NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      Khartoum (CWNews.com/Fides) - Hundreds of starving Sudanese, displaced by the ongoing civil war between the Islamic government and southern Christian rebels, are flocking to Catholic missions, the Vatican news agency Fides reported on Thursday.

      "Every day an average of 700 people reach Wau exhausted, reduced to skin and bones having lived for days on end only off leaves and grass. They are in a desperate condition, with very little clothing and at the end of their tether," said Salesian Father Vincenzo Donati. "This has been the situation for the last three months and the Islamic government has obstinately refused to let in food supplies, clearly with the intention of genocide."

      The Wau region civil authorities are in charge of distributing the food supplies, but Fides' sources said the authorities go out by night and take back what they have distributed. Catholic missionaries also reported that hundreds of bodies are taken away every day with most receiving no burial. They also report that thousands of orphaned children are being herded by the Muslim authorities into the so called peace-camps where they are "Islamised."

      The Salesian missionaries have decided to call in another priest and four of their Sudanese aspirants in an attempt to provide assistance for these children left without a family. Besides the diocesan bishop and a few local priests, there are three Salesian missionaries who run a parish and a school, and two Comboni missionaries, one of whom is a doctor.