Catholic schools are pillar of the Church in Sudan
Friday, July 28, 2017
"Many of the children would spend the whole day roaming around the streets if they didn't come to us in school. Their parents show little concern for them."
By Oliver
Maksan
DUST and mud brick houses everywhere—as far as the eye
can see. The houses are indistinguishable in color from the ground on which
they stand. Trees are few and far between. The road leading northwards from the
Sudanese capital of Khartoum shimmers in the burning heat. The temperature is tops
110 degrees, according to the thermometer. At a certain point the car turns off
into an unpaved road with deep potholes, entering a residential suburb.
“Welcome to the St. Kizito School of Dar es Salaam,” says
our host, Father Daniele, as we stand in the courtyard of the school, which is
named after the youngest of the Ugandan martyrs. This Italian priest is a
member of the clergy of the Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum. His fluent Arabic
enables him to communicate with the people of his parish in their own language.
“I belong to the Neo-Catechumenal Way and I studied at our seminary in Beirut.
I‘ve been living in Sudan now for more than 10 years”—a move he has never
regretted, ever, he tells his visitor from international Catholic charity Aid
to the Church in Need (ACN).
“But it is an extremely difficult pastoral challenge
for priests here,” he adds. This has to do more than anything with the life
circumstances of his parishioners. Father Daniele explains: “They are totally
uprooted people. The parishioners here are for the most part come from the Nuba
mountains in the south of Sudan. Their lives there were marked by the customs
and traditions of their villages. But here, far from their homeland, they are
completely lost.”
Many of the people many years ago came to the Khartoum
area, in search of work or in order to escape the fighting in their homeland. But
most of them can only survive as day laborers, and this eats away at the men‘s
sense of self-worth.
“Many of them simply drift around idly when they don‘t
have any work,” says Father Daniele, and many have no work at all. “In their
traditional view of themselves, they are herders and warriors. But since there
is no fighting no herding to be done here, all the work falls on the shoulders
of the women, he adds.
Unlike 90 percent of the Sudanese people who are Sunni
Muslims, who are Sunni Muslims, the people of the Nuba Mountains are Christians.
Owing to the fact that the Christian faith did not arrive in Sudan until the
19th century and is not deeply rooted, there are often syncretic tendencies,
with belief in magic rubbing shoulders with the Christian faith. For this
reason Father Daniele attaches great importance to helping people grow in their
faith. He says: “I want to show people above all that, despite their poverty,
God loves them—and each of them individually.”
This is not always easy to understand for people
imbued with a tribal way of thinking, he explains. But at least he has no
concerns about church attendance. “The people come in large numbers to church.
On Sundays our church is full,” tells us. ACN helped to pay for its
construction.
“It is extremely important that the church be a beautiful and
worthy place,” Father Daniele stresses, “as it is undoubtedly the most
beautiful place in the lives of these people, who otherwise know only their own
poverty stricken huts and homes.“
Father Daniele has a particular concern for the
children and he parish school is his most important resource in this respect. “Many
of the children would spend the whole day roaming around the streets if they
didn‘t come to us in school. Their parents show little concern for them.
Attention, and even tenderness, is something most of them have never
experienced, and above all not from their fathers.”
Father Daniele works hard to convey to the children a sense
of their own self-worth. He says: “We want to show them that they are
respected, precious people, loved by God. We do so by listening to each one of
them and showing them respect.”
Precisely because the circumstances of the
children are so difficult and their families so large and so poor—eight children
or more is by no means unusual—the priest places great hope in the schools,
saying that, “however modest our means are here, without education the children
will have no chance of a better life.”
Indeed, the Catholic school system is one of the
pillars of small Catholic Church in Sudan. For one Church official– who requested
that his name not be used – the Church educational system is crucially
important. The official explains: “Our schools gain us acceptance among the
majority Muslim community, and above all with the state.
"The state is strongly
Islamic, but—because of the rapid population growth, the number of people
moving into cities and limited public resources--its budget is overstretched and
insufficient to provide enough schools. Hence, the government is happy to see
the Church involved. As a Church we maintain almost 20 public schools in the
city of Khartoum alone, and permission to build schools—unlike permission to
construct churches—is something that is always granted to us.”
The schools are attended both by Christians and by
Muslims. The Church official acknowledges that the quality of the schools is
not the best. He says: “after all, we hardly have money for teachers and books,
and nor do our students.” But no pupil is refused admittance, even if he or she
cannot afford the school fees. “For the children of the poorest families the
school is the only possibility of bringing a little order into their lives,”
the official stresses.
ACN is
committed to support the Catholic schools in Sudan. “The Church in Sudan has
asked us for help,” says Christine du Coudray-Wiehe, who oversees projects in Sudan.
She adds: “It is an urgent necessity to respond, as the majority of the pupils
are from Catholic families from southern Sudan. It is vital for these families
that their children be able to attend a Christian school—for this is the only
way we can prevent them from being Catholics at home and Muslims at school.”
Students of St. Kizito school; ACN photos
|