In a country at war, it’s a region at peace, thanks to a retired South Sudanese Catholic bishop who has championed friendship among those who once saw each other as enemies.
During the civil war between southern Sudanese and the government in Khartoum, Sudan, Bishop Paride Taban was bishop of Torit, working to keep people alive in the middle of a decades long struggle. Though imprison-ed and beaten by Sudan People’s Liberation Army rebels, he bore no grudges and worked to foster reconciliation when the rebels took power following a landmark 2005 peace agreement.
But Bishop Taban knew political agreements signed by politicians weren’t going to make much difference on the ground, especially among the nomadic pastoralists in his diocese who viewed other tribes as enemies, competitors for the only real thing of value in the parched landscape: cattle. The age-old tradition of cattle raiding, essentially a violent sport that allowed young men to obtain the cows they needed to buy a bride, had been transfor-med by the addition of high-powered weapons left over from war. What had once produced only occasional injuries from spears now frequently turned into a massacre.
In 2004, Bishop Taban resigned as head of the Torit Diocese. The following year he founded Holy Trinity Peace Village in Kuron, where, as bishop, he had built a bridge over a river that was impassable during the rainy season. While the bridge opened up transport to a neglected area of the country, it posed a dilemma.