- A Church that trains pastors in opposition to predatory power
- The clergy are on the front line in a country where pastoral care comes at a high price.
- Obedience as an antidote to ethnic and political fragmentation
- A young church facing the daunting prospect of an election without guarantees
- Lectio divina
- ✝ Biblical references
On August 17th, in St. Theresa's Cathedral in Juba, three deacons knelt before Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla to receive priestly ordination, while just a few kilometers away, in the hushed corridors of government, the fate of a country hanging in the balance on an election that almost no one truly believes can be held peacefully was still being negotiated. This almost unbearable contrast alone defines the theological arena where the credibility of the Church in South Sudan is at stake today: on one side, politicians vying for power, even resorting to the arbitrary detention of rivals; on the other, a pastor calling on his new priests to flee precisely this same temptation of power, but cloaked in liturgical vestments. For this is precisely what is at stake when Cardinal Ameyu warns his spiritual sons against any vision of the priesthood as an "elite status": he is not uttering a pious formula of circumstance, he is making a spiritual diagnosis of a country where the function, whatever it may be, too often transforms into a privilege, a spoil, a distance from the people.
The world's youngest country, independent for barely fifteen years, is theoretically preparing to hold its first general election on December 22, 2026, a democratic event promised since 2011 and postponed five times. Riek Machar, the former first vice-president and leader of the opposition, has remained under house arrest in Juba since March 2025, facing charges of murder, treason, and crimes against humanity before a special court that recently closed its doors to the public and the media. His movement, the SPLM-IO, has warned that anyone attempting to register voters or campaign in areas under its control will be considered a prisoner of war. It is in this climate of widespread suspicion, where amendments to the revitalized 2018 peace agreement were passed surreptitiously to detach elections from the completion of a permanent constitution, that Cardinal Ameyu is training his priests in a completely different logic of authority: that of selfless service, a thousand leagues away from the logic of conquest that is eating away at the political class.
A Church that trains pastors in opposition to predatory power
The significance of this pastoral gesture must be understood within its immediate context. When a cardinal ordains three new priests in a country where Catholic bishops, at the conclusion of their annual assembly, have just warned of an "imminent constitutional and transitional crisis," regardless of whether the election takes place or is postponed, every word spoken during the ordination takes on a particular weight. The Archbishop of Juba is not addressing three young men in the abstract: he is sending them to exercise their ministry in parishes where the population expects them to embody a concrete alternative to leaders perceived as monopolizing resources and power for themselves. The contrast between the humility demanded of the priest and the overt pride of some of the country's political leaders is not a mere coincidence of timing; it is the very essence of the Church's witness in this wounded nation.
This demand for humility finds a striking echo in the First Letter of Peter, where the apostle writes to the scattered communities: «You yourselves, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ» (1 Peter 2:5). This text, less frequently cited than other passages on the priesthood, reminds us that the priestly function never consists of dominating the building but of being integrated into it like one stone among others, carried by Christ himself, designated as the cornerstone. Cardinal Ameyu, by insisting on the rejection of any «elite status,» is simply reformulating this Petrine theology for a context where the temptation of clerical elitism dangerously merges with that of political elitism.
South Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war since 2013, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions, before the revitalized 2018 agreement established a fragile unity government between President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his rival Riek Machar. Machar's arrest in 2025 shattered this precarious arrangement, reigniting fighting in several regions of the country and prompting the ceasefire monitoring mechanism to note, in January 2026, a fourteen percent increase in truce violations and a forty-three percent increase in hostilities involving signatories to the agreement. It is in this atmosphere of chronic distrust that the Catholic Church, through the voice of its bishops gathered in the ecclesiastical province of Juba, recalled last January that "citizens are not property", firmly condemning the resumption of fighting and demanding that the belligerents recognize the deep aspiration of the people for peace.
The clergy are on the front line in a country where pastoral care comes at a high price.
Cardinal Ameyu's call for humility and obedience cannot be understood without recalling a tragic event that occurred a few weeks earlier, a few hundred kilometers north of the border, in the Nuba Mountains: Father Youhanna Al-Amin, parish priest of Saint Vincent in Kauda, was murdered on June 19th along with two other people for denouncing the theft of medicine intended for his community. A month later, in the same region, an Anglican pastor, Adel Idris Jongool, was shot dead by fighters from a dissident faction, while another Protestant religious leader was kidnapped. These murders, which are part of a climate of targeted persecution of the Christian clergy in Central and East Africa, give a particularly grave resonance to Cardinal Ameyu's call for selfless service: serving in this region of the world is not about holding an honorary position, but about potentially paying with one's life for fidelity to one's mission.
