The well-being and happiness of families from the South Sudan region prompted a visit by Emeritus Bishop Paride Taban from the Diocese of South Sudan.
The now retired Auxiliary Bishop of Torit, south east Sudan, was visiting Perth to meet with and speak with migrants and refugees from the Sudanese community, offering his support and understanding.
Many of the former refugees would have passed through his diocese, the Bishop said.
“The war has divided many people,” the Bishop said. “I want to encourage and talk with them,” he said.
The Bishop went on to explain that many of the youth who have come to Australia – often with little or no knowledge of where their parents are – would suffer extreme homesickness and culture shock.
“They need to understand that there are people who will support them,” he said. It is very dangerous to bring young people to another country without any support to integrate them,” he continued.
Bishop Taban, who recently celebrated 50 years of the priesthood earlier this year, was also Auxiliary Bishop of the Juba Archdiocese until 1983, when he became Auxiliary Bishop of Torit.
He has since started a Peace Village, a physical area in his village, which borders with Ethiopia, to promote peace and harmony in the region.
His efforts in supporting displaced persons and his involvement in peace negotiations have won him many awards. But it is his work at the Holy Trinity Peace Village in Kuron, in the east of South Sudan, which last year won him the United National Sergio Viereira de Melo Foundation Award, in recognition of his efforts to build trust among warring communities in the conflict torn region.
Created by Bishop Taban in 2005 as a response to the war and ongoing tensions in the country, the village strives to promote peaceful relations within the community by encouraging socialisation between the 24 different Sudan and South Sudan communities living in the village.
To empower the community and show that people of different faith can live together peacefully, the peace village offers formal education to both adults and over 1,100 boys and girls, provides specialised training in water sanitation and agriculture sustainability, organises team sports and runs health clinics.
There are also bomb shelters large enough for the whole school and thorn bushes have been placed to hide them.
Unlike the struggle for independence, Bishop Taban said the current fighting around Juba was senseless.
“There is no meaning to it,” he said.
“I am not happy for anyone in the world supporting this war with arms.
“We have suffered enough, we want peace and development.
“The first war was liberation from slavery and fighting for their identity and dignity, their religion and faith. This is about greed and power and materialism,” he said.
Bishop Taban said many of the Sudanese living in Australia grew up in war, as did their fathers and are severely traumatised.
“People don’t grow by themselves, they grow from family.
My parents has no stress and trauma in their lives, what keeps you strong is what you learn from childhood, that’s what effects human life.”
Family is an extremely important part of integration, the Bishop went on to say.
He says he gives thanks every day to his parents for the love and support they gave him as a child.
“My father was Muslim and my mother was a traditionalist but she led a very honest holy life.”
Bishop Taban thanked the people of Australia, the Catholic Church, the community and the Government for hoisting those who came here to seek asylum from the difficulties they faced.