02.24.2018
February 23, day of prayer for Congo and South Sudan
By Roberta Pumpo, published on February 19, 2018
Announced by Pope Francis during the Angelus prayer on Sunday, February 4, the day of prayer for Congo and South Sudan was celebrated exactly three months after the vigil led by the Pope on November 23, at Saint Peter’s, for the lands wounded by years of war. In Congo, violence is caused by the ongoing postponement of the presidential election. In fact, President Joseph Kabila is still in power, despite the expiration of his mandate in December. To request his resignation, the lay Coordination Committee convened a new peaceful march for Sunday, February 25, after those that took place on December 31 and January 21, suppressed by the police. The civil war in South Sudan, independent only since 2011, exploded in December, 2013, when President Salva Kiir, of the Dinka ethnic group accused his Vice-President, Riech Machar, of Nuer ethnicity, of organizing a coup d\´ état.
On Friday, February 23, the Congolese community in Rome organized a prayer vigil with Eucharistic adoration at 5:00 pm in the Church of the Nativity in Piazza di Pasquino, which also included the participation of many Sudanese citizens resident in the capital. "With the continued interest of the Pope in African conflicts, we see the attitude of a true father who can never stay quiet until his children live in peace," says Father Sylvestre Kumbo Dusa Adesengie, responsible for the pastoral care of the Congolese community in Rome. "The Congolese working in Italy make huge sacrifices in order to financially assist even their own relatives who remained in Africa," he adds.
The day of fasting and prayer was greeted with excitement and joy by African peoples who insistently ask "to not be forgotten", as Sister Judith Pereira-Rico, Sister of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, and Executive Director of "Solidarity with South Sudan”, an association that brings together religious orders present in the African country alongside the local Bishops Conference. The populations of these two territories feel "abandoned" and need "hope and dignity instead of money and concrete help". Today, in the south of the world, "thousands of people die in silence, she went on to say. For the rest of the world, it is as if they didn\´t exist. The prayer desired by the Pope and his constant calls for peace represent a great comfort for us ".
To show the "silent genocide" underway in the Central African country, on Sunday February 11, hundreds of people participated in the celebration of the Eucharist and the peaceful March that took place in the streets of the historic center of Rome. Among them was the Congolese priest, Father Dieudonne Kambale Kasika, contributor at the Blessed Sacrament in Tor de Schiavi, a cardinal titular church, who said he was "comforted because finally we are talking about what is happening in Congo".