Why It’s Costly for Catholic Entities in War-Torn Sudan to Engage in Peacebuilding Initiatives

Khartoum, 26 August, 2025 / 11:53 PM

Catholic entities in Sudan where there is heavy fighting are intervening with caution, an official at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) has said, noting that the Church is especially keen not to engage in any peace-building initiatives that might be misinterpreted as the war rages on.

At the moment, the aid agency for the Catholic Church in England and Wales and other charitable organizations in Sudan are mainly engaging with communities at the humanitarian level. CAFOD is currently running initiatives to save Sudan war victims from the ongoing cholera devastation, on top of the agency’s other humanitarian interventions in the war-torn country.

In an interview with ACI Africa, Telley Sadia, CAFOD’s Country Representative for Sudan spoke about the charity’s intervention in the country’s humanitarian crisis, but was cagey about the role of the Catholic Church in peace-building and reconciliation in the east-central African country.

He said that starting a peace-building initiative is seen as  a move to side with either the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) or the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) that have been fighting since 15 April 2023.

“The Church is engaging, cautiously, because of the context and because of the historical reasons that I can't discuss in detail. What I can only say for now is that Christianity here is a minority, and you have to be cautious about certain things,” Sadia told ACI Africa on August 20.

He added, “Sometimes, even if you do something in good faith, your actions are misinterpreted. In the country, you can not even run a program on peace-building. If you try to do this, you are seen to be siding with either of the warring factions.”

The CAFOD official however clarified that community level, the Church, local leaders, and all the people are “getting along well.”

“The context, however, does not allow for any peace initiatives at the moment,” he emphasized.

Sadia said that he had seen Catholic Bishops in Sudan engage in efforts to heal the country at community level, and sometimes through the Nunciature.

“We have two Bishops and one Archbishop in the country. We also have a handful of Priests. These Church ministers are not many, but they are engaging with their communities where they are,” he said, and added, “At the national level, the Church leaders raise their issues through the Nuncio, at a diplomatic level.”

The Ugandan-born CAFOD official who currently resides in the relatively peaceful Kisti in Sudan’s White Nile state said that amid the region’s humanitarian crisis, there is some Church life in Kosti, a pastoral region carved out of the Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum. 

“We are few because the majority of the population are Muslims. But we have a number of parishes. On Sundays we have Holy Mass, and other Christian denominations have their services,” he said, and added, “We also have strong Small Christian Communities (SCCs) that take care of the needs of their members. SCCs in particular are very key in our work at CAFOD.”

In the interview with ACI Africa, Sadia spoke at length about the worsening humanitarian situation in several parts of Sudan, with the current cholera devastation especially in the country’s Darfur region taking a toll on the population already battered by the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The White Nile where he stays, he said, is one of the least affected States in Sudan but only as far as the fighting is concerned. 

“We don't have major issues apart from occasional drone attacks,” Sadia said, and added, “With incoming refugees and the high cost of living, however, White Nile is experiencing a worsening humanitarian situation, just as many other regions in the country. We are receiving more and more IDPs coming from the Kordofan region, where fighting is going on. On top of that, we have about 500,000 South Sudanese refugees in this same place.”

He said that the humanitarian situation in Sudan does not look good, especially in locations where fighting is still ongoing, like in the Darfur region and in the Kordofan region. 

“Because of the fighting, lives are being lost. The infrastructure has been destroyed. People don't have food. It is in Kordofan where you heard people were at one point feeding on leaves. In the Darfur, the situation is the same,” the CAFOD official said.

He said that accessibility to places where fighting is still going on remains a challenge and getting aid to the people who are trapped there is not easy.

One of the places he highlighted that remain inaccessible is El Fashir town. “For you to get to this place, you must first go to Chad. You fly to Egypt or Ethiopia, then connect to N’Djamena. At the border between Chad and Sudan, you encounter a fresh set of challenges. You must first be cleared by Chad authorities. You get a visa, which sometimes takes days to process before you are cleared to proceed to Sudan,” he said.

Despite the accessibility challenges, CAFOD is working to intervene in the crisis, especially in the ongoing cholera devastation.

Where power plants have been destroyed by war, the aid agency is transporting water manually using trucks from the source to distribution points near the people, especially in camps for those internally displaced.