Juba, 18 May, 2025 / 12:20 pm (ACI Africa).
A member of the Comboni Missionary Sisters (CMS) serving in South Sudan’s Catholic Diocese of Wau has expressed her commitment to fostering strong families in the East-Central African nation, where the number of Church marriages is still very low.
In a note to the Catholic Pontifical and charity Foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International, Sr. Elisabete Almendra shared the challenges the Church is facing in the world’s newest country including low number of weddings, polygamy and the need for stronger family ties among other cultural issues.
“In our Church alone, in the Catholic Church, there are only one or two weddings per year,” the Portuguese-born CMS member is quoted as saying in a Thursday, May 15 ACN report.
Sr. Almendra said that the main cause of the dearth of church weddings is the people’s culture and the way local populations understand and face the reality of marriage itself.
She highlighted the need to work with couples and families as “very important”.