Smith said South Sudanese people who leave the country to study abroad — many doing so on scholarships provided by SRF — often come back, which he views as a sign that the South Sudanese people broadly want to improve their home country rather than abandon it.
“We see a positive future and I see it in the faces of those whom we’ve helped,” Smith said.
About 60% of South Sudan’s population is Christian, with Catholics making up at least half of those — South Sudan’s independence from Muslim-ruled Sudan opened the door for the Church to freely operate throughout the country. After the region was first evangelized as early as the sixth century, Christianity experienced extraordinary growth in South Sudan between 1901 and 1964 thanks to missionary activity undertaken by the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and the Missionary Sisters Pie Madri della Nigrizia.
In their relief work, Sudan Relief Fund’s main partner is the local Catholic Church, Smith said. Church leaders in four dioceses in South Sudan, as well as the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, are able to act as effective, credible partners to deliver aid dollars where they are most needed.
“That allows us to have an ear on the ground of what the needs are as they arise and respond quickly and efficiently to them. So if a priest comes to us and says, ‘We’ve just had a number of folks displaced due to conflict that’s arisen in this part of the country,’ we can respond very quickly and efficiently to that. And so we pride ourselves again on being nimble and being able to be very targeted and effective in our work,” Smith said.
Working in concert with the Catholic Church in this way makes Sudan Relief Fund similar to charities that assist persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Church leaders tend to be “very in tune with the needs of the people, and they have relationships with the people,” Smith noted.
Still, serious logistical challenges to delivering aid remain, many due to a widespread lack of infrastructure in the country and the continued threat of war in many areas. After devastating civil wars from 1955-1972 and 1983-2005, fighting began again in 2013 following the country’s 2011 independence. Both sides have been accused of serious atrocities over the course of the conflict, including the raping of women, the killing of civilians, and the recruitment of child soldiers.
A number of peace agreements and cease-fires — including several mediated by the Catholic lay group Sant’Egidio — have not led to substantial peace progress. Hundreds of thousands of people have died amid the fighting, which has a strong component of ethnic tension.
South Sudan has the largest refugee crisis in Africa, with 2 million IDPs due to conflict, insecurity, and environmental challenges, the U.N. Refugee Agency reported. Thousands of homeless children, most orphaned by the war, roam the streets of South Sudan’s major cities. There are also more than 2 million South Sudanese refugees living in neighboring countries.
Despite massive social and personal difficulties, many of the people Smith has met in his travels to South Sudan are able to cultivate a joyful life. One woman whom Smith met last summer, living in a leper colony in South Sudan, had lost all her digits except for one, and yet was still able to sew beautiful garments and rugs. Smith said the woman’s sense of joy, despite her ordeal, was inspiring to him.
(Story continues below)
“From an outside perspective, it’s easy to get discouraged when we talk about the political corruption or the incredible needs that are present. But when you go, what you find is that the South Sudanese are an incredibly proud people. They are hardworking. They want a good future for their country. And at some level, for someone like myself, it’s convicting, it’s spiritually convicting at times,” Smith continued.
“While it’s easy to look at a broad perspective and be discouraged, you can’t help but feel the joy and the gratefulness of the people as well when you are on the ground there.”
‘An encounter that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life’
Ahead of the pope’s three-day visit, there was a “level of excitement and buzz that was unparalleled” in South Sudan, Smith said. The octogenarian Francis, who has suffered significant health and mobility problems of late, had spoken about the possibility of the trip as early as 2017, fewer than four years after the outbreak of civil war in 2013. The pope’s trip was scheduled to take place last year but was postponed for six months because of Francis’ health.
Credit: Source link