Chai Brady
Sr Orla Treacy, director of the Loreto mission in Rumbek, South Sudan, walks outside the school with children in 2017 World Mission Sunday
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The Irish Loreto sisters have been empowering young South Sudanese women for two decades, Chai Brady writes
From being exchanged for cattle to fulfil wedding arrangements, to becoming educated leaders in their community, the lives of women in South Sudan have changed dramatically due to the tireless work of the Loreto Sisters.
After an invitation 20 years ago in 2004 by the Loreto leadership team to again find their missionary spirit and engage in a programme called ‘Courage to Move’, the Loreto provinces began discerning where to start a new mission in a new country. The Irish sisters accepted an invitation from the Bishop of Rumbek to southern Sudan – which would later become South Sudan after the country would split. The aim was to establish a girls’ boarding secondary school.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, Loreto Sr Orla Treacy IBVM (Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary) who has been working to empower the people of South Sudan for two decades said that work to get the school up and running began “in an area where we discovered girls weren’t even going to primary school, let alone secondary school, in a culture where cows are valued more than girls, more than women – they are married in exchange for a cow dowry. The education of girls was certainly something very new for the people”.
While it took a number of years to get settled, not only was a boarding school started – which has 385 female pupils – a primary day school was also established. It is currently educating 1,200 boys and girls.
In the boarding school, some of the girls stay 365 days a year because of the circumstances they face at home. Sr Treacy puts this down to several reasons, including escaping forced marriage, insecurity in the areas they come from – South Sudan is still reeling from years of civil war – or simply because they have travelled from so far away to go to school.
Sr Treacy said in many ways the schools is also like a women’s refuge and that there would be girls coming to them aged 16-17 and may only graduate at 21.
Healthcare Centre
Loreto’s Mary Ward Primary Health Care Centre opened in 2018 and is the newest of the core programmes at Loreto Rumbek. The clinic serves the school and the wider community. It provides basic health education and nutrition support, water sanitation and hygiene education, maternal and well-baby care, provision of essential drugs and supplies to those with minor illnesses and conditions, support and counselling.
To support the school and the healthcare centre they have been trying to engage local qualified staff which was difficult with South Sudan being one of the most illiterate countries in the world. To combat this they set up an internship programme so that school graduates could return for two years to assist in the schools or in the healthcare centre.
Sr Treacy explained: “So a lot of those students now would provide classroom support in the primary school, or they provide administrative support or clinic support, or in development work in different areas around the compound. And then we would support them to go to university. So today we have 60 of our graduates in university in Kenya.”
We now have about 500 graduates who are working within the country or studying outside. But those young women are now coming back as educated young women”
She recalls South Sudan gaining its independence in 2011 and the President Salva Kiir Mayardit telling the nation they were not rebuilding South Sudan, but building it. “So there’s a sense for us in Loreto that education is our mandate and it’s education in all areas – helping to build a community. So our graduates would be studying education, healthcare, engineering, law, journalism, business, IT, all the main areas that you would want in developing and building a new country,” said Sr Treacy.
“We now have about 500 graduates who are working within the country or studying outside. But those young women are now coming back as educated young women. And they are now settling, marrying and having their children – and looking to the future.”
Five of their graduates who are settled and working in the northern part of South Sudan approached the mission in Rumbek 18 months ago asking if they would consider opening another mission in their area of Aweil, as the young women there were not receiving the benefits of an education. The project has since been given the green light by the congregation’s leadership team in Rome and by the local bishop.
“We had come at the invitation of the bishop, whereas this time the invitation was coming from the graduates, which was really beautiful. It was a real synodal moment for us, where it was the laity inviting us,” she said. While the area is traditionally Catholic there are no religious sisters there. The hope is that construction will start in November of a day primary school for boys and girls and a girls’ boarding secondary school and a small clinic – the same as Rumbek. It has the support of the bishop of the Diocese of Wau.
Conflict
Asked about South Sudan’s security and often fraught political situation, particularly with elections recently being pushed forward, Sr Treacy said: “South Sudan was born from conflict. It is about building a country from the ground up. There was a push from the international community for elections. I think locally people thought ‘yes if everybody is available and able’, but we still have many people in camps in neighbouring countries and while peace is coming in, people are only slowly returning. I don’t think there was disappointment from a lot of us that the elections were pushed, I think people feel we are still in a transitional period.
“We are still trying to grow as a nation together, we have a lot of identities, we have a lot of challenges around building a national community so I think it will take us time to settle. In terms of the fear of the conflict, when you live in a new country like this there is always going to be anxiety but you work with the needs that are there and as missionaries we always stay with the people. We have been blessed in Rumbek that we have been able to always work, the only time we ever had to close schools was during Covid and ironically, we never got Covid in Rumbek – at least we never saw it in our clinic.”
The Pope has often prayed for peace in South Sudan over the years, even making a papal visit two years to the embattled country, which had a profound impact on Rumbek’s schoolchildren. Sr Treacy said: “It was a fabulous experience, as a diocese we walked to visit the Pope. That was an extraordinary experience for the young people because they had grown up in conflict and all of a sudden they were doing a peace pilgrimage through their own country, many of whom had never seen beyond the town boundary.
“When the Pope comes to your land he brings international eyes as well and that was really positive for all of us to recognise the international, universal Church and to feel the world in solidarity with us and to feel that love and hope from the Pope, he is very strong in his desire for peace.”
I hope we come from a very different value centre and the idea is to live among the people and to be a message of hope, a message of love to the people”
Asked about whether Sr Treacy feels Irish people understand or value the lasting impact Irish missionaries have made all over the world in developing healthcare, education and much more, she said in it doesn’t really matter if people understand the impact.
“Missionaries don’t do it for the glory of others to see them. I think we do it because we feel there’s a need and there’s a call and we’re rooted in God and we respond to that need. If it brings pride and glory to a nation, that’s an extra bonus, but I don’t think any missionary would ever tell you that’s something that they’re either disappointed about or that they’re expecting.
“I hope we come from a very different value centre and the idea is to live among the people and to be a message of hope, a message of love to the people, however we do that, whether it’s through education, health care, whether it’s through human rights, through a direct prayer ministry, pastoral ministry, whatever it is, I think it’s about bringing dignity to the people and I think that would always be what we would want as missionaries,” she said.