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China, The Protagonist.

Thursday, 1 November 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

China may certainly be described as the more relevant protagonist in this change, finding itself having to try to contain America
for the purpose of halting (or slowing) the progress
of the Empire of the Centre.

The economic power developed in recent years by the Chinese colossus is supported by a series of strategic infrastructure projects aimed at accompanying, protecting and growing the capacity of the country for expansion. Among these is doubtless the grand project called the New Silk Road, by land and by sea, thought out by Peking, with the main objective of bringing China closer to the rest of the Eurasian continental mass, as well as developing the hinterland areas that have remained behind by comparison with the coastal strip. It is without doubt that the implementation of such an ambitious project will have geopolitical repercussions of no little importance, considering that it aims at bringing Europe and Asia under one infrastructural profile, for the principal purpose of countering American repositioning in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

With reference to land connection infrastructure, since 2011, a railway line is foreseen connecting Chongqing to the city of Duisburg across the three emerging markets of Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. It is planned to add to this an 8,000 Km road system that will connect the port of Lianyungang (on the East China Sea) with St Petersburg by way of Xinjiang Uyghur, Almaty, southern Kazakhstan and Moscow. The opening of these important arteries of communication among the Asian steppes will reduce travelling time from Eastern China to Western Europe to ten days, from the fourteen days required using the Trans-Siberian Railway, or the forty-five days by sea through the Suez Canal.
It is clear that the opening of these connections would not only facilitate exchange between the continents but would also increase the volume substantially, and so favour greater economic, but also political, ties at the expense of the United States.

Apart from the Silk Road project, the Chinese government has, as anticipated, the ambition to revive the Silk Sea Route mentioned in the epic of the Chinese explorer Zheng He who, in the XV century, travelled the length and breadth the seas of the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia. The project aims at consolidating Chinese development, and giving more strategic depth to the position of economic domination that, in recent times, China has acquired in the maritime environment. To this end, the country is promoting a naval policy – also through the production of war material – something China had not done since the time of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). This is designed to move beyond territorial waters while creating, at the same time, a security perimeter reaching the second line of the Marianne Islands, on one side, and securing the sea routes passing through the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, places at present under the control of the United States, on the other. In this line, China has already begun to work on the route towards the Persian Gulf and Eastern Africa, through cooperation with nearby regional neighbours such as ASEAN.
At the same time it is carrying out what has been defined as the ‘pearl necklace strategy’, the construction of a network of ‘garrison ports’ along the vital Persian Gulf-China maritime route. This explains why Peking is working to reinforce its position in the China Sea and especially to consolidate relations with countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand, all of which occupy strategic positions along the supply routes of the Indian Ocean.

It is precisely through this close-knit web of partnerships and especially through massive investment to build the modern port of Gwadar in Pakistan and the modernisation of the port of Sittwe in Myanmar, that Peking is seeking to create new overland routes for the transport of goods to offer as alternatives to the Straits of Malacca which at present are a log jam impossible to defend against eventual action by the United States. Equally strategic is the project for the realisation (this also is still a work in progress) of the port of Colombo in Sri Lanka, to by-pass India, another historical and regional competitor, which is already placing obstacles in the way of Chinese economic expansion with the launch of the Mausam Project.
A further focal point occupying the attention of Peking is doubtless the South China Sea that divides the territory under the control of China from Indonesia, through which 45% of international maritime goods considered in tons passes, and the security of which is, for Peking, a necessary condition to guarantee the routes that pass through the Indian Ocean. This is a guarantee that can be concretely realised only through the effective control of each and every rock, island or atoll in this sector of the sea bordered also by Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam, almost all of which are strategic allies of the USA, with which Peking is in conflict, as it tries to bring them under its control.

However, the Chinese port network is not confined only to the nearby Asian coasts. It also extends along the coasts that border the Indian Ocean, the coasts of West Africa and as far as those of the Mediterranean. In this context we find that, in Bagamoyo, in Tanzania, the Chinese are creating a port that will join up with the African ports constructed in Guinea, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Djibouti, South Africa and Egypt. We may refer also to the port of Piraeus, of strategic importance for shipments across the Mediterranean, where Chinese companies are almost exclusively the administrators.
In order to defend this maritime network that extends from the Pacific to the Atlantic, passing through the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, China understood that it must (as it is in fact doing) maintain military forces that can stand up to its great global rival: the United States. In so doing, Peking is obviously obliged to take into account certain geographic factors that penalise it, one of which is that of being a continental power surrounded by powerful neighbours, unlike the USA that is a maritime power surrounded by neighbours like Canada and Mexico which are certainly weaker or which, in any case, have no reason to abandon their strategic partnership. It is therefore clear that China needs to keep its guard up and to develop greater aggression both regionally and globally that will ensures continued control of those areas that may become vital for the development of its maritime economy. (F.R.)

The Synod on Young People: “Walking Together “.

The final document of the synod on young people has been just released. The document consists of 3 parts, 12 chapters, 167 paragraphs and 60 pages. The Rapporteur General, Cardinal Sérgio da Rocha, said that it is “the result of real teamwork” on the part of the Synod Fathers, together with other Synod participants and “the young people in a particular way”. The Summary.

The first part of the document considers concrete aspects of young people’s lives. It emphasizes the important of schools and parishes. It acknowledges the need for laity to be trained to accompany young people especially since so many priests and bishops are already overburdened. The Document notes the irreplaceable role of Catholic educational institutions. The challenge the Document addresses is the need to rethink the role of the parish in terms of its vocational mission because it is often ineffective and not very dynamic, above all in the realm of catechesis.

The reality of young people regarding migration, abuse, the “throwaway culture” are also dwelt on in part one. Regarding abuse, the Synod Document calls for a “firm commitment for the adoption of rigorous preventive measures that will keep such abuse from being repeated, beginning with the selection and formation of those to whom leadership and educational roles are entrusted”. The world of art, music and sports is also discussed in terms of using them as “pastoral resources”.

The second part of The Synod Document calls young people one of the “theological places” in which the Lord makes himself present. Thanks to them, it says, the Church can renew herself, shaking off its “heaviness and slowness”. Mission, it says is a “sure compass” for youth since it is the gift of self that brings an authentic and lasting happiness. Closely connected with the concept of mission is vocation. Every baptismal vocation is a call to holiness. Two other aspects covered in part two that aid in the development of the mission and vocation of young people are that of accompaniment and discernment.

“Walking together” is the synodal dynamic which the Fathers also bring to light in the part three. They invite the Conferences of Bishops’ around the world to continue the process of discernment with the aim of developing specific pastoral solutions. The definition of “synodality” provided is a style for mission that encourages us to move from “I” to “we” and to consider the multiplicity of faces, sensitivities, origins and cultures. One request repeatedly made in the hall, was that of establishing a “Directory of youth ministry in a vocational key” on the national level, that can help diocesan and parish leaders qualify their training and action “with” and “for” young people, helping to overcome a certain fragmentation of the pastoral care of the Church.

The Synod Document reminds families and Christian communities of the importance of accompanying young people to discover the gift of their sexuality. The bishops recognize the Church’s difficulty in transmitting “the beauty of the Christian vision of sexuality” in the current cultural context. It is urgent, the document says, to seek “more appropriate ways which are translated concretely into the development of renewed formative paths”.

