Dear Bishop Gassis Friend,

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.

This rugged memorial cross is a reminder not only of the lives lost that day, but of more than 20 years of genocide against the people of my diocese in Sudan ...

... crimes against humanity that the mainstream media and politicians in the Western world have largely ignored.

Why? Is it because our brothers and sisters in Sudan are Christian? Is it because they are African?

Even today, despite recent press coverage of atrocities in another part of my diocese called Darfur, the Catholic Church is, as it has been for more than two decades, the only sign of hope in this forgotten, seemingly God-forsaken corner of the world.

That, my friend, is why I am writing to you today ...

... to plead with you—as a Catholic, as a Christian, as a caring human being—to help me do Our Lord’s work here in this forgotten place.

Remember the words of Jesus, “what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.”

I am Bishop Macram Gassis, the bishop 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.

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 they 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.

In just under ten years, 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. During the worst days of the war, we built makeshift “bush” dispensaries and did what we could for the people. Today, we’re treating the sick in the recently opened Mother of Mercy Hospital—the first full-scale hospital of its kind in the 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.
• We’re feeding, housing and educating thousands of children orphaned by war.
• 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.

Yet, much of what we are accomplishing may have to be put on hold due to the overwhelming needs of the starving, battered and dying refugees streaming out of Darfur, a part of my diocese where over 2 million people’s homes and villages have been destroyed in ethnic conflict.

Once again, our faith and our resources are being tested.

Even without the crisis in Darfur, the funds we need to do our work are—as they have always been—sorely limited and razor-thin.

That’s why I turn to you now, as someone who has so generously helped us in the past, with the hope that you will answer my call for help during these days of extreme need.

Will you someway, somehow, give as much as you can give to help us meet the needs of our persecuted brothers and sister from Darfur while fulfilling our promises to others in the diocese that suffered and waited so long for help and hope to come?

My friend, could you look these faithful people in the eyes and ask them to suffer yet again in silence? Could you bear for them to gather around yet one more memorial erected in memory of a slaughtered loved one? I know that I cannot.

I pray every day that we won’t have to make cuts in the life-saving projects we’ve already begun.

So please, if there is any way that you can, I urge you to make a donation of $35, $50, $75, $100, $250, $500, $1000 or more to the Bishop Gassis Sudan Relief Fund today during this time of extraordinary need!

I estimate that I must raise an additional $1,148,500 in the coming year—including $575,000 over the next 90 days — to meet the needs of my people in this exploding crisis.

Without this additional funding, cuts in much-needed services will have to be made. Wells will go un-drilled. People will go hungry and die due to unsanitary conditions and lack of medical care.

So please don’t hesitate to respond to this appeal with the most generous tax-deductible gift you can make today. You can make your gift by check or by credit card using the Emergency Gift Form and postage-paid envelope enclosed.

In such dire need—NO GIFT IS TOO SMALL!

Your brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering have nowhere else to go ... no one else they can turn to for help. If you don’t give, if you don’t help these poorest of the poor and our brothers and sisters in Christ, then who will?

Thank you and God bless you in faith, charity and love.

Yours in Christ,

Bishop Macram Gassis
Bishop of El Obeid Diocese, Sudan

P.S. The Catholic Church has always been there to help Sudan’s Christian and non-Muslim people resist the Khartoum regime’s efforts to destroy their culture, their religion and their lives.

Against tremendous odds, with the grace of God and through the prayers and generous donations of many caring individuals, the Bishop Gassis Sudan Relief Fund is able to provide the people of these war-ravaged regions with clean water, shelter, methods of food production, medicines, doctors and teachers. We are also able to give them the greatest gift, the gift of Faith, the message of Christ’s love, and hope for a future free from religious persecution, terror and starvation.

Please help us continue our work at this critical time of life and death, hope and despair in Sudan. Please send your much needed, emergency gift of $35, $50, $75, $100, $250, $500, $1000 or more in support of our work today! Thank you!

Copyright Bishop Gassis Sudan Relief Fund. All rights reserved.

The Bishop Gassis Sudan Relief Fund is a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization.
Your personal or corporate contribution is deductible to the full extent of the law.

Home | Donate Now! | Current Projects | About Us | Bishop’s Bio | Contact Us