Embracing mission in warn-torn Sudan

These two articles appeared in October 2007 the Criterion, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis
Photo at right: Father Michael Barton and young man from St. Theresa Parish.

Comboni Father Michael Barton embraces mission work in war-torn Sudan

(Editor’s note: “Stewards Abroad” is an occasional series that reports on the missionary efforts of Catholics from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis throughout the world.)

By Mary Ann Wyand

Violence continues daily in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where United Nations officials estimate that more than 200,000 Sudanese people have been killed and at least 2.5 million displaced during four years of a bloody holy war waged by Muslim extremists.

On Oct. 11, the country’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended a 21-year civil war, was threatened when the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement withdrew cabinet members representing southern Sudan from participation in the central government.

Comboni Father Michael Barton, who grew up in St. Therese of the Infant Jesus Parish in Indianapolis, returned to Sudan in September following a home visit and mission trip to El Salvador last summer.

During an Aug. 7 interview at the archdiocesan Mission Office at the Archbishop O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis, Father Barton talked calmly about the continuing violence in Sudan and enthusiastically about his mission work at St. Theresa Parish and four Comboni schools in Nyamllel in southern Sudan.

Catholics in central and southern Indiana are invited to pray for missionary priests, sisters, brothers and laity serving the Catholic Church throughout the world during the archdiocesan World Mission Sunday Mass at 2 p.m. on Oct. 21 at SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral,

1347 N. Meridian St., in Indianapolis. Msgr. Joseph F. Schaedel, vicar general and director of the Mission Office, is the principal celebrant for the Mass.

Father Barton and Father Alfred Loro Caesar, a diocesan priest and seminary rector in the Archdiocese of Juba, met with Sister Demetria Smith, a Missionary Sister of Our Lady of Africa and the archdiocesan mission educator, on Aug. 7 to discuss the Church’s tenuous situation in Sudan and ways that Catholics in central and southern Indiana can support their missionary work.

Father Barton has served in Sudan from 1978 until 1986 and from 1993 to the present so he understands the volatile political and religious conflicts that plague the impoverished East African country.

“The Church in Juba is serving the people in a very trying time,” Father Loro said of his home diocese. “Many people have been killed. The whole world knows about it. I think it is worse than the former [civil] war. … We have so many orphans that we have baptized.”

Father Loro said he believes the United Nations’ statistics on the number of people who have been killed, displaced or died of malnutrition and diseases in recent years are too low.

Sudan has been torn apart by civil war since 1984. During the 21-year conflict, more than 2 million people have died from the fighting and starvation.

“The Church in Sudan has been the target of Muslim radicals,” Father Loro explained. “Because of this, the Church has been weakened. They are trying to bring down the whole Church, but I think that could not happen. I have been speaking about the needs of the Church [in Sudan] right now because we lost many things [due to the fighting]. Churches and schools in Juba were destroyed. They want the whole country to be Muslim.”

He said Catholic priests, religious and laity in Sudan educate the people in the faith, teach the children, help bury the dead, shelter and feed displaced and starving survivors, advocate for justice and work for peace.

“The Archdiocese of Juba is right in the very center of the bloody Sudanese conflict,” Father Loro said. “Our clergy, religious and laity [who are] catechists, although they are prime targets of Muslim extremists, are

nevertheless fighting against all odds to keep the flames of our Christian faith burning brightly in our country. … We continue to witness to Christ’s Gospel of peace, love and mercy, serving all our traumatized, desperate people, Muslims included. The Church remains the only voice of reason, the only hope for our people.”

Father Barton loves Sudan, has spent much of his life there, and wants to continue to help the people grow in their faith and educate the children.

“It’s a very poor life,” he said. “Sorghum, a grain, is the main food in Sudan. Then the people have to carry water [to their homes]. It’s always a struggle to survive. So many enemies, so many difficulties, make life very hard.”

His current assignment at St. Theresa Parish in Nyamllel was a mission started in 1933, but the buildings were damaged by fighting and weather during the civil war, and the rubble was left vacant for decades.

When Father Barton arrived in Nyamllel for the first time in 2002, he was the first resident priest to minister to the Dinka people there since 1964, when the Arab government in the north expelled all the Catholic and Protestant missionaries from Sudan.

He said the previous missionary priest and brother assigned there were attacked during the night and had to flee for their lives wearing only their underwear.