In the end, the Document brings the various topics covered in the Synod under one heading: the call to holiness. ‘Vocational differences are gathered in the unique and universal call to holiness…. Through the holiness of so many young people willing to renounce life in the midst of persecution in order to remain faithful to the Gospel, the Church can renew its spiritual ardour and its apostolic vigour.’

El Salvador. Oscar Romero, a Saint waiting for justice.

Thursday, 1 November 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

After thirty eight years of impunity, the process of identifying the assassins and those who sent them is reopened. People again speak of the “Argentine Connection”.

Some days before the canonisation which took place on 14 October in Rome, a march was held ending in front of the Palace of Justice in San Salvador. The marchers were demanding the speeding up of the case against the material and intellectual authors of the assassination of Monsignor Romero, people who are still hidden in the shadows after 38 years. The timing of the demands for judicial truth was well chosen, coinciding with the canonisation of Romero and coming soon after the decision finally to reopen the investigation on 12 May, 2017, assigning its leadership Criminal Prosecution Judge Rigoberto Chicas, a judge who is well known in El Salvador for having sentenced to prison for corruption Antonio Saca, who was their president from 2004 to 2009. “He is a serious person and we are confident the case will go ahead” comments Ovidio Mauricio Gonzalez, of Tutela Legale (Legal Protection), the historical institution founded in 1977 by Archbishop Romero with the title of Juridical Assistance.

It is difficult to see how, after almost four decades, not one of the guilty persons who took part in this crime has been brought before the courts, or, worse still, that no investigation has yet taken place whose results can be trusted. But this is precisely how things are. Romero is also the victim of the peace he wanted for his tormented country since the agreements that disarmed the guerrillas in Salvador in 1992 led the conflicting parties to ignore the atrocities committed, leaving them behind in favour of a future agreement that finally seemed within reach.
The amnesty decreed by Alfredo Cristiani, the president of Arena, the party in power, in March 1993 brought an end to hundreds of prosecutions already under way in the courts and halted the avalanche of cases that would have been brought with the new democracy. The Truth Commission alone, in its short term of existence, considered more than two thousand cases, 80,000 victims of the war and 10,000 disappeared, the legacy of the conflict.

Finally, the amnesty law was declared unconstitutional and repealed on 13 July 2016, opening the way for prosecutions, including cases already under amnesty.
Ovidio Mauricio Gonzalez, who, among other things, certified the transfer of Romero’s remains from the old to the new tomb by due canonical oath on 11 March 2015, has stated that he is happy with the reopening and with the person responsible for the case. In his office full of files he showed us each one of the eleven volumes each of two hundred pages or more, recently deposited with the new prosecuting judge. They contain reconstructions, statements, testimonies, newspaper articles, minutes, maps, also names and identikits such as that of the alleged assassin, tall, slim, with sharp features, a moustache and a beard and so described my other members of the death squad. These amount to a very valuable basis for indictment that confirms or integrates other works such as the report of the Truth Commission that gathered particularly conclusive items, or that of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights which studied the evidence and the great volume of work collected for the civil case brought in Fresno, California, against the former Captain Álvaro Saravia which ruled that he pay damages amounting to ten million dollars and led the judge to write in the sentence that there truly existed a death squad and that it was commanded by Major Roberto D’Aubuisson. When asked if the material collected by the Truth Commission would be sufficient to bring to justice and convict D’Aubuisson, the main suspect of the assassination, an important assessor of the Commission, the American Douglas Cassel, a Harvard doctor at law, replied without hesitation: “If this were brought before a court, I would say that the case would end in a conviction. None of the commissioners and none of the three consultants had the least doubt about the outcome because we interviewed key witnesses who knew what had happened”.

Agenda Saravia

The Argentine daily La Nación published on 14 March 2018 an interview with the younger sister of D’Abuisson, Marisa de Martínez, entitled “My brother, the killer of Monsignor Oscar Romero”. The woman, who is a social assistant and very active in the base communities of Salvador, speaks of her visit to the hospice where her brother was a patient just a day before he died. It was the last time she saw him alive and she said to him on that occasion: «”You must die in peace. I beg you, entrust yourself to Romero asking him from the depths of your heart to forgive you”. He opened his eyes for a moment and drew her close to himself, face to face and, unable to speak because of his sickness, he began to weep”.Before leaving for Rome for the canonisation, Marisa D’Abuisson de Martínez was interviewed by the daily El Faro which published it on Saturday 13 October, the vigil of the canonisation of Monsignor Romero. Asked if she had any doubts about the participation of her brother in the assassination, she replied: «Unfortunately … from what Roberto was saying about Monsignor, and the notebook that was found [the so-called “Agenda Saravia”] with its details, I think he joined that organisation, so to speak, which was set up to see how Romero could be definitively disposed of. And, of course, his last sermon may have persuaded those who still had some doubts”.

According to the results of the Truth Commission, the organisation chart of those responsible for the assassination of Romero led to a death squad organised by D’Abuisson and financed by the so-called Miami group composed of important families who emigrated to the United States” adds the lawyer Mauricio Gonzalez: “Capitan Álvaro Saravia was in charge of the funds, the treasurer; the driver is known; other names are known even though the precise role of each one in the operation is not; it is not known for certain who pulled the trigger though there are suspects”. On the eve of the canonisation, the Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez again spoke of the “Argentina connection”, at least in so far as it refers to the training of the sniper who shot Romero on the afternoon of 24 March 1980. Rosa Chávez indicated “an Argentinian priest” as his source which spoke of “a school for the training of snipers” close to the city where he lived and to have known that the one who killed Romero came from there”. The Cardinal stated that, before the murder, the Apostolic Nuncio received a representative of the American embassy who revealed to him that: “Romero is in danger; please tell him that – perhaps – He will be assassinated next week”.

The secretary of the Vatican embassy in Buenos Aires then called the nuncio in Costa Rica, Lajos Kada, and he, in turn, called the Archbishop”. Rosa Chávez confirmed that in the diary which Romero used to keep also showed the connection with Argentina: “The Archbishop wrote in his diary: the nuncio called me and told me I may be assassinated next week. And he immediately offered his life”. Rosa Chávez continued: «When I was Apostolic Administrator after the death of Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, I wrote to the nuncio and questioned him on this point: “It is true, I informed Romero – he replied. – Therefore, we have concrete facts concerning the Argentina connection, even though we do not know the name of the assassin.”

The name of former captain Álvaro Saravia recurs in almost all the reports that have been edited to date on the assassination of Monsignor Romero. In a ledger sequestered in a country house where a group of prominent right-wing men were gathered, there appear payments given to various agents of what was called “Operation Pina”, a possible code name for the operation that ended in the killing of Monsignor Romero. The lawyer Mauricio Gonzalez clarified the matter: “The ledger shows that Saravia had asked for two vehicles, one for the sniper and the driver and a second for whoever was to supervise the action from outside”, as he showed us a photocopy of the page of the ledger with details of the payments made to the members of the command which, on 24 March 1980, took part in the assassination.
Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez remembers that, in May 2015, former Captain “phoned me and said he wanted to clear his conscience, that he was writing a book on Romero and he needed to see me. I was not sure I ought to believe him. I asked him for proof and he sent me a messenger with a letter signed by him. Then something unexpected happened; a journalist intercepted him and Álvaro told him the whole story”.
That journalist was Carlos Dada, founder and director of the El Salvador on-line El Faro who, in an interview published under the title “How we killed Monsignor Romero” on 22 March 2010, declared that he took no part in planning the murder and that he did not know the sniper, though he did see him “get into the vehicle”, that he had a beard and that he “personally handed over to him one thousand Colones that D’Aubuisson had borrowed from Eduardo Lemus O´Byrne”. A couple of years before the assassination of Romero, D’Aubuisson founded the Arena Party (Nationalist republican Alliance) and became its head. He was also president of the constitutive Assembly of 1983 and a prominent member of the World Anti-Communist league. He died of throat cancer in 1992 at the age of 47, having brought the party to the presidency of El Salvador a short time before the signing of the Peace Agreement that put an end to the civil war in El Salvador.

