South African church officials to help Sierra Leone Catholics rebuild

Catholic officials in South Africa will use their experiences of rebuilding after apartheid to help the Catholic Church in Sierra Leone rebuild after the 11-year civil war, South African Catholic leaders said.
Bishop Dowling and Father Sean O’Leary, director of the Pretoria-based Denis Hurley Peace Institute, visited Sierra Leone in September.
The church in Sierra Leone “needs to help the country deal with the underlying causes of the civil war,” Bishop Dowling said in a telephone interview, noting that this is “a big challenge.”
The war in Sierra Leone, which left tens of thousands of people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more, was “most brutal,” Bishop Dowling told Catholic News Service, noting that rebel groups in Sierra Leone were notorious for chopping off the limbs of their victims and instilling fear throughout the population.
“The dynamics between justice, peace and reconciliation is complicated, and often justice is sacrificed in the interests of peace,” he said.
Helping the church in Sierra Leone set up structures to facilitate reconciliation and “build sustainable peace” will be a priority for the South African church, Bishop Dowling said.
The South African church “will use its resources,” including the justice and peace commission, the Denis Hurley Peace Institute and the Cape Town-based Parliamentary liaison office, “to strengthen church structures in Sierra Leone and support local efforts to rebuild,” Bishop Dowling added.
In Freetown, Father O’Leary and Bishop Dowling met with the government-backed national committee for social action, which assessed the needs of 29,000 war victims who will receive government compensation.
“I was very impressed at the thorough and holistic way the assessments were done,” he said.
“The needs of individuals have been assessed and the committee has passed on documents to the departments of health and education to make sure that children who have had limbs hacked off get proper schooling and medical care,” he said, noting that the committee is “not just handing out money.”