Director’s Update
A bit of good news from South Sudan. President Salva Kiir has appointed a National Elections Commission, a Political Parties Council, and a National Constitutional Review Commission — all steps toward the 2024 election required by the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on Resolving the Conflict in South Sudan. Meanwhile 1000 “reunified” South Sudanese armed forces have been deployed to Upper Nile to assist with refugees flooding in from Sudan. These are modest steps – necessary, but far from sufficient to give credibility to the election process.
The political news from Sudan goes from bad to worse. A trusted expert told me this week that the RSF, a “family-owned transnational entity,” tied to Russia’s Wagner Group, is winning the war, but could not even make a pretense of governing. Further evidence of wanton destruction comes with the November 1 bombing and burning of the Church of the Savior in Omdurman, site of the Shukai Theological Institute and Episcopal church offices.
I have taken heart, however, from the delivery of some relief aid to all the churches in the four divisions of the Diocese of Khartoum – Khartoum, Omdurman West, Omdurman East, and Bahri (North Khartoum). Much of this assistance has come through the Church Association for Sudan and South Sudan in the UK. AFRECS is seeking to raise $25,000 from Giving Tuesday, tied to a matching grant of $10,000 to add to that assistance and help the Episcopal Church of South Sudan meet the needs of destitute refugees.
Dane Smith, Executive Director
The Peacemaking Life of Bishop Paride Taban, by Richard Jones
(Radio Tamazuj photo)
Roman Catholic Bishop of Torit, Paride Taban, died November 1st leaving a Peace Village as his legacy. We thank God for his life among us.
After retiring as Roman Catholic Bishop of Torit in 2004, Paride Taban continued to develop his home village of Kuron, in the southeasternmost corner of South Sudan, bordering Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, as Holy Trinity Peace Village.
Born in 1936 in Katire, a sawmill town in the Imatong Mountains of Eastern Equatoria, Taban completed his Roman Catholic education at the Major Seminary in Tore in 1964, the year foreign missionaries were expelled from the southern region of Sudan. While civil war continued, he became a parish priest in Torit. After the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, he served parishes in Palotaka and Loa, becoming Auxiliary Bishop of Juba in 1980, consecrated by Pope John Paul II in Kinshasa, Zaire, and in 1983 became the first Bishop of Torit. After serving through two decades of war, Taban escaped to Uganda in 1984, then to Kenya and Central African Republic, returning to South Sudan in 2004 when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the SPLM/SPLA and the Government of the Sudan was being reached in Naivasha, Kenya. That year he retired from the diocese of Torit. In 2016, when conflict threatened within the government threatened the peace of the independent Republic of South Sudan, Taban was appointed Co-chair of a Steering Committee of National Dialogue.
Remembrances
“I met Paride Taban through the New Sudan Council of Churches [co-founded by Taban with Anglican bishop Nathaniel Garang of Bor in the liberated areas, predecessor of today’s South Sudan Council of Churches]. He was always an unassuming and humble presence, someone who did not seek notoriety but received it because of his immense practical wisdom and inspiring faith. He had, and I don’t say this lightly, a saintly presence.”
- Ross Kane, Assoc. Prof. of Theology, Ethics, and Culture, Virginia Theological Seminary; former volunteer with Young Adult Service Corps
“Bishop Taban and our father, the late Ambassador Angelo Voga, were good friends and the Bishop knew my wife Suzy’s family well. One Sunday morning as we were walking to services at All Saints Cathedral in Juba, a passing car started hooting and pulled over. It was Bishop Taban, also on his way to Mass. He recognized Suzy and wanted to greet her. When he learned I am Suzy’s husband, he jokingly informed me that I owe him, as Suzy’s kinsman, an uncle’s goat. (I regret that was never able to pay that debt.) Although he was a South Sudanese, Bishop Taban was a world citizen who took to heart his calling to serve all God’s people.”
- Larry Duffee, Treasurer of AFRECS, and Suzy Voga Duffee, Secretary of Ma’di Community Association in the U.S.
Anita Sanborn, AFRECS Board Member, interviewed Bishop Paride Taban at the Methodist Guest House in Nairobi, Kenya in 2009 or 2010.
