It has been an enormous challenge building and supporting these crucial institutions in this war-ravaged land. Against significant odds and not inconsiderable danger . . .

Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel

. . . We have been able to provide critical support to build, staff, and provision the Mother of Mercy Gidel Hospital for the besieged people of the Nuba Mountains. There is no other hospital for nearly 300 miles. This area is a focal point in the war being waged by the Islamic Sudanese government against the Nuba people and all those who struggle against the genocide and oppression of the government.

Cargo flights to unchartered airstrips have to be made in secret to prevent the confiscation or destruction of vital supplies by Sudanese troops or militia. Video of one such delivery can be seen here.

Mother Teresa Hospital in Turalei

We have also been able to help the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity running the Mother Teresa Hospital in Turalei. With no basic infrastructure in existence, there was no running water . . . no electricity—and no safe housing for the sisters. The doctors and nuns themselves cleaned up after operations in the surgery or after the birth of a baby with buckets of water drawn from a simple bore well. They performed life-saving surgeries by the beam of a flashlight.

The hospital has treated thousands of refugees streaming in from the renewed conflict that continues to plague the people in the El Obeid Diocese—the doctors and nuns dress wounds, set limbs, and tend to the sick in the sweltering African heat, day after day with little or no relief. Though the conflict may be religious and racial, the hospitals help all who come to her doors.

Holy Cross Catholic School

Until the bombs fell, it was a morning like any other at Holy Cross Catholic School.

Children and teachers gathered in the schoolyard. Morning prayers were said and lessons had just begun when an aircraft from the brutal Islamic government of Sudan appeared overhead and dropped the first of five bombs. Some of the victims heeded their headmaster's cries to "lie flat," while others—12 of the youngest children and their teacher—sought shelter behind a sycamore tree. By 9:15 the bloody carnage was completed. Those who had hidden behind the tree lay dead or dying. Seventeen more were critically wounded. Today, a six-foot-high metal cross marks the site where 19 students and their teacher died on the 8th of February, 2000.

Bishop Gassis wrote to supporters describing this tragedy while vowing to continue to move beyond the first makeshift schools to the development of the first full-fledged educational system ever in the diocese. We're helping build classrooms and purchasing benches, desks, books and school supplies for the growing numbers of secondary school students in the region.

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 helping spread the Holy Gospel—the healing, merciful, loving message of Christ Jesus—to the most remote and dangerous corners of the diocese.

However, there are other challenges we have to overcome. Because we believe in the best education for both boys and girls, we are going against a strong cultural tradition amongst many in the El Obeid diocese. Girls are often removed from school at a young age to be married off in order for the family to gain a dowry. With kids soon on the way for the new wives, it becomes impossible for these girls to even finish a primary education. Our solution is to offer an alternative. By creating safe boarding schools for the girls we are able to continue their education. While there, they are able to sew and produce goods which are sold, the money then in turn goes to support the families of the girls who would otherwise need the dowry. This sewing, as well as other basic work keeps them independent and in school—and moves us closer to the day when the destructive practices of survival economics will yield to the inherent dignity and worth of every one of God's children.