Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Prayer request

Again I ask prayers for the people of Kenya, and especially for the Carmelite friars there. The Associated Press reports that a church in which people had sought sanctuary from the post-election violence was torched. It looks like the tragic pattern of intertribal violence that has plagued Africa in recent decades may fuel the political unrest. I am ashamed to say that in Rwanda, Catholics and other Christians allowed tribal loyalties to lead them into genocidal behavior. Even nuns and priests were convicted of helping kill members of other tribes.

The guys in the photo are some of the seminarians at the monastery in Karen, outside Nairobi, which the friars from my old province help staff. Not all of the students are from Kenya, because the monastery serves Discalced Carmelite students from all of English-speaking Africa, including Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Uganda. Friars from some of those countries as well as from the United States and occasionally Australia, Ireland, Poland and other places make up the senior community.

After the disaster in Rwanda in 1994, the friars took in a number of refugees. At one point, there was a Hutu seminarian and a Tutsi seminarian living there at the same time. They got through the tensions then. Pray that they get through the present crisis in Kenya itself.

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