Pope Francis has said that churches in South Sudan “cannot remain neutral” but must speak out against injustice and abuses of power, as he and two other Christian leaders conduct a Peace mission to the newest country in the world.
After arriving in the world’s newest country as the first pope visit on Friday, Pope Francis spent Saturday ministering first to church workers and then to South Sudanese, who have been forced from their homes because of war, floods and other crises.
South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 but descended into civil war in 2013 when ethnic groups turned against each other. Despite the 2018 peace agreement between the two main opposition factions, ethnic skirmishes continue to kill and evacuate large numbers of civilians.
Pope Francis especially highlighted the plight of South Sudanese women, half of whom were married before the age of 18, experienced sexual abuse and subsequently faced the world’s highest maternal mortality rate.
“Let us ask ourselves what it means to be a minister of the Lord in a land ravaged by war, hatred, violence and poverty,” Pope Francis said at St Theresa’s Cathedral in the capital Juba.
“How can we carry out our ministry in this land, along the banks of a river that has been soaked with so much innocent blood, amid the tearful faces of those entrusted to us?”
According to the United Nations, there are 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan, out of a total population of about 11.6 million, and another 2.3 million have left the country for asylum.
Extreme poverty has become widespread, with two-thirds of the population needing humanitarian assistance due to conflict, as well as three years of catastrophic flooding.
Along with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and head of the Church of Scotland, Francis has sought to draw global attention to the country’s plight.
The visit to encourage South Sudan’s political leaders to implement the 2018 peace agreement ends civil war.
The agreement and many of its key provisions, including the creation of a unified national army, have stalled amid internal political infighting and ongoing clashes across the country that have forced to postpone the first presidential election for two more years.
At the cathedral on Saturday, Pope Francis urged South Sudan’s bishops, priests, nuns and seminarians not to enter religious life for the sake of social prestige, but to serve their flock with how to go with them.
“It is the art of entering among our brothers and sisters that the pastors of the Church need to cultivate: the ability to step in the midst of their sufferings and tears, in the midst of their hunger for God and their thirst for love. their. ” he say.
Francis had heard of the terrible sacrifices some nuns had made. Sisters Mary Daniel Abut and Regina Roba Luate of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart were killed in an ambush in 2021 along with two others.
“On behalf of the entire Church, thank you for your dedication, courage, sacrifice and patience,” Pope Francis said.
Women and girls in South Sudan live like a “hell existence,” the United Nations Human Rights Commission in South Sudan said in a report last year based on years of interviews.
“South Sudanese women are physically assaulted while being raped with a gun, often by being pinned down by men while being abused by others. They were asked not to make even the slightest resistance and not to report what had happened, or they would be killed,” the report said.
Committee Chairman Yasmin Sooka said late last year: “It is difficult to convey the extent of the trauma of South Sudanese women, whose bodies are really war zones.
In his pre-arrival speech on Friday, Francis raised the plight of women and called for them to be protected and promoted.
Among those present for Saturday’s visit to the cathedral was Sister Regina Achan, who said Francis’ visit would encourage other nuns to continue serving.
“We stand with them because we are their voice, we don’t run away in difficult times,” Achan said.
She added that Pope Francis’ visit will awaken “sereneness and peace in our hearts so that we can work for peace and justice in this country”.
Pope Francis issued a blunt warning Friday to President Salva Kiir and his one-time rival and now deputy Riek Machar that history will judge them harshly if they continue to delay implementation. present peace agreement.
For his part, Kiir pledged the government to return to peace talks – which were suspended last year – with groups that did not sign the 2018 accord.
The Pope’s stop in South Sudan followed a visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, another resource-rich country facing persistent conflict.
Pope Francis’ fifth visit to Africa, originally scheduled for 2022 but had to be postponed because of the pope’s knee problems.
The illness has made him wheelchair dependent and has cut his journeys in both countries.