Even though some suspects are already dead and others have committed suicide, some witnesses have disappeared and despite various red herrings, the investigation into the assassination of the man declared a saint by Pope Francis can once again set out on the path towards the truth. This is because the Church – as Cardinal Rosa Chavez repeated recently – wants to forgive but the element of justice is the condition for pardon”.On October 23, a Salvadoran judge ordered the arrest of Alvaro Rafael Saravia. Judge Rigoberto Chicas said there is sufficient evidence to charge Saravia for participating in Romero’s killing, and ordered the police and Interpol to search for him. Saravia’s wherabouts are unknown.

Alver Metalli/TdA

Burkina Faso. Alphonsine Yanogo. Sister and Mechanic.

Thursday, 1 November 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

She is the first female mechanic in the country. She runs the Garage Saint Michel de Sic with 22 employees. A Sister who understands engines.

From early morning, the traffic in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso with its 2.5 million inhabitants, is impressive. There is a concentration of vehicles including many motor cycles called ‘Ouaga-two-wheelers’ and a growing presence of used cars called ‘France-Aurevoir’. The use of so many motorcycle and used car taxis has created in the world of wheels and engines a business that varies from those who deal in second-hand parts to dozens and dozens of mechanical and tyre workshops.

At Tampouy, a quarter in the northern outskirts of the capital there is a workshop called Garage Saint Michel de SIC (acronym of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception). What is unusual about this workshop is that it is run by the only woman mechanic in the country. Sister Alphonsine is a native of Burkina Faso. She was born 41 years ago in Pabré, a small village in the province of Kadiogo in the centre of the country. She grew up in a Catholic family, together with her two brothers and three sisters. After completing primary school, she entered the Aspirat Saint Goretti di Tampouy, a Catholic school run by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception with a High School course for girls lasting five years.

Sr. Alphonsine tells us: “At the Aspirat, scholastic education, discipline and ethics were carefully nurtured. The curriculum included almost all the main subjects (French, mathematics, history, geography, law and biology), but I preferred the more technical and practical subjects”. It was during those years of secondary school that her vocational journey began. She obtained her diploma and decided to go to Guilongou, also in Burkina Faso, for a vocational experience. She stayed there a year and then returned to Pabré to start the novitiate.
In 2001 Alphonsine took the vows of religion with the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. She soon distinguished herself for her practical abilities, especially concerning motors. Sr. Alphonsine explains: “We needed to mill the cereals so one day I found parts of an old electric motor and succeeded in attaching it to our grinding mill. I was not afraid to get my hands dirty”. Michel Pillot, A French priest, the founder of several humanitarian associations in Burkina Faso, noticed her great talent and advised her to make good use of it. With his help, Sr. Alphonsine got a driving license and, once behind the wheel, her interest in mechanics grew even more.

Sr. Alphonsine understood that mechanics could be the ideal area for her to exercise her mission as a Sister and, at the same time, learn more about mechanics herself. Her superiors were interested and accepted her proposal. Sr. Alphonsine studied automobile mechanics for two years and obtained top marks with her diploma in automobile mechanics. She obtained practical experience in a garage to learn the trade.
Father Pillot then urged her to set up her own small business and so on 10 March 2009, the Garage Saint Michel de SIC was opened with Sr. Alphonsine and three workers. The garage run by a Sister mechanic made people curious and, as she herself relates, “They came, and still come today, to see if it is true”.
Besides the curious, the garage has also attracted so many young people in search of work that it now has 21 people involved: Sr. Alphonsine, seven mechanics, an electrician, four bodywork repairmen and eight painters, apart from a number of apprentices learning the trade. Sr. Alphonsine’s workers are paid regularly each month.

In a short time, the garage became one of the most respected and qualified in the capital. People even come from far away to have their cars repaired. “I think it is important – Sr. Alphonsine says – that people see in us a different way of working, with respect for people and material. The young men and women here learn first of all to believe in themselves and in their abilities and that they can be successful. This is also meant to be an answer for those thinking of emigrating. We have here in our country the potential to create work and a future”.
The work of Sr. Alphonsine today consists mostly in administering and coordinating the work. First a ‘diagnosis’ is made of the problems with any car to be repaired and the collaborators decide what is to be done. She herself can often be seen using a spanner as she stoops over the engine, or under the car to check the brakes. “The vocation is the union of love and passion, experience and talent. I feel as if I heard the call twice, both as a Sister and as a mechanic”, Sr. Alphonsine concludes.

Natascia Aquilano

Johannesburg. Refugees In The City Of Gold.

Thursday, 1 November 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

Every year, thousands of migrants and refugees arrive in Johannesburg from several African countries. The House of Mercy and the Jesuit Refugee Service have been committed to serving hundreds of marginalized people in the metropolis for two decades now.

Johannesburg is home to about half a million refugees and asylum seekers, one of the largest urban populations in the world. They arrive mainly from African countries with conflict situations, such as Eritrea, DR Congo, Nigeria, Somalia and Burundi.
Unlike many other countries, there are no refugee camps in South Africa, while there are four reception centres located in Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Messina; the latter is close to the border with Zimbabwe. Refugees arriving in South Africa must register as asylum seekers and apply for a refugee permit in order to get an asylum seeker card that allows them to study or work in the country.

However, finding a job is almost impossible, considering that the unemployment rate in South Africa is estimated at 35%. If one is lucky there are some opportunities in the informal sector of street vending. The permit must be renewed periodically until the refugee status is obtained. Those who are finally granted refugee status (it takes about ten years) have access to health care and retirement benefits, like all South African citizens. The Ministry of the Interior of South Africa, estimated, at the end of 2016, that 170,000 refugees and slightly less than one million asylum seekers were in the country, these data reflected how huge the scale of this phenomenon is.
The United Nations define as ‘refugee’ a person who has been forced to cross national boundaries due to war, violence or persecution because of their sexual orientation, or religious, political or ethnic affiliation. An ‘economic immigrant’, on the other hand, is a person who emigrates in search of a better future, because of lack of work or of prospects of a decent life in their place of origin.

