South Sudan’s Catholic Bishops Denounce Wrongful Use of “military action”, Say Hinderance to Lasting Peace

They express concern about the manner the government and opposition leaders are handling conflicts in the country and query if they have the South Sudanese people at heart or are just “obsessed with the pursuit of power and wealth.”

Despite constant calls for peace, South Sudan’s Catholic Bishops express their disappointment, saying, “It is with heavy hearts of grief that we are now conveying our dismay about what we have been confronting daily; reports of aerial bombardments and shelling, armed ambushes on roads, rivers, and highways.”

They decry “military confrontations, shrinking of civic space and media restrictions, deadly clashes at cantonment sites and villages, abductions and rapes, devastating raids at community levels, detentions and alarming hostilities and insecurity across South Sudan.”

“We see communities torn apart, innocent lives lost, people injured, forced recruitment of the infamous gang groups commonly known as niggers, and torontos and families forced to flee their homes in fear and pain, exacerbated by economic hardships and hunger,” they say in the statement that the President of the Sudan and South Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SSS-CBC), Stephen Ameyu Martin Cardinal Mulla of the Catholic Archdiocese of Juba read out.

They lament that South Sudan has allowed itself to return to this “unfortunate spiral of conflict and large-scale violence” despite past experiences of “deadly guns and senseless killings.”

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They pose, “Have we not seen too often how violence has silenced the hopes of our people and crippled peace and development?”

They find fault with what they term as repeated assurances of the country’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit on not taking the country back to war as well as public statements of opposition leaders that they are committed to implementing the peace agreements.

Despite all the assurances, Catholic Bishops drawn from the eight Catholic Dioceses of South Sudan say, “We continue to witness a lack of concrete steps for peace and reconciliation.” 

To address the conflicts and foster peace and reconciliation in the country, the Catholic Church leaders “call for immediate, unimpeded humanitarian access across all conflict zones.”

They advocate for the “establishment of protected corridors for aid delivery, granting tax exemption on humanitarian goods for faith-based and humanitarian organizations serving the vulnerable and suffering people of South Sudan.”

They recall the remarks of the late Pope Francis during his February 2023 ecumenical visit to the country, saying, “Brothers and sisters, it is time for peace!... No more bloodshed, no more conflicts, no more violence.” The Catholic Bishops add, “It is time to turn the page.”

“We equally echo these wise words with urgent insistence to put them into practice so that South Sudan could be seen as a good country among the community of nations,” they say, recalling the message of the late Pontiff, when he realized his peace pilgrimage in South Sudan to the country alongside the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.

Silas Mwale Isenjia is a Kenyan journalist with a great zeal and interest for Catholic Church related communication. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communication from Moi University in Kenya. Silas has vast experience in the Media production industry. He currently works as a Journalist for ACI Africa.