On 24th May 2000 Miguel Gil Moreno and Kurt Schork were killed in Sierra Leone. They were doing the dangerous work of war-zone journalists when rebel soldiers ambushed the convoy of cars they were travelling with, and sprayed it with bullets. Two other journalists in the party survived to tell the tale. The deaths were reported during the main BBC News programme at nine o'clock.

The death of Miguel Gil came as a particular shock. A cameraman for APTN, he was a month short of his 33rd birthday. Born in Tarragona (near Barcelona) in 1967, he studied Law before changing career in 1993 and travelling to Sarajevo as a freelance photographer. After Bosnia he worked in the Congo, Chechnya and Kosovo. He had become one of the standard bearers for the generation of front-line journalists who made their names in the many nasty conflicts that have broken out since the end of the Cold War.

But as well as being a fierce competitor he was a devout Catholic whose conduct made a deep impression on his colleagues. His funeral was only six days later. Even so, over a hundred colleagues in Miguel's hard-bitten profession made it to Tarragona to attend.

A few months later (20th September 2000) there was a similar turnout for a conference held in his memory, hosted by the Freedom Forum (then near Marble Arch), attended by leading figures in television news. It was followed next day by a Mass at St James', Spanish Place. Tributes were read out from the Vatican Press Office, and the Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Javier Echevarría.

Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent of CNN, first knew Miguel in his Sarajevo days. Asked what him made so special she responded, 'You could see he was truly a man of virtue, without being patronising or proselytising; he was simply good'.

The depth of this feeling is extraordinary among other journalists who attended the Mass in London. One colleague recounted how she had not been able to get to Miguel's funeral because of work commitments in New York. A few days later, at the first opportunity, she flew to Spain, left a wreath at the graveside, and then caught another plane back across the Atlantic - a round trip of several thousand miles.

A fellow cameraman who also worked in Sarajevo recalled that at first he had been cynical at Miguel's obvious concern for the orphans caused by the war. He thought Miguel was simply looking for a news angle. But later he had come to understand the unusual depth of the man. Miguel's philosophy was that he and his colleagues provided the only window on the world for such victims of suffering. His work was conceived as a service to them, to try to galvanise world opinion on their behalf. As APTN Managing editor Sandy MacIntyre said of him, 'In some ways he was a missionary with a camera'.

Fr Robert Farrell, who celebrated the Mass, was Miguel's confidant and knew him well, confirms this view. 'He understood well that all Christians are called to holiness of life. Miguel had no doubt that how he carried out his professional work had a lot to do with that holiness. He also went to Mass frequently and made use of every opportunity to see a priest for Confession. He had his rosary on him when he died.'

He worked to very demanding standards and at the time of his death was regarded by many as the best cameraman in the profession. Some of his pictures became famous; those he took of refugees in the Balkans were widely circulated. As Christiane Amanpour recalled, they reminded the outside world of another crime against humanity that had taken place fifty years previously.

He would help the needy in other ways too. Witnesses noticed that he would do without food in order to hand it to the children he found abandoned because of the wars he was reporting. In the midst of a gun-battle in a Sarajevo street, he once put away his camera to get into an armoured car and drive over to pick up a woman lying wounded on the ground.

He even helped his competitors. A journalist told how one winter night he was racing Miguel to a news story when his car broke down in a quiet snow-filled country lane. After some minutes Miguel realised that the other vehicle's headlights were no longer visible behind him. Realising what must have happened, he turned his car round and picked up his stricken colleague, although it meant losing an exclusive. His action may have saved his rival's life.

Miguel Gil may have been a saint. The moving result of his example is that his colleagues, in a profession where cynicism is frequent and open belief in God unusual, all seem to be united on one thing: Miguel is certainly in Heaven.