Aid to the Church in Need: Uganda: Rebuilding after war

Uganda: Rebuilding after war

Posted by Press Release on 12/10/2009, 8:11 am
Board Administrator

ACN News: Monday, 12th October 2009 – UGANDA

Rebuilding after war

By John Newton

THE Church in Uganda is helping to rebuild peoples’ lives as they leave the camps they sheltered in during the country’s guerrilla war with rebel militia – but it’s an uphill struggle.
Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, Fr Paul Okello of Lira diocese in the north of the country said the Church has been encouraging reconciliation and the restoration of lost values, such as integrity, honesty, and fidelity.
While the country is more stable and peaceful than five years ago – most people have returned home from the camps and rebels have withdrawn from Uganda to the Congo – the Church has to help a generation rebuild their lives.
Fr Okello described how the Church has been at the forefront of advocacy for peace, reconciliation and social justice.
He said: “The Church has encouraged everyone to see that guns cannot solve anything, that nobody wins when you use violence, that it is a vicious circle that no one can stop except God.”
According to the priest “morality had completely degenerated” because of life in the camps, where prostitution, infidelity, child abuse, and substance abuse were rife.
Parents not only permitted but actually encouraged their children to become prostitutes “as it was seen as a means to a livelihood.”
While the country has one of the lowest rates in Africa, the spread of HIV/AIDS in the camps was three times higher than among the rest of the population.
Fr Okello described how the Church is responding to these challenges.
He said: “As a Church we have been promoting fidelity in marriage and the proper place of sex – telling young people and adults about abstinence, and holistic behaviour change.
“Chastity and virginity: these are the values we promote in our teaching to people.”
Fr Okello told ACN that changing people’s sexual behaviour is no easy task.
He said: “It remains a big challenge when you have to tell people something that is true, yet not easy for them to follow.
“It is still more challenging for the Church to preach to someone on the brink of poverty, who has lost hope, someone who is starving, who would prefer to do what is not proper to fill his stomach.”
According to Fr Okello, people could not carry out agricultural activities when they were living in the camps, as their farm land was too far away.
Fr Okello said: “They got up in the morning and instead of working they just waited for food to come.”
The Church has been supplying food and agricultural equipment, and providing lot of workshops to help train people – it has also organised peace seminars for people to understand “how God has created us to live in harmony and unity, and what Christ prayed for – that they may be one”.
People have now returned to cultivating fields and rearing animals, but wild and unpredictable weather means new challenges.
Farmers can no longer rely on the stable cycle of wet season or dry seasons required to grow their crops.
Fr Okello said: “Nowadays rain comes 2-3 days, or perhaps 2-3 weeks, then it just disappears and a scorching sun comes and burns crops – sometimes it’s the opposite, all of a sudden storm comes and there’s a flood all over. It takes us back to point zero.”
He added how a big flood in northern Uganda greatly affected Lira diocese in July 2007.
In response to the diocese’s urgent request, ACN provided more than $40,000 to buy seeds for distribution to returnee farmers who had lost their crops to floods.
Thanking ACN for supporting his priestly training, Fr Okello said: “I am particularly grateful to everyone who enabled my formation.”
He added: “This priesthood, fully understood, requires me to make a preferential option for the poor, suffering and persecuted – and obliges me to put myself entirely at their service.”

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, 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
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