“It was in 1989 that I first heard of Paride Taban. After refusing to allow the Sudan People’s Liberation Army to use the church’s vehicle, he was physically slapped by a general. Later I read his small book written in Jerusalem, where he had gone for healing and meditation and discovered a cooperative peace village called Neve Shalom where Christian, Muslim, and Jewish people lived together in harmony. Taban argued that the liberation movement is for the people and not the people for the movement. I had the pleasure of hosting one meeting of the bishop with Southern Sudanese community members in Washington, D.C.”
- Kwathi Akol Ajawin, Sudanese African Fellowship, Annandale, Virginia
“What a giant! He spoke truth to power and broadcast the plight of Sudanese during the Second Sudanese Civil War far beyond Sudan’s borders. While figures like Fr. Saturnino Lohure and Barnaba Deng occupy rather iconic places in South Sudanese liberation lore, I believe one cannot talk about the Sudanese Church and its prophetic/public role in conflict mediation without serious consideration of Paride Taban.”
- Christopher Tounsel, University of Washington, Seattle
Public Recognition
2013 – United Nations Sergio Vieira de Mello award, for his involvement leading to an agreement between the government of South Sudan and the David Yau Yau armed Cobra faction signed in May 2014
2018 – United States government Freedom of Worship Award
November 9, 2023 – Opus Foundation million-dollar prize, by Villanova University, Philadelphia, USA, for the work of Holy Trinity Peace Village Kuron
More at:
Award of the Sergio Viera de Mello Peace Prize
Retired Bishop Paride Taban dies
Paride Taban: South Sudan’s ‘warrior for peace’ dies (2-minute audio interview)
Even the Birds are Gone: Images from a War-Wracked Land
It is now over thirty weeks since war broke out in Khartoum between forces of the government of Sudan and the rival Rapid Support Forces of General Dagalo (Hemedti). Death continues to spread.
Bishop Ismail Gabriel Abudigin writes from of El Obeid in the west:
“In Nyala, South Darfur, there is just one deacon, with his family and a few Christians. Most people fled over the border to Chad. In Geneina, West Darfur, our school has been looted and destroyed. El Fashir in North Darfur is under government control, and our pastor is still there.
Here in El Obeid we continue to hold a church service on Sundays, but when the fighting within the city is serious we pray under our beds. Government soldiers are in control up to now. Food is available in the city but some of it is very expensive. We have joined with mosques and other local churches, collecting clothes and delivering and distributing items together. There are approximately forty schools here, full of displaced people. Every day you hear about or see someone killed in front of you. “
As government military bases come under attack by the Rapid Support Forces, North Darfur markets like this one in the town of El Fashir are disrupted.
On November 1, an aerial bomb plus fire destroyed the eighty-old Anglican Church of Our Savior in Omdurman, while paramilitary looted diocesan offices, a residence, and three church schools in the compound. Fighting has destroyed most public properties in Khartoum, including a bridge connecting Omdurman to Khartoum North across the Nile. A woman caught in this urban battlefield writes, “The city is devoid of cats and dogs. Even the birds are gone because the air is polluted by the smoke of a city in flames.”
Before & After: Church of Our Savior in Omdurman, (across the Nile from Khartoum) destroyed
Residents in the diocesan compound watched helplessly after a bomb sent flames and smoke from burning wooden benches and roof beams of Church of the Savior roaring into the sky.
Photos courtesy of John Poole.
Details at: https://www.casss.org.uk
Praying for the Sudans in Palestinian Words
Lord, I am a refugee fleeing to you! I seek refuge in you.
Under the showers of missiles, you are my fortress that will not collapse.
When wicked people look at me, I can almost feel their hands strangling me;
but evil hands cannot reach you. You are my hope in whom I trust.
I take refuge in you daily; you have never failed in shepherding me.
Don’t reject me or forsake me, for I need you! My heart longs for you.
Grey has invaded my hair: every hair tells a story of your touch, which is
full of righteousness as well as kindness.
You have shown us many painful hardships, yet you return and restore our lives.
Despair cannot rule over us as long as our hearts are in your hands:
you restore and comfort us.
I praise you for I am in your hands today.
A Meditation on Psalm 71 by Yohanna Katanacho in ‘Praying through the Psalms’
Source: Church Association for Sudan and South Sudan, UK
Photo from Church Association for Sudan and South Sudan, UK
This issue of the E–Blast was compiled by Richard J. Jones and Anita Sanborn. We welcome your news, comments, or concerns at anitasanborn@gmail.com.