Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Juba (Agenzia Fides) - “Traditional chiefs are inspired by God to work for peace in our communities. They settle disputes between individuals and groups ” said Pentecostal Bishop Michael Taban, President of South Sudan’s Council of Churches, in a call to traditional chiefs and elders to help restore peace in South Sudan. The young nation, (independent in July 2011), since last December is in a state of civil war, the fighting is between the pro President Salva Kiir faction and the pro Vice President Riek Machar faction. The South Sudan Council of Churches, a body comprising 6 Christian denominations present in South Sudan (Catholic Church, Episcopal Church of the Sudan, Presbyterian Church of Sudan, African Inland Church, Sudan Pentecostal Church, Sudan Interior Church), is fully committed to helping restore peace, also because peace agreements signed in June have yet to be applied by both parties. In particular, a government of national unity has still to be formed.
The President of the South Sudan Council of Churches said that religious leaders and traditional chiefs have the same mission to work for reconciliation, to build peace, because local chiefs have an important role to play at grassroots level, and also because the conflict has taken on a ethnic dimension with clashes between the Dinka people (the President’s ethnic group) and the Nuer people (the ethnic group of Machar). (LM) (Agenzia Fides 03/09/2014)