There are some five million immigrants, mostly from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Nigeria, in South Africa. Unlike the economic immigrant, the asylum seeker is allowed, temporarily, to study or work in the country. This is the reason why, according to the Government of South Africa, many immigrants request asylum without being truly refugees.South Africa plans to create a single refugee reception centre, next to the border with Mozambique, where the asylum seekers would remain confined until they are granted or denied refugee status.
Those who do not obtain refugee status would be very likely repatriated to Mozambique, the country from which the majority of them enter South Africa. Members of civil society consider this reform of the immigration law a way to limit the rights of refugees. In 2014, 15 percent of asylum applications were processed favorably. A year later, the percentage dropped to four percent. Luckily, there are those who are on the side of the most disadvantaged. Diana Bemish left her job as a teacher to dedicate her life to refugees. More than 20 years ago, she founded the House of Mercy, a home for 22 refugees in the northeast area of the city. “I was shocked by the images of the exodus from Rwanda in 1994 and I felt I had to do something. Everything started with the renting of a house for five refugees. People who are hosted at the Mercy House find a family who cares for them”. Diana says. “Although I left the House of Mercy three years ago, I still consider it my home”, says Donatus, a Burundian who fled his country in 2003 and who now works as a chief nurse in a public hospital in Johannesburg. His psychological wounds, due to the violence he had experienced and to the continuous fleeing from one place to another, were healed at the House of Mercy. After going through DR Congo and Tanzania, Donatus finally settled down in Johannesburg. He enrolled in the Bible School of Pretoria, then he studied nursing and even collaborated as a lay missionary in Malawi on projects for the promotion of women.

Mama Mi, is from Rwanda and prefers not to remember the travail she experienced before arriving in Johannesburg. Now, she cooks for and takes care of the children at the House of Mercy. She has become a member of the committee that coordinates the functioning of the house. “I, along with other people, started a new life here. That’s why I feel grateful to God”.
There are also other centres that focus on refugee needs in South Africa, such as the Jesuit Refugee Service. The JRS was established in 1998 and it was started as a spiritual and practical response to the plight of refugees. Its director, Johan Viljoen, recognizes that they must respond to countless challenges that refugees face: first of all accommodation and basic needs.

Dominican Sister Lidia Danyluk works as Community Outreach officer at JRS. She supports refugees psychologically. She is also committed to promoting a culture of hospitality, together with the local community. “When we explain the reality of refugees to locals, they understand and become bearers of a message of hospitality among their communities”, explains the Argentine religious. “At the same time”, she says, “refugees, for their part, should try to interact with locals; they tend to remain within their own communities instead. They feel safer with their compatriots. They happened to be attacked by locals and therefore they are scared, nevertheless, efforts for integration should be made by both sides”, says Sister Lidia. The diocese of Johannesburg also offers pastoral care to the refugees.

Sister Lidia tell us that the JRS South Africa also runs the Arrupe Center, a women’s skills training centre that provides women with English language training, followed by skills training courses in sewing, hairdressing, baking, cosmetology and computer literacy. Upon successful completion of their training, women are issued with start-up kits (for example a sewing machine and materials, if they have completed the sewing course). They then undergo a business training seminar, and are then supported and monitored to ensure that they can use their newly acquired skills to generate income for themselves and their children. The Congolese Henriette, is about to get a certification which is issued to all those who successfully completed their courses. Henriette is about to achieve her graduation in the course of sewing. Her dream is to set up a small sewing workshop and leave street vending. “Every day I find reasons to thank and glorify God because he has never abandoned me. I hope to be able to help other women at the Arrupe centre”, she says.

Rafael Armada

Uganda/Sudanese Refugees. Just A Drop In The Ocean.

Monday, 1 October 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

It consists in a microcredit project for women and grants for school fees for about fifty young people. This is the concrete contribution of the Comboni Sisters to those wishing to build a life for themselves. A Costa Rican Comboni Sister Lorena Ortiz puts us in the picture.

There are signs of improvement in the refugee camp at Palorinya in the north of Uganda even though the refugees came here early in 2017 having suddenly had to abandon their homes in Kajo Keji (South Sudan) due to increasing violence and widespread insecurity. Now, at Palorinya, some families have succeeded in making bricks and building more dignified and secure dwellings. Others have opened small shops and in some areas potable water is more available since wells were dug with the help of some NGO’s.
Unfortunately, the weakest people and those with no families are now living in worse conditions than at the start: the walls are nearly gone and the plastic sheet that serves as a roof is full of holes and lets in the rain. With no protection from the weather, quite a few people became ill and some died. In general, families find it hard to improve their lives due to rising prices. They often have to sell some of their rations of food provided by the UN agencies.

We Comboni Sisters are carrying out our mission of witness, evangelisation and human promotion just as we were doing in Lomin, in South Sudan, from where we were forced to flee in February 2017 due to the war. Maria, from Portugal, works with groups of women in the microcredit project. The women have a very hard life and many of them are alone, abandoned by their partners or widowed. It is the women who usually bear the burden of the family and assume the roles of both father and mother.

The microcredit project is giving cause for hope: the women are given a small loan with which they buy what they want to sell and so make some profit. They then refund the money which is, in turn, given to other women as loans to begin their activities. This method has turned out well in promoting the women since it makes them independent and it gives them creative and dignified work. It motivates them and makes them feel no longer alone and helpless but able to do much for themselves and their families.

For my part, I run the Malala Project to finance secondary school for about fifty young people. We also provide them with breakfast and lunch. We also provide them with solar-powered lamps so they can study at home where they have no electricity. Many students have to walk two or three hours every day to and from school. They leave home around five in the morning, walk for several hours and then attend classes until five in the evening. They do this without having any breakfast as they cannot afford it. They reach home around seven or eight in the evening. It is obvious that such a routine will not produce the best results and so we started the Malala Project. The problem is that there are many students and we cannot help them all. I find the words of Mother Teresa who used to say: “What we are doing is but a drop in the ocean but if we didn’t do it, the ocean would have one drop less.”

South Sudan. Street Children in Juba. They Want To Live.

Monday, 1 October 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

Seventeen abandoned children have been rescued from wandering around the streets and started ‘the trip of their lives’. They are part of a long-awaited educational project, which hopefully will take them, and many others like them, into a different future.

Juba, the capital of the South Sudan, lays on the left bank of the White Nile, about a hundred kilometres from the Ugandan border. The city has been, since the eighteen hundreds, the principal city in the South of Sudan, a vast region of 619,745 square km. With a population of around 500,000. On 9 July, 2011 when South Sudan officially became the 54th African state and the 193rd state in the world, Juba became the newest capital in the world.

In December 2013, some Dinka militias loyal to President Salva Kiir began to clash with Nuer army soldiers, accusing them of planning a coup. The Nuer soldiers were led by Vice President Riek Machar who had been dismissed by Kiir a few days previously. The city became a battleground. Thousands of people took refuge in United Nations areas. Dead bodies lay in the streets. After talks and various negotiations, between President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, a peace agreement was signed last July. Through the years, because of the war, many people had come to settle down in Juba. Many are children without parents. In the capital Juba, up to 3,000 children live on the street, and that number is increasing daily, said the Mind and Soul Institute, a local charity that works with street children. According to Bester Mulauzi, country director of programme development for Save the Children: “Children living on the streets face unimaginable dangers. They risk being forcibly recruited by armed groups and are more likely to be abused and exploited”.

