Mourners gathered at a funeral service in Burundi today for a papal envoy Archbishop Michael Courtney who was shot dead by gunmen on Monday.
Hundreds of troops guarded the cathedral in the capital Bujumbura where more than a thousand people paid their last respects to the 58-year-old Irishman.
The Vatican's envoy to Uganda, Pierre Christophe, urged Burundians to abandon "egoism and hate" in a mass at the cathedral.
Colleagues remembered Archbishop Courtney - appointed papal nuncio to Burundi in 2000 - as a man who worked towards healing the 10-year conflict between rebels from the ethnic Hutu majority and the Tutsi-dominated army in which an estimated 300,000 people have been killed.
"He was a peacemaker, he was against violence and for dialogue," said Bernard Bududira, Bishop of Bururi diocese.
"He refused to identify people by their ethnicity, only as human beings and Burundians," Bishop Bududira said at a hospital where mourners gathered to view Courtney's body.
Under a straw mitre, the fatal wound to Courtney's head was wrapped in bandages. Mourners shuffling past touched his forehead or the crucifix wrapped between his fingers.
Unidentified gunmen fired on Archbishop Courtney's diplomatic car on a road 25 miles outside Bujumbura late on Monday.
After today's ceremony, the Archbishop's body was loaded onto a plane to be flown to Ireland.
The Tipperary-born man had been closely linked to the peace process and in June negotiated the release of hostages kidnapped by the Forces for Defence of Democracy.
The Burundian army has accused the rebel Forces for National Liberation (FNL) of killing Courtney. The FNL denies the charge.
The FNL said on Wednesday it wanted Burundian Archbishop Simon Ntamwana, president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in Burundi, to leave the country within 30 days after he publicly accused the FNL of killing Archbishop Courtney.
"We don't want to kill him, but we want the Vatican to transfer him to another country, because he wants to destroy the FNL," FNL spokesman Pasteur Habimana said.