Situation for Sudan’s Catholics is ‘dire’; Trump aid cuts, says missionary, are compounding civil war’s tragedy
April 16, 2025
April 15 marked the second anniversary of the beginning of the Sudanese civil war, a conflict to which Pope Francis has drawn frequent attention in his Angelus addresses.
“The 15th of April will mark the second sad anniversary of the beginning of the conflict in Sudan, in which thousands have been killed and millions of families have been forced to flee their homes,” he wrote on Palm Sunday. “The suffering of children, women and vulnerable people cries out to heaven and begs us to act. I renew my appeal to the parties involved, that they may end the violence and embark on paths of dialogue, and to the international community, so that the help needed may be provided to the populations.”
“In 2023, the year the war erupted, the Khartoum archdiocese, which covers the northeastern half of the country, had 79 priests,” The Pillar reported. Within a year, “Khartoum, the focus of some of the heaviest fighting, now only had four priests and four nuns.” The capital city’s Catholics continued to “gather on Sundays to pray together with the catechists, despite there being constant carpet bombings which make travel very difficult.”
Last December, Bishop Yunan Tombe “narrowly missed martyrdom” at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and “the plight of the bishop and his flock remains dire,” according to the report. “His rectory has had no running water, electricity, or internet since 2023, and only a sporadic phone connection.”
L’Osservatore Romano marked the anniversary with three articles in its April 15 edition, including the most prominent front-page article. In that article—“Sudan: Fuga disperata“ [Sudan: Desperate flight]—Valerio Palombaro reported on the flight of 400,000 Sudanese from a refugee camp after the RSF took control it.
The Vatican newspaper’s two other articles were “L’inferno sudanese, ignorato dai potenti“ [The Sudanese hell, ignored by the powerful] and “«La gente è stanca di scappare e vuole la pace»“ [“The people are tired of fleeing and want peace”], for which Father Diego Dalle Carbonare, provincial superior of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus in Egypt and Sudan, offered comments.
Both sides in the conflict, said the priest, consider dialogue and compromise “as a defeat, any logic of mediation is seen as an act of weakness. And then there is another thing to say, not of little importance: even the international actors who support one side or the other are not inclined to withdraw from the game and stop the hostilities.”
Father Carbonare also spoke of the plight of South Sudanese who are in Sudan as refugees from their own nation’s civil war.
“Only one thing is certain: for them the situation is very serious, also because the decision of the Trump administration to cut funds for international aid is causing the first negative effects,” he said. Federico Piana, who interviewed the missionary, added, “Such as the lack of food, water and medicines that is causing an exponential increase in deaths: a tragedy within a tragedy.”
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