Aid to the Church in Need: Tanzania: The last Burundian refugees in Tanzania to return home

Tanzania: The last Burundian refugees in Tanzania to return home

Posted by Press Release on 30/9/2009, 11:31 am
Board Administrator

ACN News: Wednesday, 30th September 2009 – TANZANIA

Going Home

By John Newton and John Pontifex

THE last Burundian refugees in Tanzania are preparing to return home – ending a humanitarian crisis that began more than 30 years ago.
Bishop Protase Rugambwa of Kigoma Diocese in the west of Tanzania told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need of his hopes for the future after UN reports stated that Burundian refugees – who numbered half a million just a decade ago – have fallen to 36,000.
Now the government in Tanzania expects to close the last remaining camp in the near future.
In his interview with ACN on Friday (18 Sept), Bishop Rugambwa spoke of how for years, the diocese considered support for the refugees to be an essential part of its pastoral work.
The bishop said: “We have tried to accompany them and help them spiritually, to seek peace and change their mentality away from hatred towards reconciliation.”

(Bishop Protase Rugambwa of Kigoma Diocese)

Bishop Rugambwa described how last month he visited Mtabilia, the last remaining camp where he conducted Confirmations for candidates prepared by the Holy Ghost Fathers, a religious order of priests.
There has been a steady flow of Burundian refugees into Tanzania between the mid-1960s and early 1990s.
About 300,000 are reported to have fled during the mass slaughter that occurred as part of ethnic struggles in 1972.
Since 2002, when it was first considered safe for the refugees to return home, more than 400,000 have returned.
But not everyone wished to return and last month 3,500 Burundians were granted Tanzanian citizenship.
The Holy Ghost Fathers are one of the religious orders, along with the White Fathers, doing pastoral work in the diocese.
Bishop Rugambwa said: “You can be doing pastoral work, but it obliges you to enter into the social area, and fund schools and so on.”
The bishop described the establishment of schools and hospitals as “traditional areas of activity” in the diocese.
ACN has been supporting Kigoma Diocese by providing Mass offerings for priests to offer Masses for the charity’s benefactors.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 46.5 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, contact please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org