This reality echoes the warning Jesus himself gives his disciples when he sends them on their mission, in an often-overlooked passage from the Gospel of Luke: «I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Take no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road» (Lk 10:3-4). This radical stripping away, this deliberate absence of any protective trappings, outlines the portrait of the priest that Cardinal Ameyu envisions: a man without a material or symbolic safety net, entirely exposed to the fragility of his mission, the exact opposite of the figure of the prominent priest that some African ecclesiastical cultures have sometimes allowed to take root.
Since his election, Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly issued appeals concerning this region of the world, referring last January to "the persistent political instability in South Sudan, the youngest state in the international community," alongside neighboring Sudan, which he described as "a vast battlefield." In early August, he again urged the authorities to guarantee humanitarian corridors and called on the international community to support an immediate ceasefire, reiterating his spiritual closeness to the entire Sudanese population. This papal insistence, far from being a mere diplomatic exercise, sheds light on the formation that Cardinal Ameyu provides to his new priests: they are called to become, in their respective parishes, the concrete agents of a peace that Rome calls "disarmed and disarming," an expression that has become emblematic of Leo XIV's pontificate.
Obedience as an antidote to ethnic and political fragmentation
The third pillar of the cardinal's exhortation, obedience, deserves particular attention in the South Sudanese context, where intercommunal tensions often intersect with the ecclesiastical fault lines themselves. A priest trained in obedience to his bishop and to the universal Church becomes, in this configuration, a unifying force transcending the tribal affiliations that still profoundly structure the country's social and political life. Cardinal Ameyu himself, from Torit County in Eastern Equatoria, built his entire ecclesiastical reputation on this ability to transcend clan affiliations, which largely explains why Pope Francis chose to create him a cardinal in 2023, the first in the country's history, precisely on the twelfth anniversary of South Sudanese independence.
This unifying dimension of priestly obedience finds a striking scriptural foundation in the Epistle to the Philippians, where Saint Paul describes Christ's kenotic movement: "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:6-7). This text, fundamental to any theology of the priesthood, takes on a burning relevance in a country where political leaders, on the contrary, cling fiercely to their positions, where President Salva Kiir Mayardit unilaterally amended the peace agreement to decouple the electoral calendar from the completion of a permanent constitution, provoking the indignation of the opposition, which sees it as a maneuver to secure his re-election. The voluntary self-emptying that Paul describes in Christ stands in stark contrast to this clinging to power that has characterized the South Sudanese political scene since independence.
It would be reductive, however, to read Cardinal Ameyu's homily solely as an implicit critique of political power. It addresses first and foremost a reality internal to the Church itself: the temptation, present in many young African churches where the clergy enjoys considerable social prestige, to transform ordination into social advancement rather than into conformity to Christ the servant. A religious sociologist observing the meteoric growth of South Sudanese Catholicism, fueled by numerous vocations in a context of national reconstruction, would readily understand why a cardinal responsible for clerical formation insists on this point with such consistency, as he had already done during a previous diaconal ordination where he exhorted the candidates to "sacrifice themselves" for the ministry.
A young church facing the daunting prospect of an election without guarantees
The close timing of this priestly ordination and the announcement, just days earlier, of renewed concerns expressed by South Sudanese parliamentarians regarding the very possibility of holding free elections in December, is undoubtedly not a coincidence in the cardinal's pastoral agenda. The legislators themselves acknowledge that persistent insecurity prevents them from visiting their constituencies, fundamentally undermining the freedom of movement of both voters and candidates. In such a context of institutional vacuum, the Catholic Church, through its new priests trained in humility and service, paradoxically becomes one of the few structures capable of maintaining a bond of trust with a population that no longer believes in the promises of its leaders.
