Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala is a man on a mission. Born in what is now South Sudan in 1964, he has been a priest for 25 years and bishop of the Diocese of Tombura-Yambio, South Sudan, since 2008. Bishop Kussala is also president of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference. If this were not enough to keep him busy, he is chancellor of the Catholic University of South Sudan, too.
Earlier this autumn, I sat down with Bishop Kussala at the Jesuit residence of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles to talk about his life, work and the reasons for his visit to the United States as the representative of the US-based Sudan Relief Fund.
The bishop’s backstory reflects the turbulent reality of post-colonial Africa. He recalled the impact of his mother’s violent death when he was two months old. He was raised by his grandmother, whom he called “a serious Catholic” who had been formed by the Comboni Missionaries. They lived in a refugee camp for five years before returning to Sudan.
“When I was old enough, my grandmother told me the names of exactly who killed my mother and I grew up hating them and their communities. But later, when I was in the seminary, a Jesuit priest from the United States, Fr Ed Brady, managed to convert me to the way of peace. He taught a course on justice and peace to the seminarians in theology so we would understand how to achieve peace through reconciliation. But I didn’t like the course because I thought reconciliation made us look weak. I told him the course did not belong in our seminary and that he should just leave.
“He knew that teaching reconciliation to victims of violence was not easy. One day he came in with me on his mind. ‘I have a question for you. Would you be happy if all the mothers of two-month-old babies were killed right now so that their children could join you in your sorrow?’ That changed me. I replied: ‘No, Father, I could not agree to that. I would not want another child to experience what I did because his or her mother was lost to violence.’ This is when I began to work for peace and reconciliation.”
-Sister Rose Pacatte
