There are many thoughts crowding together in my head as I post this entry. Last week on January 20, a relatively young (late 40s) priest of the diocese, Fr. Victor Okot Lodukamoe, passed away in Ikotos, and was buried there on January 22. I had the privilege of being present for his funeral and of visiting the community of Ikotos on that occasion. January 20 and 22 are both feasts of martyrs, Sts. Agnes and Vincent, and the martyrs are in a supreme sense the witnesses of hope in eternal life. For them that hope was so vivid that it enabled them to face the premature loss of their earthly lives with freedom, confidence and serenity. January 22 is also the anniversary of the death of Fr. Saturnino Ohure, a local hero of the Church and people of Southern Sudan. Fr. Saturnino was (with the approval of the Holy See) one of the leaders in the first southern resistance to northern Islamic oppression, for which he was killed in Uganda in the late 1960s. The Government of Southern Sudan is planning to bring his body from Uganda and inter it in a special monument in a public square in the center of Torit later this week.
I first met Fr. Victor when I arrived back in Africa in September. He was in Nairobi studying language and communications, and getting treatment for his chronic poor health. I remember being deeply moved when I found out that he had been ordained during the war just two years after me in a small roofed shelter in the forest near Ikotos because of the danger that air raids posed to any crowd that might gather in the church. What a contrast to my own ordination in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in peaceful times without any real threat of danger. I couldn’t help but wonder how the contrast appeared in God’s eyes, and how precious Fr. Victor’s response to his vocation under those circumstances must have been to Him. I was even more moved by that fact when I discovered during the funeral that in his journey toward priesthood, Fr. Victor had to overcome a lot of obstacles and endure some personally painful delays before ordination.
We arrived in Ikotos just after Fr. Victor’s body had been washed and prepared for his simple wooden coffin. Of course, as in most developing countries, there was no possibility of embalming or mortuary services. I had the honor of helping to clothe him in the priestly vestments in which he was buried, and that became a profound meditation for me. The last time a priest is vested is in death, when he is preparing to enter into “the heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem towards which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, minister of the holy things and of the true tabernacle” (Vatican II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, n. 8, from the Office of Readings of today, the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time). Just as we finished, his aunt and surviving brother arrived. Later his casket was wreathed in flowers and a dozen priests concelebrated Mass.
The bishop arrived later and was the main celebrant of the Mass of Christian Burial the next day. When he arrived, however, his sorrow was doubled when he discovered that the aunt who cared for him as a child and who also lived in Ikotos, had died the same day as Fr. Victor. Apparently she had become disoriented and wandered away from home, and was overcome by heat and dehydration. As the story unfolded I learned a great deal about the bishop’s personal history. His father had been an active participant in the same first southern resistance as Fr. Saturnino, and as a result had to go into hiding. His mother, his older siblings and most of his aunts and uncles were imprisoned for several years as a result, and Bishop Akio was left in the care of his mother’s youngest sister. And so the bishop’s early childhood was deeply marked with suffering and hardship. Perhaps in some way that helped to prepare him to serve the Church in the difficult circumstances during and after the second civil war.
The village of Ikotos, the seat of government for Ikotos County, is about two hours southeast of Torit going towards the Uganda border on a road that is slowly being improved. On the way we passed the ruins of one of the villages that had been burned in June (see the posting about my Visit to Hiyala in June) as a result of an intertribal conflict over cattle rustling.
Ikotos sustained a lot of heavy bombing during the war. As in many places now, lots of new huts are cropping up as refugees return and try to resume a normal life. In addition to the Diocese of Torit, the World Food Program has a base there, as does the Lutheran World Fellowship and the Episcopal Church of Sudan.
A metal panel church was somewhat hastily built there near the end of the war, but was poorly constructed and began to deteriorate soon; it is now unusable.
A large cross stands atop the small rock mount on which the church is built.
A residence for the parish priest was begun but never able to be finished:
On a positive note, a new secondary boarding school was recently constructed in the parish, which also oversees a diocesan youth center.
Accomodations for retreatants at the St. Joseph Diocesan Youth Center, Ikotos (above and below)
Both were built with the help of international NGO’s. One of the challenges the diocese faces is that funds are much more readily available for projects related to social services such as education, health and youth activities, than for strictly pastoral projects such as churches and rectories. That produces the enigmatic situation of a parish with a new school and youth center, but no church, rectory or convent. We are hoping to conduct a YOUTH 2OOO type Eucharistic retreat for the youth of the diocese in Ikotos later this year, perhaps on Pentecost weekend.
The main hall of the St. Joseph Youth Center, possible site of a future YOUTH 2OOO-type retreat
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