cross connections

Introduction May the mercy and love of God be manifested to you in this Lenten season. Lent is the time of the year in which God invites us to a sincere renewal of our lives in line with the Gospel. It is an invitation to realize our need of God. On Ash Wednesday, we started a pilgrimage to be marked by the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving which are a way to prepare us for the journey. In this Lenten season God offers us once more the opportunity to restore our relationship with Him. God wants us to repent from the many sins we have committed against him and ourselves, especially in Southern Sudan: tribes against tribes, killings, abductions, robery, corruption and so forth. We must atone for these sins by prayers and good deeds. Like the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:11-32), the Sudanese people should arise and in humility approach the Merciful God for pardon. Ahead of us, there are still many opportunities and this is the time to restore our relationship with God and others. In h

The two major religions in Sudan, Islam and Christianity, originally from outside, but each entered very early in its respective history and each is still deeply rooted there. Christianity was introduced to Sudan before A.D. 400 and flourished there in the ancient Sudanese kingdom until one thousand years later when Islam arrived and eventually became the majority religion ( Encyclopedia, the region in Africa). After 1848, however, Christianity again received a strong following in the country. Today, over 70% of the Sudanese claim to be Moslems. Christianity counts adherent amounting to 20% of the Sudan’s population, the great majority of who are black Africans from the south, the Nubba Mountains and southern Blue Nile, with a dwindling band of Coptic Christians indigenous to the north. Most of the remainder of the Sudanese is adherent of traditional African religions. Sudan is also home to small numbers of Jews, Hindus and adherents of other major faith, and some atheists and agnost

The Sudanese Clerical Community in Rome has witnessed, at ‘ J.H. Newman’ hall in the Pontifical Urbanian University near the Vatican city in Rome, the Doctrinal thesis defense of Fr. Matthew PAGAN Daniel, of Malakal Diocese. The defense was attended by Msg. Fr. Dr. Roko Taban Mosa, the Apostolic Administrator of Malaka Diocese, Fr. Dr. Jangara , the education coordinator of the Archdiocese of Khartoum, and number of Sudanese priests and Seminarians who are studying in Rome. In an hour time, Rev. Fr. Mathew Pagan, with elegant Italian Language, elaborated his doctrinal thesis defense on “Nilotic Customary Marriage and its effects on the Church in Sudan has”. According Fr. Pagan the aim of his studies is “ to find a canonical regularization of the situation of Catholics married according to the customary law, to seek a canonical solution to the problem of the youth cohabitation and their sideline families and intends, and to initiate a discussion in the Church in the Sudan on the consequ