School football team

Wearing the blue colours of London Chelsea soccer team, Johnson and his companion are sitting at the back of an open four-wheel-drive vehicle parked in one of Juba’s main streets. Anyone who sees these children dressed in blue has to pay attention to them. It is a weird sight in a country that has been ravaged by civil war and stricken by poverty for many years now. In fact, soon some people come near, “are you a school football team? Which school do you belong to? Have you come to challenge the team of a neighbouring school?” The answers to the questions are not simple, and go beyond the appearances. Fr Paolino tells the curious ones a very sad story: a story of abandonment, drug abuse, juvenile crime, poverty and a chain of unending sufferings.

It all started when Paolino Tipo Deng, a South Sudanese Comboni missionary priest, bumped into those children, who were living in appalling conditions. No sooner seen than done! He took upon himself the task of doing something to change their situation, and prayed that God could help him in his purpose. Today he oversees an educational project which, hopefully, will take at least a hundred children out of the streets of the capital and give back to them an opportunity to study and enjoy their childhood for the first time in their lives.

The building in which Fr Paulino had found the children was in a shambles. “An authentic rat’s nest, – remembers the father – it’s an old religious formation house, abandoned many years ago. You can imagine what it may look like now, after many years of war and strife. Everything is in ruins. It lacks even the most basic services. And yet, it was – and still is – the refuge of about one hundred street boys. That hovel was the only home they knew. They were sheltered by night, and also fed during the day. Somebody had carried out some works of maintenance, and so they could enjoy one decent shower cubicle”.One day with another two Comboni missionaries Fr Paulino went to see the place. They were struck by the look of it. They found the children kicking around a deflated soccer ball. When the children saw them, they all ran to greet the visitors. “What are you doing here?”, one of the fathers asked them. “Nothing”, was the answer of one of them, with a big smile on his face. An explanation followed: “This is the orphanage of the zone!”

New beginnings

One of the two missionaries who had visited the ‘orphanage’ wanted to accompany Fr Paulino in his trip to take the first group of those street children to their new destination. After a 40-minute drive, including a short stop to refresh the passengers with some soft drinks, the group arrived at the Good Shepherd Peace Centre in Kit Kolye village, south of Juba town. It is a beautiful centre for human, pastoral and spiritual formation, the first of its kind in the whole of South Sudan, opened in October 2016, furnished with a chapel, a refectory and accommodation for up to 35 retreatants, and cared for by a religious community under the umbrella of ‘Solidarity with South Sudan’, an inter-congregational initiative to foster peace and justice in the country.

No doubt, the children were impressed by the beauty of the compound. As they jumped off the pickup, one of the missionaries asked them: “Well, boys! What do you think?”, waiting for the reply. No one said a word: all were busy taking in through their eyes that new fantastic world they were in. Only one, the youngest, after a while, cried out: “This is our new home!”: “Not really, replied the father, yours is somewhere else, but not less beautiful”: The little boy looked at him, smiled, took his sunduk (a metal trunk) from the back of the car, and, like the others, received from Fr Paulino a padlock and a key: “You will keep your belongings in this metal box. From now on, you are responsible for all the toiletries and educational materials you will be given during the whole year. And do not lose the key”. I wish I was there to see their faces. Before this, they did not have anything; now all their hopes were kept and locked in that trunk.They spent some nights at the Centre. Then they were carried to their true ‘home’; at least for a year: ‘Brother Augusto Memorial’ Primary School, an educational boarding facility run by the Saint Martin de Porres Brothers, a local congregation founded by two Comboni Missionaries, Bishop Sixto Mazzoldi and Fr. Giovanni Marengoni. There, in few days, the brothers had prepared brand new huts for the 17 children just next to the school.

Fr Paolino gathered the children and said: “Listen carefully to me, and keep my words in your minds and hearts. Do not throw away this chance. Be brave. The road ahead will be challenging and difficult. Never get discouraged. Always keep up hope. And know that the success of this project we launch today is in your hands”.He paused for a moment, then added: “Among you I can see the new president of South Sudan and the future ministers of our country. Do not disappoint the great expectations we have put on you all”. He looked at them and studied their faces intently for long moments. He was absolutely sure that they had listened with much attention, and he could see their faces alight with great ideals, immense hope and a clear determination.

Fr Paolino’s dreams

Fr. Paolino talking with another missionary said. “When I first saw these children, forsaken and roaming around the streets of Juba town, I knew I could not witness their situation and do nothing about it. I am thinking about the rest of them still living in that hell-like ‘orphanage’: I want to do something also for the other orphans who do not have even that rat’s nest to spend the night and get some food. I want to work out some plans for all the street children and for all the many youngsters that still roam around the town”.He continued: “I know what I have to do. First, I will restore radically the orphanage and also I will build proper boarding accommodation for at least 100 children next to the Brother Augusto Memorial Primary School. I will need many resources, not only to put up structures, but also to run them. Gosh, without realising it, I have become their foster parent”. Actually, he is more than a foster parent. He is the true father for these children.

Roy Carlos Zaiga Paredes

World Mission Sunday. “Life Is A Mission”.

Monday, 1 October 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

The theme of this year: “Together with young people, let us bring the Gospel to all,” echoes the upcoming synod of bishops on Youth. “The Synod to be held in Rome this coming October, the month of the missions, offers us an opportunity to understand more fully, in the light of faith, what the Lord Jesus wants to say to you young people, and, through you, to all Christian communities”. World Mission Sunday is celebrated this year on October 21. A synthesis of his message.

Pope Francis said: “Every man and woman is a mission that is the reason for our life on this earth. To be attracted and to be sent are two movements that our hearts, especially when we are young, feel as interior forces of love; they hold out promise for our future and they give direction to our lives. More than anyone else, young people feel the power of life breaking in upon us and attracting us. To live out joyfully our responsibility for the world is a great challenge. I am well aware of lights and shadows of youth; when I think back to my youth and my family, I remember the strength of my hope for a better future. The fact that we are not in this world by our own choice makes us sense that there is an initiative that precedes us and makes us exist”.

Pope Francis continued: “The Church, by proclaiming what she freely received (cf. Mt 10:8; Acts 3:6), can share with you young people the way and truth which give meaning to our life on this earth… Dear young people, do not be afraid of Christ and his Church! For there we find the treasure that fills life with joy. I can tell you this from my own experience: thanks to faith, I found the sure foundation of my dreams and the strength to realize them. I have seen great suffering and poverty mar the faces of so many of our brothers and sisters. And yet, for those who stand by Jesus, evil is an incentive to ever greater love. Many men and women, and many young people, have generously sacrificed themselves, even at times to martyrdom, out of love for the Gospel and service to their brothers and sisters.”

