‘Your pain is my pain’: Pope consoles victims of Congolese atrocities

Pope Francis visited his flock in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for an intimate Mass that gave victims of war crimes an opportunity to tell their harrowing stories.

On Wednesday, the Pope heard first-hand accounts of some of the “inhuman violence” suffered by the Congolese, including a former sex slave who was forced into cannibalism, with an audience of one million people.

Other victims included a teenage girl ‘raped like an animal’ for months and a young man who watched his father beheaded.

The Pope traveled to the capital of Kinshasa and sat in silence as victim after victim presented their harrowing stories of horrific atrocities suffered at the hands of rebel groups.

Territory has been sought in the mineral-rich region through bloodshed and barbaric violence that has forced more than 5 million people to flee their homes.

The victims offered a symbol of their pain at the foot of a crucifix: the machete with which they mutilated and killed, or the straw mat on which they had been raped.

As they knelt in front of him for a blessing, Pope Francis placed his hand on their heads or on the stumps of their remaining arms.

‘Your tears are my tears; their pain is my pain,’ Francisco told them.

‘To every family suffering or displaced by the burning of villages and other war crimes, to survivors of sexual violence, and to every injured child and adult, I say: I am with you; I want to bring you the caress of God.’

Despite hosting one of the largest UN peacekeeping operations in the world, eastern Congo has been mired in violence since the early 1990s, as rebels and militias vied for control. of a territory rich in minerals.

Pope Francis has called this the ‘forgotten genocide’ that hardly makes news.

Francis criticized foreign powers and extractive industries exploiting eastern Congo, calling the “hypocrisy” of booming trade as “people are being raped and murdered.”

The pope had originally planned to visit the eastern province of North Kivu, where rebel groups intensified attacks last year, when his trip was originally scheduled for July.

But after the trip was rescheduled, the Vatican had to cancel the visit to Goma due to fighting that has forced some 5.7 million people to flee their homes.

This latest outbreak of violence has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Congo, where already some 26.4 million people face hunger, according to the World Food Program.

Instead, residents of the East turned to Francis, and his testimony was heartbreaking.

Emelda M’karhungulu, from a village near Bukavu in Congo’s South Kivu province, spoke through a translator of being held as a sex slave for three months at the age of 16 by armed men who invaded her village in 2005. .

She said that between five and ten men raped her daily and then forced their captives to eat the flesh of the men they had killed, mixed with animal meat and corn paste.

M’karhungulu said she finally escaped one day when she was going to fetch water.

While forced cannibalism is not known to be widespread, the United Nations and human rights groups documented how it was used as a weapon of war in the early 2000s in parts of eastern Congo.

‘Bijoux Makumbi Kamala, 17, said that she was kidnapped in 2020 by rebels in Walikale, in the North Kivu province, when she was going to fetch water.

Speaking through a translator, she said the commander raped her daily “like an animal” until she escaped after 19 months.

“It was useless to scream, because no one could hear me or come to my rescue,” he said.

The teenager gave birth to twin girls ‘who will never know their father’ and found solace in the services offered by the Catholic Church.

Ladislas Kambale Kombi, from the Beni area in the eastern province of North Kivu, told Francisco that she watched as men in military uniforms beheaded her father, put his head in a basket, and then left with her mother, whom never saw again.

“At night, I can’t sleep,” he said.

Désiré Dhetsina disappeared after surviving an attack on 1 February 2022 at a camp for internally displaced persons in Ituri province, on Congo’s north-eastern border with Uganda.

‘I saw savagery: people butchered like meat in a butcher’s shop; women disemboweled, men beheaded,’ Dhetsina reported.

As their story was read to Francis, two women stood in front of the pope and raised the remaining stumps of their mutilated arms into the air.

Francis condemned the violence and urged the Congolese victims to use their pain for good, to sow peace and reconciliation.

It was a message he also delivered earlier in the day at a mass before crowds at Kinshasa’s Ndolo airport, where he cited the example of Christ forgiving those who betrayed him.

About half of Congo’s 105 million people are Catholic, according to the Vatican, which also estimated that 1 million people attended Francis’ Mass, citing local organizers.