In an interview with Vatican News, Bishop Christian Carlassare of Rumbek, South Sudan, discussed the nation’s poverty, as well as local Holy Week customs.
“South Sudan is not poor because it lacks wealth, but because it lacks peace,” he said. What he is needed, he added, is not dependence on oil revenue—rendered tenuous because of damage to a pipeline in neighboring Sudan—but “entrepreneurship and the construction of an economy that is sustainable, starting from small economic activities: from agriculture, farming, fishing.”
In 2021, the prelate, a Comboni missionary from Italy, was attacked and shot in both legs shortly after he was named a bishop. Last month, South Sudan’s high court overturned the conviction of a priest in connection with the attack.
The nation of 12.1 million (map) is 61% Christian (38% Catholic), 31% ethnic religionist, and 7% Muslim. It gained independence from largely Muslim Sudan in 2011.