Taking directly to young people, Pope Francis said: “You too, young friends, by your baptism have become living members of the Church; together we have received the mission to bring the Gospel to everyone. You are at the threshold of life. To grow in the grace of the faith bestowed on us by the Church’s sacraments plunges us into that great stream of witnesses who, generation after generation, enable the wisdom and experience of older persons to become testimony and encouragement for those looking to the future. And the freshness and enthusiasm of the young makes them a source of support and hope for those nearing the end of their journey. In this blend of different stages in life, the mission of the Church bridges the generations; our faith in God and our love of neighbour are a source of profound unity.”
“This transmission of the faith, the heart of the Church’s mission, comes about by the infectiousness of love, where joy and enthusiasm become the expression of a newfound meaning and fulfilment in life. The spread of the faith “by attraction” calls for hearts that are open and expanded by love. It is not possible to place limits on love, for love is strong as death (cf. Song 8:6). And that expansion generates encounter, witness, proclamation; it generates sharing in charity with all those far from the faith, indifferent to it and perhaps even hostile and opposed to it. Human, cultural and religious settings still foreign to the Gospel of Jesus and to the sacramental presence of the Church represent the extreme peripheries, the “ends of the earth”, to which, ever since the first Easter, Jesus’ missionary disciples have been sent, with the certainty that their Lord is always with them (cf. Mt 28:20; Acts 1:8). This is what we call the missio ad gentes. The most desolate periphery of all is where mankind, in need of Christ, remains indifferent to the faith or shows hatred for the fullness of life in God. All material and spiritual poverty, every form of discrimination against our brothers and sisters, is always a consequence of the rejection of God and his love”.

Pope Francis concluded: “The ends of the earth, dear young people, nowadays are quite relative and always easily “navigable”. The digital world – the social networks that are so pervasive and readily available – dissolves borders, eliminates distances and reduces differences. Everything appears within reach, so close and immediate. And yet lacking the sincere gift of our lives, we could well have countless contacts but never share in a true communion of life. To share in the mission to the ends of the earth demands the gift of oneself in the vocation that God, who has placed us on this earth, chooses to give us (cf. Lk 9:23-25). I dare say that, for a young man or woman who wants to follow Christ, what is most essential is to seek, to discover and to persevere in his or her vocation.”

DR Congo. Kabila likely to remain in control after the elections date.

Monday, 1 October 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

Either the elections are rigged or they cannot take place for logistical and financial reasons. In both cases, directely or indirectly, Kabila is likely to remain in control, anticipate observers in Kinshasa.

A growing number of players and observers inside and outside the DRC are convinced that President Joseph Kabila is likely to remain in office or at least in control of power after the date of the scheduled presidential and parliament elections on the next 23 December.

One of these pundits is the former Prime Minister between 2008 and 2012, Adolphe Muzito who was barred from running for the presidency by Constitutional Court in early September. The alleged reason for eliminating him was reportedly an obscure ‘conflict of interest’ with the Lumumbist Unified Party (PALU) from which he was excluded.
Another former Prime Minister, the 94 year old ‘patriarch’ Antoine Gizenga, the founder of PALU was also banned, allegedly on a accusation of forgery after his son signed a document on his behalf to register him as a candidate. The Court also barred from running the former Congolese vice-president and Kabila’s rival at the 2006 presidential election, Jean-Pierre Bemba. The decision is motivated by Bemba’s condemnation for the bribery of witnesses by the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) Remarkably, however, the Congolese court did not bar from running for a provincial parliament election, Frederic Batumike, a militiamen who was sentenced for the rape of young girls.
Kabila has taken no prisoners. His handpicked Independent National Electoral Commission has banned all the main opposition candidates, except for Félix Tshisekedi, son of the late founder of the Union for Democracy Social Progress and Vital Kamerhe. “The Electoral Commission is under Kabila’s heel “, says Muzito. Some of the eliminated candidates are indeed heavy weights, as showed the important crowd that welcomed in Kinshasa Bemba when he returned from his ten year imprisonmnet, after he was acquitted by the ICC at the beginning of August. Bemba scored an impressive 41,95% at the 2006 presidential election against Joseph Kabila while Gizenga scored 13,06% of the votes at the first round of the presidential election in 2006.

Beyond that, the most popular Congolese politician, according to nationwide opinion polls carried out by the Berci and Congo Research Group, Moise Katumbi, the former governor of Katanga has not been allowed to register as a presidential candidate. On the last 3 August, Katumbi was banned to enter the Congolese territory at the Zambian border. The Bishops National Conference of the Congo (CENCO) considered that the incident was inacceptable while Renaud Girard, columnist of the Paris-based Figaro daily concluded that the DRC was heading towards a non credible election.
It is not sure that the elections will even take place, considers Muzito. In his opinion, it is quite likely that at some point, the authorities will declare that there are not in a position to organise the elections for logistical and financial reasons. The government claims that it wants to finance them without foreign support but it lacks the means to finance the cost of the elections estimated at one billion dollars, says Thierry Vircoulon from the French Institute of International Relations IFRI.

According to Vircoulon, the Kinshasa regime has no interest to organize elections since very few will vote for Kabila’s dauphin, the former permanent secretary of the ruling People’s Party for Reconstruction and Development (PPRD), Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary who was anointed presidential candidate on the last 8 August. All observers coincide that the man lacks charisma. Beyond that, they stress that he is extremely unpopular after the violent repression against the supporters of the Bundia dia Kongo religious movement in the Kongo central region, of demonstrators in Kinshasa in early 2017 and of a rebel movement in the Kasai province. In addition, Ramazani Shadary is a disastrous candidate on the diplomatic scene since he was put in May 2017 on the European Union sanctions list for its alleged role in the planification and the execution of serious human rights violations.
If nevertheless the election do take place anyway, a massive rigging can be expected, warns Adolphe Muzito. There are growing signs that it will be the case. By end August, the Congolese roman Catholics bishops expressed concern about the lack of clarity in the vote registry. In May, the International Organization of Francophony revealed that the fingerprints of 16.6% of the registered voters, about 10 million citizens, were missing, which makes it impossible to check their identities. In addition, the Electoral Commission is adamant to use controversial electronic voting machines.

These devices designed by a South Korean company called Miru Systems have been dismissed by the Congolese opposition as ‘cheating machines’, whereas the United States said that they could undermine the credibility of the forthcoming polls. Moreover, last March, the South Korea’s government officially distanced itself from the company and warned that the use of these machines « could give the Congolese government a pretext for undesirable results related to the elections ». Besides, in a country where the majority of the people lives in rural areas, the use of touch screen voting machines is a serious challenge. Another problem is the one month delay in the supply of the first batch of 35,000 machines (out of a total of 110,000) which was observed in early September.

In such context, Adolphe Muzito has called the opposition to unite, to campaign for the organisation of free and fair elections and to come up with a joint programme. But the lack of trust in the transparency of the entire electoral process does not make this challenge an easy one. Muzito’s prediction that Kabila is likely to remain in control of power after the 23 December deadline set for the election, seems realistic. Opposition, civil society and church circles are extremely concerned about the risk that this could trigger new cycle of protest and violence, if the Congolese people react in a desperate way.

François Misser

Africa Youth. To be protagonists in the church and in the society.

In the view of the Synod on youth which will take place in Rome this month, Tendai Karombo, chairperson of the National Catholic Youth Council in Zimbabwe, explains what are the challenges that face young people in the society and in the church in Africa.

Zimbabwe just like any other African country, young people are facing many situations in their day to day lives and also hope for the best from both the Church and Society.
The change in times has never made it easy for us young people to have a steady life and also the rise of many challenges
In most of African countries economic crisis has brought about many challenges and problems. Poor economies, largely due to mismanagement of resources (especially natural resources) has led to poor performance of economies resulting in: High levels of unemployment (e.g. in Zimbabwe it is estimated to be between 80%-95%) therefore it means there is no stable source of income. Young people have developed dependency syndrome on parents, politicians and donor aid stalling youths’ active and meaning participation in societal transformation. Young people are now failing to live a dream of their own, their dreams and aspirations are controlled by the one who has an upper hand in their knives or based on how much the family can earn to make their dreams come true.
Another challenge is the child labour. The concept of child labour is becoming a common practice in Africa. Young people are being used to provide cheap labour. Many of them, especially girls, still have challenges to access basic education, many fail to get specialised trainings. Instead of one help young ones earn and further their education, young boys and girls are ‘employed’ as house helpers and in some production companies and are then deprived their chance to develop their future.

