Uganda: Missionaries Won't Run Away From War
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Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
May 14, 2004
Posted to the web May 14, 2004
Nairobi
A missionary congregation working in war-torn Northern Uganda will not abandon its
flock, despite the worsening security situation, two of its priests say.
Fr Raphael Dellagiacoma of the Comboni Missionaries told CISA on Friday, May 7, 2004,
that "though in several areas we cannot do much work, we love the people by staying
with them. I mean, mission is witnessing, loving as Christ did, not so much preaching
or doing relief work!"
"Even dying, [being] killed by mindless and reckless young men, is part of this
witness," the editor of the Comboni magazine Leadership in Gulu added.
In 2003, two Comboni priests were killed by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.
At the end of March 2004, Fr Luciano Fulvi, 76, was murdered -apparently by bandits-
bringing to 15 the Comboni missionaries who have been martyred in Uganda.
The LRA leader Joseph Kony has ordered targeted attacks on missionaries and church-run
institutions.
But the missionaries' suffering has also come from the government, which favours a
military solution to the war, and is uncomfortable with the Church's dogged search for
peace. The army recently demanded the expulsion of Fr Carlos Rodriguez, also a Comboni
missionary and a vigorous peace campaigner, whom it accuses of endangering state
security.
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Uganda
Speaking to CISA in Nairobi on Friday May 7, 2004, Fr Joseph Caramazza, the editor of
New People magazine, another Comboni publication, said the congregation is involved in
providing emergency relief to the 1.5 million internally displaced persons, as well as
participating at all levels in the search for a peaceful end to the 18-year-old war.
The Comboni Missionaries have been working in Northern Uganda since 1910, and today
run some 30 parishes and many social facilities.
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