Sudan Catholics turn to Darfur saint

By Andrew Heavens and Skye Wheeler

KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) - In a dusty church in Khartoum's Jeberona camp for displaced persons, the congregation claps and sings beneath a portrait of a smiling woman who has become a focus of hope for a divided country.

Josephine Bakhita, a former slave who died in 1947, has risen from obscurity to become the first saint from Darfur in western Sudan, a region convulsed by war for the past five years.

"I would say she was a gift from God ... an offer from God," said Bishop Daniel Adwok, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Khartoum. "She has come on time for the conflict here in Sudan."

The Roman Catholic Church canonised St. Bakhita a saint in 2000, three years before the start of the conflict in Darfur. Back then no one paid much attention to her birthplace, an obscure village in the remote western region.

That changed when fighting erupted around her old home.

Since then, Church authorities say Sudan's Catholics have been directing their prayers to her for an end to the Darfur conflict.

In Jeberona, the packed service in St. Bakhita parish church is punctuated with songs honouring the saint and a homily from visiting priest Father George Jangara holding her up as an example of grace and forgiveness in troubled times.

Almost all the church members came to Jeberona fleeing the north-south civil war that raged for decades until a shaky peace deal in 2005. For them, the woman who gave her name to their parish has been a source of solace and inspiration.  Continued...