From Wounds to Fraternity: Catholic Bishop in South Sudan Proclaims Hope in His 2025 Christmas Message

South Sudan gained independence in July 2011, an outcome of the 2005 agreement that ended the longest-running civil war in Africa.

A civil war in the independent South Sudan broke out in December 2013 when troops loyal to the then-only-Vice President Dr. Riek Machar Teny clashed with government forces.

While the source of the conflict might have been political rivalry, the main political leaders implicated in the protracted violent struggle, Dr. Machar and President Salva Kiir Mayardit, seem to have used the ethnic card, pitting the two largest tribes, the Dinka and the Nuer.

In his Christmas message, Bishop Carlassare does not turn away from the pain that followed independence festivities, a couple of years later. He speaks of “the deep wound of an internal conflict that has divided the country and torn apart its social fabric, forcing millions to flee and plunging them into misery, depriving them of essentials and wounding their dignity.”

Still, the Comboni Bishop insists that despair does not have the final word. “Right there, amid the rubble of conflict,” he reflects, “the Gospel reminded me that hope is never an illusion: it is a stubborn seed, capable of sprouting even in parched soil.” For him, this stubborn hope defines both the Christmas mystery and the South Sudanese experience.

Drawing inspiration from St. Daniel Comboni, whom he recalls as one who “refused to give up before a mission many considered impossible,” Bishop Carlassare situates South Sudan within a broader Christian vision for Africa and the world.

“For this reason,” he writes, “we keep believing in a world where no one is discarded, where life is respected, and poverty is not a condemnation but a starting point for solidarity as we build a fraternal society.”

Making known his dreams for the East African nation, Bishop Carlassare speaks of longing for “a South Sudan where children can play without fear, where young people can go to school, and where it is no longer more likely for a girl to die in childbirth than to earn a high-school diploma.”

He envisions “a land where resources are not a cause of injustice but a tool for development,” and “a country where people can work and live with dignity, without depending on humanitarian aid.”

At the heart of the message lies the striking Christmas image: “South Sudan—young and wounded—is a living parable of Christmas.”

In a context where “violence, poverty, and division seem to suffocate hope,” the Comboni Bishop whose Episcopal appointment for Rumbek Diocese in March 2021 was followed by the life-threatening episode of his being shot in both legs on 26 April 2021 writes that “the birth of the Son of God continues to shine forth as the most radical sign of God’s closeness.”

Christmas, he insists, reveals a God who does not stand apart from human suffering. “God chooses to come into the world where humanity groans and waits. God chooses the path of poverty to reveal to us our true wealth,” Bishop Carlassare says.

Quoting Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation on love for the poor, Dilexi Te, which opens with the words “I have loved you,” Bishop Carlassare underlines that “this is our only true wealth: His love.”

It is a message that resonates deeply in South Sudan, where, he notes, “we know the fragility of the human heart – unable, on its own, to sustain fraternity, communion, and peace.” Yet it is precisely in this fragility, he says, that grace takes root: “the Lord comes to meet our poverty and clothes it with His grace.”

Bishop Carlassare also reflects on God’s healing presence, saying, “In South Sudan, as in every ‘South Sudan’ of the world, we can witness that God’s love mends what we break, heals what we wound, and raises up what we trample.” This, he explains, is the mystery of Bethlehem: “not a closeness expressed in words alone, but a concrete nearness.”

(Story continues below)

Bishop Carlassare’s Christmas reflection places the poor at the center of the Church’s mission. Citing Dilexi Te, he recalls that “love for the poor is not simply an act of charity, but a real participation in the very love of Christ.”

He goes on to echo St. Comboni’s conviction that “the poor are our masters” and insists that the poor “are not merely recipients of aid: they are active subjects, silent teachers, the first evangelizers.”

Such a vision, he argues, defines the Church itself. “A Church that is poor and with the poor is the only Church capable of revealing to the world the merciful face of Christ,” he says.

A Church that is poor “walks, listens, accompanies,” and knows that “extra pauperes nulla salus: without the poor, there is no salvation, no Gospel, no Church, no fraternity, no future.”

As Christmas, Bishop Carlassare invites believers to see the world anew: “to look at the world through the eyes of the Child of Bethlehem – who does not dominate but gives Himself, does not conquer but loves, does not impose but welcomes.”

He prays that this Christmas will “rekindle in us the courage to dream and to turn our dreams into concrete steps.”

For South Sudan and beyond, Bishop Carlassare’s message is that only by drawing close to the poor and wounded can the Church become “a seed of hope.”

In South Sudan, a land still yearning for peace, this Christmas proclamation affirms that the manger of Bethlehem continues to stand wherever humanity suffers – and that there, hope is already being born.