Welcome, I am Bishop Macram Gassis, of El Obeid Diocese, Sudan. And I can bear witness to more than 20 years of religious persecution, enslavement, rape, torture, starvation and murder of my people at the hands of the Sudanese government.

I can tell you of the 2.2 million people who have perished as the direct result of a campaign of genocide against Sudan's Christian and non-Muslim population—a death toll greater than all the victims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda combined.

I can tell you without hesitation that the Sudanese government has bombed churches, schools, hospitals and refugee centers. For over 20 years, the Catholc Church has provided the people with the basics needed to preserve life and to find Christ.

I can tell you that the regime has tortured and killed its own citizens including catechists, teachers and priests. I can tell you that the Sudanese government supports the selling of Christians and non-Muslims as slaves.

What's more, I can tell you that millions of our brothers and sister in Sudan have no homes, and so must find shelter wherever possible under extremely unhealthy conditions. They are in need of clean water, food and basic sanitation.

That is why in 1998 I established the Bishop Gassis Sudan Relief Fund for the purpose of bringing food, clothing, shelter, medical attention and the Gospel of Christ to the people of Sudan.

Since then, with the prayers and financial support of faithful people like you,we have made very real progress under the most difficult circumstances imaginable:

• At the height of the war we dug bore wells wherever and whenever we were able. Today, we're digging more wells and creating healthful, more permanent sources of life-giving water for the people.
• We're bringing much-needed health care to a region that until a few years ago had not known medical care of any kind. We have built a full-scale, 80-bed hospital, "Mother of Mercy," the first of its kind in my diocese.
• We are also expanding our small medical dispensaries run by Mother Teresa of Calcutta's Sisters of Charity. We're supplying life-saving medicines, vaccines and much-needed basics like first-aid ointments, bandages and soap. Pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and equipment, and blankets and beds are still needed.
• We're moving beyond our first makeshift schools to the development of the first full-fledged educational system ever in the diocese. We're graduating students from our primary schools in ever-greater numbers. And we're building classrooms and purchasing benches, desks, books and school supplies for the growing numbers of secondary school students in the region.
• Today, we're building centers of education and religious formation. Additionally, we're building basic housing for catechists and teachers, so that they will have clean and safe places to live while doing God's work in the diocese.
• And we are spreading the Holy Gospel—the healing, merciful, loving message of Christ Jesus—to the most remote and dangerous corners of the diocese.