Pope Francis to victims of eastern DRC: “Your suffering is my suffering”

The sovereign pontiff met, Wednesday afternoon, displaced from the great Eastern region where a hundred armed groups are rampant, including the M23.

by Sarah Belouezne (Kinshasa, Special Envoy)

For a long time, Pope Francis listened to them. He scrutinized the stigma of their aggressions on mutilated members, listened to the stories of a rare harshness of their suffering endured in the Kivu region, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from which they are from. This part of the country is torn by a series of rebellions and local conflicts and marked by the abuses of armed groups for three decades. Wednesday 1 er February, in the afternoon, Pope Francis received at the Palais de la Nunciature Apostolique in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, displaced from this great region of the East where Currently a hundred armed groups, including M23, rebellion predominantly Tutsi fighting against central power.

He gave them all the signs of great attention, giving his hand here, offering a rosary or a medal there, blessing to children from the rape of their mother. It is to address these unfortunate people, victims of a distant, endless and forgotten war of the rest of the world that Jorge Bergoglio wanted to go to this country of Central Africa as large as Western Europe in This beginning of 2023. He who says he is “pilgrim of peace”, eager to use his influence – despite his limits – to convince the protagonists of conflicts to stop killing, plunder and rape, held to Make this meeting a highlight of his trip which must also lead him to South Sudan.

In front of him, a young woman lifts her arms, showing her stumps, the result of an attack of incredible violence. Another bed the text of her neighbor, jewelry Makumbi Kamala, a teenager from Goma, a victim whose testimony describes a ordeal of several months of capture by an armed group. Raped “several times a day for several hours” nineteen months, she managed to escape, but says she gave birth to “twins who will never know their father”.

“We need peace “

“Holy Father, we need peace and nothing other than peace, this free gift from Jesus Christ resurrected. We want to return to our villages, cultivate our fields, rebuild our houses, educate our children, Cohabit with our lifelong neighbors, far from the noise of weapons! We want the evil perpetrated in Ituri to stop, to be punished and repaired, “said the Pope a member of the delegations who came to meet him on Wednesday. At his feet, under the cross, were deposited several symbolic objects, embodying the sufferings of the victims: machetes or a mat on which was sleeping, during his captivity, one of the women who came to testify.

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