Fr Alan in South Sudan: Back to School
Back to School for Exams The Catholic University of South Sudan, Rumbek Campus experienced a good, but challenging semester. For fourteen weeks, lectures were held in a local Catholic secondary school. This return to familiar surroundings was a nostalgic experience...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: The Longest Journey Begins with 27,000,000 Steps
The Catholic Church in South Sudan is at the forefront of pastoral ministry in both education and health. Our impact is easily quantifiable by the number of students taught or patients treated. However, one of its most important roles is perhaps the most difficult to...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: It’s Never Boring in Rumbek
November is a busy month in Rumbek. We are coming to the end of the year and students are preparing for their final exams. Before all that can happen, we had our graduation with our Senior 4 students. It is a time of sincere gratitude for all that has been achieved,...
Highs and Lows in South Sudan – Fr Alan MSC
Whistling Tunelessly What is the meaning of happiness? Philosophers have speculated on the topic since the beginning of the human story. The answers provided to date are varied and many, but few would include driving along a dirt road, at night, in the rain, perched...
Fr Alan MSC : Everyone is included, The Surprising Grace of Hospitality – Part 2
After a torturously long trip including a delayed flight in Addis, as well as a missed flight, an overbooked flight, and militantly disinterested support staff in Istanbul, we finally made it to Lisbon. Pilgrimages are not meant to be easy. In fact, some challenges...
Fr Alan MSC: The Surprising Grace of Hospitality – Part 1
Ten days in Addis Ababa was unavoidable. If you want to get a Schengen Visa for four South Sudanese pilgrims to go to World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon there really is no other way other than through Ethiopia. In fact, conventional wisdom among those familiar...
Give Peace A Chance – Fr Alan MSC in South Sudan
The world of education in Central Africa is small and even after only a short while you can link up with people from all over. With this in mind I Whatsapped a friend who is a religious priest who runs a Catholic university in Khartoum to see how he was doing....
Life Goes On – Fr Alan in South Sudan.
It has been heartening that many people got in touch over the last month to see how things were here, due to the ongoing civil war in Sudan. The situation there is dire, as rival leaders seek to gain as much power and wealth as possible, regardless of the...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: The Papal Visit
Juba International Airport is chaotic at the best of times. It is only for the hardiest of travellers, with a sense of reckless abandon, and the sturdiest suitcases. On Friday, the 3rd of February, though, it reached new heights. As I flew back into Juba, the Pope was...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: Do they know it’s Christmas time?
"Growing up in Ireland, it was impossible to get through December without hearing Do They Know It’s Christmas? repeatedly. Like crackers with bad jokes, or recipes that try (in vain) to make brussels sprouts tasty, the song was an essential and important part of...
Fr Alan in South Sudan – Vaccine Status: Denied.
"It’s official. Last week a journalist from the Irish Times tweeted that vaccines distributed throughout Africa would not be recognised by the countries of the European Union. This was initially thought to be directed against vaccines manufactured outside of the EU,...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: Lions, Snakes, and the World’s Deadliest Predator
When you are asked what is the deadliest animal that you’ve come across in South Sudan, people are hoping for something dramatic. On my first weekend here, when I was mapping out a potential jogging route around the Loreto campus, I came across a snake thicker than my...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: Ticket to Ride
Every couple of months in Loreto Rumbek, we have a celebration. It’s something of a bittersweet gathering with pizza, Coke, a few tears, and plenty of good humour. We had one only last Wednesday. They mark the departure of the graduates from our intern programme as...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: Young people fighting COVID-19 in Rumbek
There seemed to be a dreadful inevitability to it, but no one was surprised last week when Uganda joined the list of East African countries that have gone into lockdown in response to a surge of coronavirus infections. Along with Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, and...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: Seeds of Hope
Like Ireland, South Sudan has a rich tradition of farming. Whether it is the cattle they tend or the small vegetable gardens they plant, the people here survive on the land. We have just begun rainy season and when it rains in Rumbek it pours. So far, I have...
Fr Alan in South Sudan: Celebrating the Missionary Life
The motto of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart is the same as ourselves; after all, we are family. It is short and to the point, but also profound, rich, and as relevant today as it ever was. It is, “To be on earth the Heart of God.” You could spend a...
Three Arrivals and a Party – Fr Alan in South Sudan.
Looking back on my previous entries, I think I begin all of them with the same idea, namely that it is a busy time here in Loreto Rumbek. Being something of a traditionalist, I’ll continue in that vein, at least for now anyway. Since I wrote last, we have had a number...
Holy Week on the Move – Fr Alan’s Easter Journey.
It’s a busy time here in Loreto Rumbek. I have just arrived back from leave and we are straight into Holy Week. As we are a boarding school, we have been able to maintain a rigorous lockdown and this has allowed us to celebrate the Easter Triduum. What a gift! When I...
As Easy as Baking a Cake – Fr Alan Neville MSC
The biggest dilemma at the start of the month was figuring how to fit the words ‘Celebrating Religious Life’ across a cake. It was for the second of February, the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life, when the Church acknowledges in a special the contribution of...
Mock Exams and Real Life in South Sudan- Fr Alan.
Life is filled with key moments that help shape us into the person we are today. Many are unique to our story and depend on our different circumstances, but some are shared and have become part of our culture. I would argue that in Ireland one of the biggest, most...