As for why he decided to become a priest in the first place, “It was because of my grandmother, who always taught me the importance of prayer, morning and night especially. She always took me to church. When my older sister became a Comboni Sister, I began to feel the call of Jesus. We also had a wonderful parish priest who was down to earth and could talk so well to children. I loved the way he related to people. So, I wrote to the archbishop and started the journey.”
We talked about South Sudan’s journey since independence in 2011 and the reasons for the continuing unrest. Bishop Kussala admits: “The reality is that we did not know how to run a country. Ninety-eight percent of the country is illiterate. It is not easy to build a country and we find ourselves in the midst of political difficulties.”
He continued: “In 1956, the colonizers handed the government of Sudan to the northerners. They had already identified southerners as ‘different’ people and treated them differently. I don’t know for sure the reason why the colonizers did not insist on development in what is now South Sudan, but this is what has led to a lack of education and development of infrastructure in the south.
“Our people are really poor. They need education and development, but especially education, to transform the community. We lack contractors to build good housing; we have to hire them from outside the country for quality work.
“We need teachers. We have to hire teachers from East Africa, Kenya, and Uganda, and this is very expensive. Even to write letters using a computer, we have to hire people. We need the transfer of skills from countries like Britain and the US, even to do the most simple things like basic agricultural practices to improve food and care for animals – and to create a working class. This is the answer to peace: education, development, and work.”
Another activity the Church of South Sudan participates in is the rehabilitation of child soldiers. Between 2015 and 2018, a huge number of young people went to the bush to fight with different groups in this conflict, lured there with the promise of $100 each.
“I called on all the faith communities, including Muslims, and the government, to stand between the bush and these young boys,” the bishop recalled. “We went out to them and three different times we were forced to our knees at gunpoint by boys with guns. At the end of our efforts, we brought out about 10,000 armed young men and child soldiers from the bush. We had to convince them that they did not need guns.
“Then with the help of the UN, we convinced them to put down their guns. We then gave them a school uniform, books, and a copybook. We have a rehabilitation program for them, but the biggest hurdle is to reconcile them with their families, to overcome the stigma of being a ‘bush child’, or child soldier. Teachers must be trained to include these children with all the students and not refer to them as ‘bush children’.
“It is the same with the girls, the child mothers. They don’t want to stay in the bush. We brought out many child mothers, but we need a proper center where there can be healing of trauma. We also need a center for child protection, and to teach child protection because there is child abuse too. No one wants to believe it, but it exists, and it must be addressed.”
-Sister Rose Pacatte
