“When the pope comes, we will tell him our pains and our miseries…” On this Easter weekend, in a site for displaced people in Rutshuru, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Stéphanie Aziza, 25 , does not have the heart to celebrate.
Since the recent fighting between the army and the M23 rebels in the province of North Kivu, she has had no news of one of her three children, lost in the chaos of flight.
How to celebrate Easter, “when we don’t have enough to eat?” Sadly adds the mother of the family, a small child in her hand, in the courtyard of the Rugabo school, where several hundred villagers have taken refuge.
Not far from there, another family is sorting beans for the Easter Sunday meal.
The eastern DRC has been plagued for more than a quarter of a century by violence from multiple armed groups. The arrival of Pope Francis in early July in Goma, the capital of North Kivu, is presented by the Catholic Church as “a sign of comfort and peace”.
“It’s the first time he’s set foot on our land, it’s a divine blessing,” wants to believe Heri Byiringiro, another displaced person.
At the end of March, in the Rutshuru region, the “March 23 Movement”, a former Tutsi rebellion which reappeared at the end of last year, seized several hills, whose inhabitants fled to nearby Uganda and towards the center of the capital of the territory.
The heavy fighting lasted two days, stopped for a week and resumed. For a few days, it is again the lull, but the tension is palpable, the soldiers are on the teeth.
– “Despite the fear” –
On Saturday, about 6 km from Rutshuru-center, some faithful Catholics celebrated Easter in the chapel of the village of Rangira, attending the only Easter mass organized in the entire parish of Jomba, very affected by the fighting.
Near the brick building, a military camp was set up to counter the rebel advance. Trucks full of soldiers pass on the road, jeeps are on patrol.
“We thank the Lord who has just allowed the arrival of our parish priest. We thought he was dead,” said Dusera Nyirangorengore, who had just returned from Rutshuru where she had fled.
“We lived through the worst. I prayed, with my rosary, that the bombs would not fall on us in the bush,” she says.
Their parish priest, Abbé Juvénal Ndimubanzi, caught in the clashes between the army and the M23, was saved when the UN force in the DRC, Monusco, evacuated him on March 28. His parish of Jomba is still under the control of the M23, inaccessible.
“Let us pray for the regions of the world that are suffering from war; and that peace will return here, so that the displaced return to their villages!”, a servant, standing near the abbot, told the audience.
At the time when the Stations of the Cross generally take place, a high mass took place on Friday at Rutshuru-center in the Saint-Aloys church, which was attended by hundreds of faithful, collected and silent.
Elsewhere in the territory, celebrations have been reduced. The faithful had to give up the traditional Saturday evening vigils, because of the insecurity and the state of siege in force for almost a year in North Kivu and the neighboring province of Ituri, which established a curfew.
In the modest chapel of Rangira, Jean-Pierre Sebaganzi, a 45-year-old faithful, is nevertheless delighted to have been able to celebrate Easter, “despite the fear”.