Family disintegration and society chaos

The effects of destabilised families are detrimental to the growth and success of young people and leads to society chaos. Family members especially parents leave families for greener pasture or for safety and better living conditions which affect the psychological and even physical wellness of youths. Technology coming in between families not as a strength but being a threat to the communion of a family, taking the place where attention is now shifted more to technical gadgets and less to the behavioural changes of young people in families.

Challenges facing the young people in the Church

The Church as a body of Christ plays a very important role in the formation, growth and development of young people. In my time being involved in the process of coming up with the Pastoral Plan for the Archdiocese I come from, I realized that there are certain areas that young people would wish to be addressed.

Formation. From the time one gets baptised (most of young people gets to be baptised just a few months after being born) to the time one receives the sacrament of confirmation, there seems to be lack of proper and continuous formation in spiritual and other human development matters after receiving the sacrament of confirmation. There is little or no sustainable and comprehensive faith formation programmes for the youth. I appreciate the various youth guild we have but in some areas youth groups are not so common especially when they do not receive support from the parish councils and the Parish Priest hence no substantive platforms for youth formation. This often leads to youths being lured to new mushrooming churches (and the question is there Faith or Fiction in these new churches).
Lack of space and engagement. Due to generational differences the older generation of believers have failed to create sustainable dialogues with young people hence no space for youths to grow. Youths are often side lined to minor responsibilities and duties in Catholic institutions.
Lack of proper platforms for youths to exercise and utilise their talents and gifts to minister to other youths and the universal Church. In many cases the Church in Africa is led and run by the ‘seasoned Catholics’ who have all sacraments, all the experience and know it all.
Not much trust is given to young people in terms of involving then in decision making process and roles of leading in the Church.
Lack of human development formation. Socio economic conditions in Africa have led to youths lacking creativity, not fully utilising their potential and less is being done on a long term bases to help the youths. There is little effects to get support from the Church in dealing with social challenges like addiction, homosexuality, pornography, alcohol and child abuse. Most young people who are affected by the social challenges I have just mentioned above have seized to attend and join other youths in parishes, leaving no option but for the Church to go and reach to the society.
Many things are happening in the world and time spent at the church grants the young people an opportunity to realise what Gods wants for them to do. Also helping the young people to discern on their vocations as a process not an event means the religious, clergy and members of the Church needs to intervene a lot.

Hopes and expectations of young people from the Society

Young people in this generation lives with hope for a better future. As much as there are challenges faced but platforms like this Synod that we gather here today to plan and discuss gives more hope and shades more light. There are a number of expectations I have highlighted that the young expect from the Society and the Church

Expectations from the Society and Church

The society to support young people and give them platform to show their strength, and learn from their mistakes. To acknowledge and appreciate responsibilities that some young people are carrying. To assist young people discern carefully about their vocations, their career and their aspirations. To constantly revise and improve the education system to prepare the young in dealing with potential challenges of the Church, society and the respective countries /regions. To give full moral and social support. To advance evidence based policy making in order to address the needs of the young people. The society should embrace the generation and find ways to address to the generational gap so as to develop an understanding of our needs. To understand that being young is a transitional period and it will not remain permanent so there is great need for the society to help in preparing the young be responsible adults especially during this transitional period. Every being to feel partly responsible in the lives of young people. An African proverb says ‘’It takes an entire village to educate a child”.

Young people hope for: An inclusive society; A Church that is ready and willing to transform itself and its youths; Peaceful and conflict free societies; To have access to basic and advanced education and to live in developed communities. The Church to be always be vocal in raising these critical issues and advice the society on better alternatives. A chance to be able to contribute and engage meaningfully in the growth and development of the local Church in Africa.

Mandela. Above All Humanity.

There are all sorts of reasons for celebrating Nelson Mandela in this centenary year of his birth.

We recall the way he worked incessantly to overcome racial domination and achieve freedom for both the oppressed and their oppressors. We marvelled at how he could emerge from 27 years in prison without rancour or bitterness, even without regret, and sit across the table to negotiate with those who had kept him there.

When he became President he did his best to create an inclusive government, going well beyond the constitutional stipulation that the leader of the second- biggest party should be a Deputy-President. Mandela brought into his cabinet various Inkatha Freedom Party leaders, and offered posts to the leaders of the Pan Africanist Congress and the then Democratic Party.

Perhaps, though, his greatest political legacy was the simple fact that he left before his time. He was fully entitled to stay on for a second term in 1999, and there would have been nothing unusual about it had he done so. Indeed, it is a challenge to think of any other African liberation leader who willingly stepped aside at the first opportunity.

Beyond just the politics, we can surely never forget the many gestures of reconciliation, the way that he – who had been so deeply wronged – openly embraced so many people who had spent their sad lives fearing him and hating what he stood for: non-racialism, peaceful co-existence, a shared nationhood. He was criticised for his visit to Orania (and the criticism has recently been re-asserted) but when he took tea with Betsy Verwoerd, he showed us that true liberation is something that goes much deeper than mere politics. It is at root a spiritual thing and when it flowers it presents us with a glimpse of perfect humanity.

This is the Mandela legacy that we must treasure most. His deep, abiding, well-tested, indefatigable humanity. It is a rare quality among politicians, and it is sometimes assumed that Mandela acquired it during his imprisonment; that he went to prison as some kind of fire-breathing revolutionary, and came out all those years later as a man of peace.

This was not the case. In his famous speech from the dock during the Rivonia trial in 1964, he addressed the Court about his decision to embark on violent struggle with Umkhonto we Sizwe: “Four forms of violence were possible. There is sabotage, there is guerrilla warfare, there is terrorism, and there is open revolution. We chose to adopt the first method and to exhaust it before taking any other decision. In the light of our political background the choice was a logical one. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality”.

Note the reasoning: apart from avoiding loss of life (in itself a humane consideration) sabotage would also “offer the best hope for future race relations”, and minimise bitterness. How many liberation Leaders, having reached the stage where they feel compelled to take up arms, would factor in as a guiding principle, their future relationship with their oppressors? How many would prioritise the avoidance of bitterness on the part of their enemies? Only someone with a special sense of humanity would think that way.

When he emerged from prison in 1990, and took up leadership of the liberation struggle once again, Mandela’s message was exactly the same. Speaking on the day of his release from prison, he made it clear that the freedom for which he had sacrificed so much of his life was meant for the oppressors as much as for the oppressed: “We call on our white compatriots to join us in the shaping of a new South Africa. The freedom movement is the political home for you, too.”

This characteristic of Nelson Mandela’s – his unshakeable humanity – goes well beyond the realm of politics, even the often noble and sacrificial politics of a liberation struggle. It is what made him the moral giant that he was, and what gave him the capacity to give all the diverse people of South Africa an equal place in his heart. It is what made him a leader, but first and foremost a servant leader. As we commemorate Nelson Mandela, and give thanks for the vital gift that he was to our country and our world, we should see him as a benchmark. It would have been unfair to expect those who followed him as leaders of a free and democratic South Africa to be able to fill his shoes; but let us hope that in the current generation there are some who will at least try to do so.

