Sudan Catholics turn to Darfur saint

By Andrew Heavens and Skye Wheeler

KHARTOUM/JUBA (Reuters) - In a dusty church in Khartoum's Jeberona camp for displaced persons, the congregation claps and sings beneath a portrait of a smiling woman who has become a focus of hope for a divided country.

Josephine Bakhita, a former slave who died in 1947, has risen from obscurity to become the first saint from Darfur in western Sudan, a region convulsed by war for the past five years.

"I would say she was a gift from God ... an offer from God," said Bishop Daniel Adwok, the Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Khartoum. "She has come on time for the conflict here in Sudan."

The Roman Catholic Church canonized St. Bakhita a saint in 2000, three years before the start of the conflict in Darfur. Back then no one paid much attention to her birthplace, an obscure village in the remote western region.

That changed when fighting erupted around her old home.

Since then, Church authorities say Sudan's Catholics have been directing their prayers to her for an end to the Darfur conflict.

In Jeberona, the packed service in St. Bakhita parish church is punctuated with songs honoring the saint and a homily from visiting priest Father George Jangara holding her up as an example of grace and forgiveness in troubled times.

Almost all the church members came to Jeberona fleeing the north-south civil war that raged for decades until a shaky peace deal in 2005. For them, the woman who gave her name to their parish has been a source of solace and inspiration.

"We were just thrown together here," said 40-year-old Carisio Yusuf Ugale. "The conditions were terrible. So we turned to her and invoked her because of the suffering she had undergone."

Mata Hassan, aged 24, fled Sudan's central Nuba Mountains, the focus of some of most brutal fighting in the north-south conflict.

"She taught me to be humble," he said. "We all pray through her intercession to God to give us the grace to find forgiveness for Darfur and for all the conflicts in Sudan."

Outside, children play soccer under a huge mural of the saint's face next to the concrete classrooms of Jeberona's equally packed St. Bakhita parish school.

Further west in her home region of Darfur, the population -- from marauding militias to families huddled in displacement camps -- is predominantly Muslim: few have heard of the saint.

However, her fame has spread elsewhere.

In Juba, capital of Sudan's mainly Christian south, her face appears on hats, key rings, badges and brightly printed cloth worn by southern women.