This overwhelming responsibility that weighs on young ordained priests, barely out of the seminary, recalls the words of the prophet Jeremiah, himself called at a very young age to a mission that was beyond his comprehension: «Ah, Lord God, I do not know how to speak; I am only a youth!» The Lord then replied, «Do not say, »I am only a youth.’ Go to everyone I send you to and tell them everything I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to rescue you” (Jeremiah 1:6-8). This prophetic dialogue sheds a particular light on Cardinal Ameyu’s emphasis on obedience: it is not passive submission to an abstract ecclesiastical hierarchy, but radical trust in the divine promise of accompaniment, the only thing capable of sustaining a young priest sent into the heart of a fractured society.
The witness of this South Sudanese Church, still young institutionally but already tested by persecution and war, offers the universal Church a demanding mirror. Where so many Western ecclesiastical debates focus on questions of status, recognition, or media visibility, Cardinal Ameyu reminds us, with almost brutal simplicity, that the Catholic priesthood, in its most stripped-down essence, is never measured by the power it confers, but by the service it demands. This lesson from East Africa, at a time when the country is preparing for an election whose outcome remains highly uncertain, deserves to be pondered far beyond the borders of South Sudan.
Lectio divina
«You yourselves, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood.» 1 Peter 2:5
Perhaps you, too, hold a position, a title, a responsibility that sets you apart from others. Have you ever felt that silent pride gently separating you from those you are meant to serve? The living stone does not shine alone; it only stands when joined to the other stones of the building. What would remain of your mission if all outward signs of power were taken from you today? Dare to look, in silence, at what would then remain.
Lord, you chose rough stones to build your house. You did not want polished marble, but fragile and obedient flesh. Teach me to let myself be shaped without resistance. Take from me all desire to be seen, to be feared, to be exalted. Make me a hidden stone, useful, placed where you want it to be. May I serve without ever seeking to shine.
A stone hand rests on a bowed head, and the silence of the cathedral carries further than all the speeches in the world.
📁 Special Report
Leo XIV1300 articles
Leo XIV, the first American pope, facing AI and digital technology: profile, social legacy of Leo XIII and challenges…
Access the folder →✝ Biblical references
4 passages · 4 books
Cast all your anxieties on him, for you are precious in his eyes. (1 Peter 5:7)
Encouragement to persecuted Christians: hope, baptism and conduct in society.
→ Explore Codex 1 Stone- Leo XIV and the gesture of Saint Ignatius of Antioch: when Rome learned to sing with one voice with the East
- Norway 2030: When a king killed by the sword becomes the seed of a Church
- These Russian Catholics whom Rome calls upon to become living bridges
- When American charity meets the memory of Hippo: Leo XIV's words to the Vincentians
I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. (Jeremiah 31:31)
Prophet of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the new covenant of the heart.
→ Explore the Codex Jeremiah- When the lines of communication resume: what Moscow reveals about reconciliation diplomacy
- When the judgment of one man decides a life: Massachusetts law and the collapse of a boundary
- Ecuador: When a child who was never born becomes a son of the Church
- Nigeria: When Bishops Are a Trouble — Catholic Parrhesia in the Face of Power
The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. (Luke 19:10)
The Gospel of Mercy: Jesus close to the poor, women and sinners.
→ Explore the Codex Luc- Nepal: When water sweeps everything away, the Church remains standing
- Nigeria: When the harvest overflows the granaries of unity
- Acts 29: The sixth continent doesn't need perfect apostles, but available ones.
- When two continents respond to each other: Canadian charity as an extension of Colombian ecclesial communion
I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)
A letter of joy written from prison: the humility of Christ and peace that surpasses all.
→ Explore the Codex Philippiens- Sitting with God, but not yet — The Cistercian art of walking before reigning
- The Church of Saints: When God Takes the Lead
- Gifts to Christ: when the heart becomes a dwelling place
- Coming into the light: when good work reveals God
- Growing up: the dizzying price of universality according to François Cheng
- The Pope in sneakers: what Leo XIV's habit really reveals
- Catholic China and the fertile silence of Beijing: when two ordinations in eight days redraw the map of fidelity
- «"I need your support: strong, explicit, and public" — The historic humility of Leo XIV in the face of the schism
- The Church on the edge of the desert: when the minority becomes a mission
🌍 1 Catholic country
With approximately 60,130 Catholics, South Sudan is one of the most Catholic countries in Africa, but also one of the most affected by civil war and poverty. Evangelization began in the 19th century with the Comboni Missionaries…
Discover South Sudan →
