Your Eminencies    
My Lord Archbishops and Bishops
Reverend Fathers

“The Grace of our Lord Jesus, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the holy Spirit be with you all”.

In the first place I want to thank the Lord for bringing me safely to this place. I hope that this meeting will be beneficial to all of us here present.
I wish also to thank the French Bishops’ Conference for inviting me here. In fact a similar invitation had been extended to us before. If I did not accept the invitation before, it was because it is on these very days that we usually hold the Diocesan Pastoral Council Plenary Meeting in the Archdiocese of Khartoum. This year my clergy felt I should come here, and here I am.

It is a truly great honour for me to address such a “august” assembly and to be requested to speak about the Church in the Sudan, with special focus on the Archdiocese of Khartoum.

The Archdiocese of Khartoum has acquired a special place in the Church of the Sudan. It is host to the over two and a half million displaced persons who have taken refuge there because of the war, hunger and lack of essential services in the South, the West, and the East of the Sudan. We estimate that of the nearly five million Christian in the Sudan (of whom about three and a half million are Catholics), over a million Catholics now inhabit the Archdiocese of Khartoum.

Despite this big number, we the Christians of the Sudan feel we have been forgotten by the rest of the Christian World, or at least, that our problem has not been fully understood by most of the outside world. Yet this is a group of Christians that has come to recognize and to accept its suffering and the displacement of its people as a mission, an act of providence. The situation has scattered Christian now to almost every corner of the Sudan, with their presence being felt more intensely in Khartoum and its suburbs. It is a presence in suffering, under continuous harassment by the security forces, under constant humiliation and frequently made the scapegoat in times of crisis.

The Church in the Sudan is neither anti-Islam or anti-government. It is a Church that has set itself to witness in a divided and war-torn country to Christ, who remains always a sign of contradiction. It is a Church that consistently witnesses to unity among the Sudanese people, to solidarity, Christian love and reconciliation. Our quest is peace for our people, justice and equality for all, respect for God-given dignity of every human being and for the rights accruing to it. Since the majority of the Christians in the Sudan are of African Stock, mainly from the South and the West of the country, their cry for respect often takes the form of defense of their own cultures, languages, lives, religion and territory which has now become a battle ground. Unfortunately anyone who upholds these values publicly is easily branded as a rebel, simply because the most conspicuous object to point accusing fingers to happens to be the Government itself, and the pointers usually belong to the tribes that have resorted to armed struggled against oppression, and the forceful denial of basic rights.

Many of you have often heard that there is some kind of religious persecution against the Christians in the Sudan. The official organs of Government in the Sudan vigorously deny the existence of any form of religious persecution or discrimination. To back the vigorous denial instances of tolerance, equality, and peaceful coexistence are cited : e.g.
- that Christians are admitted to high Government posts : the second Vice President is a Catholic, and number of Ministers, State-Ministers, and high ranking officials are Christians, there is even an Episcopalian Bishop who is a State-Minister in the Foreign Ministry ;
- that Christians are totally free to practice their faith, they go to Church on Sundays without problem, they are even allowed on Sundays to report for Work after 10.00 a.m. so that they may attend their Sunday Services;
- that the Constitution recognizes the Sudan as a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-ethnic country; and that equality is guaranteed for all on the basis of citizenship; that the basic human freedoms are respected and protected….etc…

We hear many things like these, but the reality is different. 
- Christians have not been granted permits to build Churches since the sixties. We have the Church of Kenana Sugar factory whose construction has been suspended for six years despite the fact the constructions were began with all the necessary permits. 
- Land cannot be registered in the name of Churches. In fact most of the Parish Centers our Christians use in the Archdiocese are registered in my name. Since 1995 there has been a systematic demolition of Christian Schools and Prayer Centers under the pretext that they fell where the Town Planners intended to build roads , or that they have been illegally erected on unplanned land. Strange enough all news roads pass where our Centers are (at least 25 have been demolished in this way). The Churches have never been compensated for the demolished structures, neither have they been given any land replacement.
- Of late the focus is on Church Personnel : Frs Hilary Boma and Lino Sebit are now one year in prison; Fr Gilles (a Canadian) was expelled in July this year; stay permits for missionaries are now granted for six months; we awaited the expulsion of eight missionaries (men and women), fortunately the Nuncio and others intervened and the matter was solved, the reason given was that they had entered the country as visitors despite the fact that the application of their entry clearly indicated that they entered the country for work.
- Since May we have been struggling to hold to our schools that provide education for 42,823 pupils, most of them children of the displaced. The Governor of Khartoum wanted these schools closed and the pupils distributed into Government schools. In spite of the Governor’s latter declaration that the he never intended to take over the schools, we are still being harassed with frequent un-announced inspection even by armed security men and soldiers.
- The main targets now are the personnel, the schools, and the land properties.
- Another very disturbing factor is the Government’s consistent use of armed police security men and soldiers to harass the Church : - I was arrested by a contingent of a least fifteen armed men who got into my house climbing over the fence; Fr Hilary was arrested by about ten armed men ; Fr. Gilles was deported accompanied by armed men; the Catholic Club was confiscated by two lorry full of armed men; the same method of intimidation is used now in regards to ours schools.

