“Act as voice of voiceless in quest for peace": Church Leader in South Sudan Urges

By Peter Mapuor Makur

Torit, 19 December, 2020 / 1:00 pm (ACI Africa).

The quest for peace in South Sudan can be achieved when the people of God raise their voices in favor of the “voiceless” in society, the leadership of the Inter-Churches Council (ICC) has said.

Addressing participants at a meeting in South Sudan’s Catholic Diocese of Torit earlier this week, the leadership of South Sudan’s ICC that includes the Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church of South Sudan (ECSS) among its members said evangelization entailed fostering peace at the grassroots, especially conflict-stricken areas.

“Churches should act as the voice of the voiceless in the quest for peace,” ICC Chairperson, Rev. Oryem Solomon Abalang of ECSS told the participants at the December 14 meeting.

Rev. Oryem appealed to “churches to continue their call for peace” by extending their evangelical programs "beyond areas free from political and intercommunal conflicts to war-affected neighborhoods.”

“We will evangelize; we all need to evangelize these areas where there are crises especially the area of Hiyala and all those areas in crisis around Eastern Equatoria State,” Rev. Oryem said at the conclusion of the meeting attended by the Coordinator for Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Torit.

He continued, “The Inter-churches Council needs to come out with our evangelical activities so that we carry out our work in those areas.”

“What the people lack in those areas we did not reach is that they don’t know God and therefore it is our mandate to come together as the church,” Rev. Oryem added.

The ICC Chairman advised the over thirty Church leaders to “share the capacity of knowledge about God with all the people that have not been evangelized in South Sudan.”

On his part, the Justice and Peace Commission officer in the Catholic Diocese of Torit, Chandi Richard encouraged South Sudan’s ICC members to “review their work as they develop plans for the upcoming year 2021.”

“The main aim of this coordination meeting is to review what we did last year and assess the difficulties before having our plans for the New Year,” Chandi Richard said, and explained, “It is the kind of evaluation among you ICC members to check and balance what you have done.”