Pope Francis has warned that the future of South Sudan depends on how it treats its women, noting its dire situation in a country where sexual violence is rampant, child brides are common and the maternal mortality rate is the highest in the world. world.
On his second and penultimate day in Africa, Francis called for women and girls to be respected, protected and honored during a gathering in the South Sudanese capital Juba with some of the 2 million people who have been forced to to flee their homes because of the fighting and the floods. . Women, girls and boys make up the majority of the displaced.
The meeting was one of the highlights of Francis’ three-day visit to the world’s youngest country and one of the poorest. Accompanied by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the Presbyterian head of the Church of Scotland, Francis is on a historic ecumenical pilgrimage to draw world attention to the country’s plight and encourage its stalled peace process.
The aim of the tripartite visit is to encourage South Sudan’s political leaders to implement a 2018 peace deal that ended a civil war that erupted after the largely Christian country won independence from mostly Muslim Sudan in 2011.
Greeted with songs and shrill hoots, Francis urged the hundreds of people gathered at Freedom Hall to be “seeds of hope” that will soon bear fruit for the country of 12 million.
“They will be the trees that absorb the contamination of years of violence and restore the oxygen of fraternity,” he said.
The head of the UN mission in South Sudan, Sara Beysolow Nyanti, told Francis that the women and girls were "extremely vulnerable" to sexual and gender-based violence, and UN statistics estimate that four in 10 have been victims of one or more forms of assault. She said women and girls were at risk of being raped when they were simply going about their business. and daily tasks.
“If South Sudanese women are given the opportunity to develop, to have space to be productive, South Sudan will be transformed,” she told Francis.
The Pope took up the theme in his remarks, saying that women were the key to the peaceful development of South Sudan.
“Please protect, respect, cherish and honor every woman, every girl, youth, mother and grandmother,” she said. “Otherwise, there will be no future.”
According to UNICEF, approximately 75% of girls in South Sudan do not go to school because their parents prefer to keep them at home and prepare them for a marriage that will bring dowry to the family.
Half of the women in South Sudan marry before the age of 18 and then face the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a report last year that, by and large, women and girls here live a “hellish existence.”
“South Sudanese women are physically assaulted while being raped at gunpoint, often held down by men while being abused by others. They are told not to resist in the slightest and not to report what happened, or they will be killed,” the report said.
Maria Nyataba Wur, a displaced woman who now lives in Juba and attended Francis’ event, told The Associated Press that one of her neighbors was raped in front of her children, so violently that she limped for days.
“According to what she told us as a survivor, her legs were tied up and then three people entered her, raped her,” Wur said, adding that she lost track of the neighbor during her own efforts to flee to the safety of the capital. . .
Mariam Nyantabo, another 36-year-old resident of a Juba protection camp, said the women were grateful for Francis’ visit.
“The situation for women is shocking,” she said, noting that the risk of rape comes from everyday tasks, such as collecting firewood. “Your visit is a blessing for the women of South Sudan and I believe that there will be a big change, the suffering of women will be reduced.”
Welby also addressed the plight of women during her remarks at an ecumenical prayer service later on Saturday. He praised its “incredible” strength when “in addition to the pain of conflict and the responsibility of providing for your families, many of you live with the trauma of sexual violence and the daily fear of abuse in your own homes.”
To the men in the audience, Welby was more blunt: “They will value and honor women, never raping, never violent, never cruel, never using them as if they were there to fulfill desire,” he said to applause from the crowd.
Francis began his day by meeting with the priests and nuns who care for the people of South Sudan, urging them to accompany their flocks by joining their suffering.
At St. Theresa’s Cathedral, she learned of the sacrifice the nuns have made over the years, including the 2021 ambush murders of sisters Mary Daniel Abut and Regina Roba Luate of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
Sister Regina Achan, from the same congregation, said Francis’ visit would encourage other sisters to continue serving the people of South Sudan. “We stand with them because we are their voices, we don’t run away in difficult times,” Achan said.
Sister Orla Treacy, an Irish nun from Loreto who runs an all-girls secondary school in the central city of Rumbek, walked for more than a week with her students to see the pope in Juba. The school makes contracts with the girls’ extended families, with the relatives agreeing not to take the girls out of school to get married.
“It’s still a challenge for young women, but it’s changing and young women now come with a vision of what they want for their country as well,” Treacy said at the cathedral event.
Upon his arrival on Friday, Francis issued a blunt warning to President Salva Kiir and his former rival and now congressman Riek Machar that history will judge them harshly if they continue to delay implementation of the peace deal.
Kiir, for his part, committed the government to return to peace talks, suspended last year, with groups that did not sign the 2018 agreement. And on Friday night, the Catholic president granted presidential pardons to 71 inmates at the Juba central prison honoring the ecumenical pilgrimage, including 36 on death row.