Mike Pothier
Programme Manager,
SACBC Parliamentary Liaison Office

Republic of Central Africa. A Church With Open Arms.

Monday, 1 October 2018 8:00
Written by: Fr.Carmine

Some dioceses have had their priests killed and churches destroyed but nevertheless they take in the homeless and the needy. The Episcopal Conference promotes interreligious dialogue and seeks to get internal and international political institutions moving. The testimony of Mons. Juan José Aguirre, Bishop of Bangassou.

On 29 November 2015, Pope Francis visited Central Africa and declared Bangui: ‘The Spiritual Capital of the World’. That visit created a peaceful interlude lasting four months. First there was the blind violence of the Seleka militias followed by another dark period lasting until today, under President Touadéra.

During this phase, the human rights of the Central Africans have been and continue to be trodden underfoot with impunity by militias who call themselves Christian and are known as anti-Balakas. The visit of the Pope brought a time of peace and quiet that made us hope. We thought we had left the labyrinth of violence. After some time, those responsible for the UN mission turned a deaf ear to the message of the Central Africa Episcopal Conference. Despite the little good they undoubtedly did do, their overall mandate to defend the civil population seems to have been ineffective, unprofessional and, at times, due to its failure to react to war crimes, even complicit in them.

Welcome one and all

In 2013 and 2014, the churches of Bangui were filled with homeless: many found refuge there for more than three years. Some of the Muslims of the capital fled to Chad, others barricaded themselves in the PK5 quarter, the economic centre of Bangui. Yet, there are still homeless people in 80% of the territory not controlled by the government. The bishop of Alindao (in the south of the country), Mons. Cyr-Nestor Yapaupa, has 20,000 people camped at his residence. Catholics, Protestants and people of traditional religion sleep in makeshift tents supplied by UN organisations and suffer hunger and misery due to the insecurity created by the UPC (Unity for Central Africa, one of the many Seleka groups, led by Ali Darassa), which controls the city.

This is just an example: according to UNICEF, food insecurity affects four million Central Africans, 80% of the population. At the entrance to Alindao there are UPC mercenaries mixed with paramilitaries of the Peul ethnic group. At the exit there are anti-Balaka militias, poorly armed and composed mainly of young men. They say they want to liberate the country from the Seleka and they do this with unheard-of violence. Greeted first as ‘liberators’, they soon became fanatics and and even insane criminals seeking revenge. Alindao is between the hammer and the anvil. The Bishop of Kaga-Bandoro (central north), Mons. Taddhée Kusy is in a similar situation. However, there the militias have a different name and their sponsors are neither from Chad or the Gulf States.

We in the Catholic Church are aware of our vocation to lend a hand to all the despised, abused or massacred peoples. In Bangassou, in the south-west, the refugee camp is located in St Louis Minor Seminary. The seminary was opened fifty years ago and educated part of the leading class while training many Central African youths for the priesthood. On 15 May 2017, two thousand Moslems from Bangassou who were about to be massacred in their mosque, were rescued and brought to the seminary, close to the cathedral where they are still living. The Church, like the Good Samaritan, does not ask if the wounded person is black or white, Moslem or not, or whether they have residence permits: it simply helps them. This is how the churches still standing in the city and in the countryside have become places of refuge, field hospitals, as Pope Francis often says, or simply friendly places where people can find temporary shelter and save their lives.

Attempts at Reconciliation

When, in December 2013, the anti-Balakas attacked the Moslem quarters of the city, the Cardinal of Bangui, Dieudonné Nzapalainga, granted refuge to the Imam of the central mosque, Omar Kobine Layama. Of 25 mosques, only two are still standing. Hundreds of Moslems were killed in the streets and more than half a million fled to Chad. The more than 600,000 internally displaced people were taken in by the Catholic churches. At Boali, 60 km from Bangui, the parish priest who had Moslems staying in his church firmly opposed about a hundred anti-Balakas who wanted to burn the building down. His courage avoided a tragedy and there was no loss of life. In this situation, the Cardinal, the Imam and the Protestant Pastor Nicolas Guerekoyame Gbandou, organised a Platform for the religious denominations of Central Africa to seek social cohesion and peace.

The Catholic Church throughout the country also organised committees for mediation and the prevention of conflict. These are but small signs which, in many instances, have not produced great results but they have set in motion the wheels of reconciliation.
Certainly, the Church has paid a high price. Hundreds of chapels burned, many churches vandalised, and priests killed. The mission of Nzako (central-north) was burned to the ground: the priests’ residence, the dispensary, the school and the newly-built church, everything was destroyed by the FPRC (Popular Front for the Rebirth of Central Africa, a Seleka group led by Noureddine Adam. In 2015, Fr. Forman Wilibona was killed in the forest of Bossangoa. On 21 March 2018, Fr. Joseph Désiré Angbabata was assassinated at his parish of Seko (Bambari, in the centre of the country) while he tried to defend a group of women and children who were shot by UPC militias.

Fr. Albert Toungoumale was killed at the Comboni parish of Our Lady of Fatima, close to the PK5 in Bangui, the stronghold of the Moslems of the capital, on 1 May last. Fourteen other people were killed with him and hundreds were injured: they were attending mass on the memorial of St. Joseph the Worker when a radical Moslem group entered the building and fired on the faithful at point blank range. A few hours later the act was defined as, ‘a horrible crime’, by the UN peacekeeping force without, however, sending any troops to the place. We bishops and priests are witnesses to this often incomprehensible violence. We have interceded for Moslems and non-Moslems; we evacuated the wounded, bringing help to all for years. We have even dug common graves in the land behind my house to bury Moslems and non-Moslems alike.

Let us begin again with forgiveness

Pope Francis reminded us that religion is not to blame but is part of the solution. Since June 2017, I have spoken of little else in my cathedral but unconditional pardon and the need to start afresh. Many of my faithful would leave the church murmuring and with downcast eyes: their hearts did not follow the trend of my words. Both the Seleka and the anti-Balaka have burned down all sorts of buildings. Many families have lost everything. This is what happened in the Ligouna quarter (in the city of Zemio, in the east): for four kilometres, everything was burned, leaving but a dead desert. I can guarantee that, during these five years of conflict, many Catholic missions have remained there in the forest, to provide a place of safety for those unfortunate people whose quarters have been burned down, forcing them to flee. For everyone, a church means there is a priest there to welcome them, a well with clean water, a place to hang out their coloured clothes and rest in the shade while waiting for better times.
The church is always a place of encounter, a place where people from the organisations meet to spend the night. The churches are also places where we can find ministers, ambassadors, international organisation workers, even President Touadéra and the UN Secretary Antonio Guterres. They all meet in the hall of some church to analyse the problems, to plan, discuss how to spend the huge amounts of money, to offer solutions that are never realised. They hardly ever even cast a glance at the voiceless poor. They then depart in their high-powered Toyotas, surrounded by bodyguards to board their flights. And so they leave, while the Church remains. It is usually the Church that is the last to leave and turn out the light.

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