The Government complains that of all the Churches, the Catholic Church is the most stubborn and non-cooperative Church. By cooperation it means the Catholic Church should support  all Government policies some of which according to us are unacceptable; that it should stop sending negative reports about the Government - (in fact our means of communication are too poor to warrant such an accusation, especially when we ourselves hear of these reports from the international media); and that we should not speak against Government policies in our Pastoral Letters.

We must appreciate efforts the Government has made to initiate some form of dialogue with the Churches, and with the Catholic Church in particular. A Committee for inter-religious dialogue was set up in the early nineties. The Church could not work with this committee, first because it refused to address areas of tension, and secondly, because the committee did not meet the expectations of the Church which wanted real religious dialogue between Muslim and Christian Religious Leaders. – Another effort was made in the wake of the Catholic Bishops’ refusal to have the Catholic Church registered as a Voluntary Non-Governmental Organisation. The initiative was soon abandoned for paltry reasons. Today effort is being made. Unfortunately we do not share the same ideas about dialogue.

The tension between the political system and the Christians is not a new phenomenon. The present Government has however become more explicit in that it intends the Sudan to become 100% Arab and Muslim, despite the declarations in the Constitution. Since independence, the direction was always Arabisation and Islamisation. Even the short spells of Democracy were heavily loaded with Arabism and Islam. It was however the military regimes that forced this program through : General Abboud called for “one Sudan”, “one language” (Arabic), “one Religion” (Islam). Field Marshal Nimeiri imposed the Islamic Sharia on the whole Country. The present Regime has made Islam its principal program and systematically applies it to all aspects of the political, judicial, executive, legislative, economic and social structures of State. – The problem however is not only religion, but also the system of Government with its suppression of basic human rights and freedoms: repressive methods, including imprisonment incommunicado, summary executions, torture in detention, imprisonment without trial; security system of intimidation and organized to act above the law; misinformation on the media, with the consequent suppression of the freedom of expression and opinion (though there are signs of improvement in this area which sometimes is belied by the suppression of news papers and the arrest of outspoken journalists).- Other these aspects it is not only the Christian and the non-Arabs that suffer but the whole population of those who do not think and act the way the Government wants them to, and this includes some Muslim groups.

We must not confuse the political created by Government with the attitude of the ordinary Muslim. In Sudan, Muslim live and work side by side with Christians. It can be said with some truth that tolerance and mutual respect is part and parcel of the Sudanese culture as a whole. Good neighbourliness is a characteristic in most of our tribes. Left to themselves without political coercion the Sudanese would give no reason for anybody to accuse them of persecuting one another.

The Church in the Archdiocese however struggles to continue its mission.
Evangelisation and on-going Christian formation is one our priorities. All the year round we 4,000 to 5,000 adult Catechumenates under formation, with a corresponding number being Baptized every Easter. We base our pastoral activities on Small Christian Communities which besides being the Christians actually find them selves in a majority Muslim society, it also an effective way of strengthening and deepening of the faith, as well as to create unity and solidarity among Christians. – In these last years many of the laity have become truly involved in the life of the Church. One of the promising areas of involvement is the Justice and Peace Committees that have become very effective in creating awareness in the faithful especially on issues of human dignity and rights, and in the effort to promote non-violent resistance to unjust system and treatment.

Our greatest desire is to see an end to the present war. Somehow the war becomes an excuse for all types of problems. We however feel that all parties to the war need to be pressured into considering carefully the irreparable harm this war is doing to the country and to spirit of the people.