ACN News: Friday, 24th May 2013 – CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Central African Republic: "World opinion only interested in dead elephants"

By Eva-Maria Kolman


Father Aurelio Gazzera, a missionary in the Central African city of Bozoum and Caritas director for the diocese of Bouar, bemoans the lack of interest shown by world public opinion in the dramatic situation in the Central African Republic. "In the past few weeks the most important news for the mass media with regard to Central Africa is the killing of 26 elephants by poachers. The innumerable dead and injured plus the rapes and lootings arouse little interest by comparison," the Italian Carmelite monk stressed when talking to the Catholic charity "Aid to the Church in Need". The Central African Republic was, he said, at risk of "being left to its own devices and of becoming a hell on earth."


(Fr. Aurelio Gazzera OCD, Carmelite Missionary in Bozoum and Caritas director of Bouar Diocese,
blessing the new school Saint Augustine in Bozoun © Aid to the Church in Need)

A particular cause for concern, according to Gazzera, was the intervention by Chad and Sudan since the majority of the Seleka rebels were foreigners who couldn't speak the national language Sango but only Arabic. There was no control over the rebels. "Recently the rebels told me: 'This here is a province of Chad. We're at war!'" On top of this there is the growing influence of Islam. Half the new government was made up of Muslims, although these accounted for a mere 15 per cent of the total population, whereas the proportion of Christians was 66 per cent, the missionary claimed. "The victims of the lootings are primarily non-Muslims, and especially the Catholic Church," Father Gazzera has observed. "This is a cause for concern in a country where the communities have been living peacefully together to date." The ethnic and mainly religious tensions were intensifying.

The Central African Republic had often suffered coups d'état, the Carmelite Father said sadly. This time, however, the situation was much worse. For two months the lootings, murders, shootings and violence had persisted. The state officials had fled, as had the military and the security forces. Schools and public institutions had remained closed for months. Gazzera: "In view of the 51.4 per cent illiteracy rate, classes of up to a hundred pupils, a judicial system biased against the poor, politicians who only sought their own advantage and a health service which was only interested in money and not so much the welfare of the sick, I ask myself in the words of the Psalmists: 'What can the righteous do?' (Ps 11,3). What is clear is that an immense education effort is required on all levels. And that's why we don't intend to leave the country and why we are crying out!"

The Church, and in particular the "voice of courageous Bishops like the Archbishop of Bangui", were among the few voices who were continuing to stir the conscience of the nation, Father Gazzera claimed. The Central African Republic was a country which "is little known and carries little weight internationally," he continued. "If we speak, write and cry out perhaps someone will stop to think and listen to us – and be able to do something! We want to carry on and speak out; we want to work to ensure that such things do not happen again in the future."

Aid to the Church in Need recently granted the Catholic Church in the Central African Republic emergency relief of $210,000.


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.
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, Aid to the Church in Need’s Child’s Bible – God Speaks to his Children has been translated into 172 languages and 50 million copies have been distributed all over the world.
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