Kansas Catholic priest fatally shot inside rectory as schoolkids played nearby: cops

A beloved small-town priest was gunned down at a Catholic church in Kansas Thursday afternoon by an unhinged Oklahoma gunman — just steps from where young students were playing outside the parish’s nearby school, according to police and reports.

The fourth-graders heard gunfire erupt inside the rectory of Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Seneca, where Gary Hermesch, 66, allegedly killed 57-year-old Rev. Raj “Arul” Balaswamy Carasala around 3 p.m., the Kansas City Star reported.

Carasala was found bleeding outside his residence at the church and succumbed to his injuries at a local hospital, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation said.

Hermesch, who lives in Tulsa but grew up around Seneca, allegedly walked over to the Nemaha County Sheriff’s Office, which employs his brother as a dispatcher, and surrendered, the news outlet reported.

Seneca is about two hours northwest of Kansas City.

Hermesch was charged with first-degree murder, authorities said Friday.

A motive was not revealed by investigators.

Grieving residents in the town of roughly 2,100 said Hermesch was an area native who one man called “kind of a loner.”

Local Jim Runnebaum also told the KC Star that the suspect also used to send in “kind of off-the-wall” letters to a local newspaper.

Some of the missives bashed the Catholic church because it became too modern and called it the “fake Catholic church,” the outlet reported.

He reportedly blamed Jewish people and the Second Vatican Council for hurting the church in a 2022 letter and in a 2021 letter compared President Trump with the late President John F. Kennedy, who was the first Catholic elected to the Oval Office.

“JFK was always ‘the man’, whether it be a debate, speech, press conference, or whatever, but not in the sense where he tried to ‘dominate and crush’ the way Trump does,” Hermesch wrote, per the KC Star.

“Why? Because even though he obviously had a lot of trouble living up to it, he at least lived in a time when he had a properly formed conscience (knowledge of the difference between right and wrong), and everybody knows knowledge is power.”

Ordained in 1994, Carasala became pastor at the church in 2011, according to a bio on the church’s website.

The Indian immigrant was remembered as a “faithful” priest beloved by the community.

“His deep faith, pastoral care, and generous spirit touched the lives of so many,” the church wrote in a social media post. 

The shocking murder left residents reeling.

“Terrible thing,” Mike Haug, who witnessed the shooting with his wife as they stood in their nearby backyard, told the KC Star. “The world gets crazier and crazier.”

Lisa Kidd said her two young children who attend the school are “completely heartbroken.”

“As a parent, you’re grieving, but then you see your kids completely heartbroken and asking why. And you can’t tell them,” she told the outlet.

“I think right now, it’s kind of like, ‘Is this real? Is this a thing that actually happened?’” added Chase Jones.

“It’s the kind of thing you think that happens in ‘other places.’”