CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Ugandan nun reconciles rebels, victims

Sister Pauline Acayo has looked at her region of northern Uganda and seen the devastation caused by violent insurgents.

She has one response: forgive.

Most strikingly, her neighbors feel the same, even when it comes to the leader of the 23-year rebellion, Joseph Kony.

"We went around and asked people in the resettlement camps, 'What should we do if Kony surrenders?' And three-fourths of them said, 'Forgive him.' They say, 'We have lost sons, we have lost property, we have had enough and we are ready to forgive. We don't want to suffer any more.'"

Violent decades

Sister Pauline, a member of the Little Sisters of Mary Immaculate of Gulu, has been on a speaking tour in the United States organized by Catholic Relief Services. CRS is the overseas relief organization of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and is supported by donations on Mission Sunday.

Sister Arlene Flaherty, OP, who helped organize Sister Pauline's American tour, said it was part of CRS' effort to connect American Catholics with the global community.
In Uganda, Sister Pauline works for CRS teaching and promoting reconciliation in Gulu and the adjoining districts of Kitgum and Pader. These were most affected by Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

The group began as a political rebellion in 1986, and then devolved into a gang that mutilates women, kidnaps children and has no purpose beyond survival. More than 1.6 million people left their fields and villages to avoid violence and the killings that have left 100,000 dead.

At least 20,000 children were kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, which brutalized them into becoming fighters. Kony, their leader, often said he wanted to cleanse northern Uganda of sin and restore the Ten Commandments.

Good news

Over the two past years, peace has edged into the region. The LRA has remained largely across the border in Sudan and, more recently, Congo. Many members have surrendered under an amnesty as church and civic groups rebuild civil society and helping former abductees regain their childhood.

LRA leaders signed a cease-fire agreement last year. Now, the government is waiting for Kony himself to come out of hiding and sign the final treaty.

Sister Pauline is not waiting. For almost a decade, she has organized "peace teams" that visit villages and camps and teach lessons on human rights, domestic violence and reconciliation. The teams help Ugandans act out peaceful solutions to hatred and conflict.

Inside experts

Many of the instructors are former child soldiers who talk of their experience and offer advice to families on how to welcome back other former abductees.

"When people are ready, we bring them to the tribal chiefs, and supply food and blankets for a cleansing ceremony and a reconciliation ceremony," said Sister Pauline.
These ceremonies, participants and observers report, have worked well to ease the pain and reconnect families and neighbors.

"If Kony comes out of the bush, he will go through the reconciliation ceremony," Sister Pauline noted.

Her fear, and that of many other Ugandans, is that Kony will be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court, based in Geneva, rather than received back in traditional Ugandan fashion.

"If [the government] goes through the courts, then we will have more war," she said wearily.

Sister Pauline's lessons have inspired American Catholics to give, but also practice what they hear. At a hotel gym, she met a man whose daughter heard the nun speak at her Catholic high school that day: "He told me that his daughter came home and said, 'We have a task to do. We have to work for peace in our community and in our home.'"

FACBOX
Uganda, in east central Africa, has 31 million residents. The size of Oregon, it is surrounded by Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Congo. After independence from Britain in 1962, Uganda suffered through two dictatorships, including Idi Amin, before Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986. Museveni won an election in 1996 and is in a third term.


(10/16/08)