“They were left with nothing, no passport, not even their pants,” he said. “They had to escape by running and left everything they had there.”

Nyamllel isn’t the first place where Father Barton has relied on God to start a new ministry with few resources.

When he began his previous mission at Mapuordit in southern Sudan in 1984, he opened a Comboni grade school with 125 children. Eighteen years later and with God’s help, he said, 2,000 students were enrolled at two Comboni grade schools and a secondary school in Mapuordit when he went to Nyamllel in 2002.

During five years at Nyamllel, Father Barton said he has “worked a lot repairing the buildings and getting the school going. We now have three Catholic grade schools there. One school has about 370 students and the other about 350 students, up to class eight. The third school has just 50 children, only class one, two and three. [The schools] feed into Sacred Heart High School.”

On weekends, Father Barton takes turns celebrating Mass at 80 chapels in the Diocese of Rumbek.

“My goal, and what I have been able to do these last five years that I’ve been there, is to celebrate Mass twice a year at each chapel,” Father Barton said, because another Comboni priest helps him with Masses at St. Theresa Parish.

“Now I have more freedom to go out to the chapels more often,” he said. “Last year, we had 1,859 baptisms in the diocese. This year, from Jan. 1 to when I left Nyamllel right after Easter on April 10, we already had over 1,100 baptisms.”

When he arrived in Sudan in 1978, Father Barton said there was an average of two marriages per diocese in Sudan. Now there are more priests and more marriages.

“Every once in a while, I can get some of the parents to have their marriage blessed in church,” he said. “That thrills me. When I can bless a marriage, I always think God is patting me on the back. And not only

marriages, but some of the children will become priests. That’s all very encouraging.”

(For more information about how to help Comboni Father Michael Barton with his missionary work in Sudan, call the archdiocesan Mission Office at 317-236-1485 or 800-382-9836, ext. 1485.) †

Mission priest inspires vocation in young man he baptized in 1979

By Mary Ann Wyand

With God, all things are possible.

Comboni Father Michael Barton, a native of Indianapolis who has served the Catholic Church in southern Sudan as a missionary priest from 1978 to 1986 and from 1993 to the present, believes that but admits that God still surprises him.

Last summer, Father Barton met a Sudanese man that he baptized as a 6-year-old boy during a missionary visit to the Bari village of Yaro in 1979.

Now 33, the man is a diocesan priest for the Archdiocese of Juba, but they didn’t meet in Sudan or even in Africa.

While he was home for a family visit, Father Barton met Father Alfred Loro Caesar at St. Pius X Church in Indianapolis when the Sudanese priest was making a mission appeal during weekend Masses there in August.

It’s hard to imagine, Father Barton said, that he would meet one of the tens of thousands of Sudanese children he has baptized—during 22 years of missionary work in Africa—half a world away in his own hometown.

But then again, he said, smiling, God works in amazing ways.

“I was 6 years old when I was baptized by him in my own village,” Father Loro said during an Aug. 7 interview at the archdiocesan Mission Office at the Archbishop O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis.

“That is all I can remember,” Father Loro said. “Our village is not far from the parish where he served among the Bari [people]. He even taught me a little English.”

Father Loro attended a Comboni grade school as a child and was confirmed in the Church, but had to flee from Yaro to Juba in 1988 because of the civil war in southern Sudan.

“He suffered during the war,” Father Barton said. “It was very difficult for the boys. He had to run away to many places. He had to flee for his life several times.”

Father Loro entered the seminary in the Archdiocese of Juba and was ordained in 2005.

During his mission appeal visit to the U.S. last summer, Father Loro preached at Masses at Catholic churches in Connecticut, Delaware and Indiana.

“We met when he was baptized in 1979,” Father Barton said. “The first time I am able to concelebrate Mass with him is … in my own hometown.”

Their unexpected reunion was amazing, Father Loro said. “I told him he inspired me very much. … I found my way to the seminary.”

Now Father Loro serves as the rector of the minor seminary in the Archdiocese of Juba, where 75 young men are studying for the priesthood this year.

In his mission talks, Father Loro shares the good news of the Church in Sudan

and recounts horrifying statistics from the 21-year civil war that ended in 2005 and the current holy war waged by Muslim extremists in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Despite this new conflict and threats to the Jan. 9, 2005, peace accord, Father Loro and Father Barton recently returned to Sudan to serve God’s people as best they can in the wake of continuing violence there.†