South Sudan: Help to renovate the minor seminary in the diocese of Rumbek

Mapuordit, Sudan: Minor seminarians playing chess outside. @ACN
Mapuordit, Sudan: Minor seminarians playing chess outside. @ACN

Father Werenfried van Straaten, the founder of ACN once told a congregation to whom he was appealing for help, "I would gladly renounce the entire collection if there were just one young man in this church who was willing to give his life in the service of our Lord and proclaim the Kingdom of God as his priest".

It is above all in such crisis torn countries as Sudan that soundly trained priests are needed as pastors to the people and as role models for young people who may one day opt for the priesthood.

It was in the year 2007 that the minor seminary of the diocese of Rumbek returned from its war exile in Kenya. A new home was provided for it in the town of Mapuordit in the south of Sudan. ACN helped for the construction with €164,000. Today there are 45 students living here in the seminary, preparing for their future tasks. In the morning the young candidates travel, together with other students who are not seminarians, to the secondary school in Mapuordit. Then they return to the seminary, where their formation continues under two Fathers of the Community of the Apostles of Jesus. Later they will work in the seminary garden and look after the pigs.

Life is not easy for the people of southern Sudan. For a long time now it has been threatened by an enduring drought, but also by economic mismanagement and rising food prices. Nor are the seminarians immune from this. Following the food crisis in Eastern Africa they too suffered an acute shortage of food last year (2009). Their pastoral coordinator, Father Marcellus Nkafu, tells ACN how he attempted to buy food in neighbouring Kenya and send it to the seminary. He explains "The grounds (of the seminary) are vast and normally parts of it are cultivated, but more recently the field we were able to use was not very big, since the area is not properly fenced off and hungry goats got in and destroyed our harvest."

A new fence was needed. The seminary also needed money in order to pay its running costs. But the food shortage was the greatest threat to everyday life for the seminarians. ACN helped with €30,000 so that basic stores of rice, beans, flower, lentils and oil could be laid in. Father Nkafu writes "We are very grateful for the enormous support we have received from ACN, without which we could have done nothing." In the long term, the seminary rector is hoping that they can plant enough food for themselves so that they can lay in a store of basic necessities. "We are hoping that the seminary can in future provide some of its own food through gardening and pig rearing", he adds.

A measure of self-sufficiency is in fact essential, since the food shortage in the South of Sudan will not be resolved overnight. Less than half of the population of southern Sudan have access to clean drinking water, and infant mortality is among the highest in the world, with every seventh child dying below the age of six.

 

To know about this and many other similar projects in favour of the pastoral needs of the suffering Church, please contact our national offices.