember very much about the last few days except that he says he remembers people talking about him dying and being very afraid," Liam said.

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"But he doesn't really remember too much about the robbery itself."

He said that his brother loved South Africa and its people, but that he was aware of the dangers in the country.

"There are those who just have the attitude that life is very, very cheap that they can kill you to take a camera, mobile phone or money off you," he said.

He said that there had been massive support for his brother, and that the South African president Thabo Mbeki had sent a message of support.

"We have had calls from right across the religious divide - unbelievable calls of prayer and support."

Police told the Associated Press the robbers, who have not been caught, escaped with money from the hospice safe and Father Creagh's mobile phone.

The priest, who was the first person in Africa to be injected with a trial HIV vaccine, was made Irish International Personality of the Year in 2004.

He received the award after volunteering to try out the vaccine, despite being free from the virus himself.

He has worked with Aids patients in the country for a decade and opened the Leratong hospice in 2004.