Cardinal Keith O’Brien, archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, began a twelve-day visit to Sudan on Monday, 16 January. The main aim of the trip is to visit the refugee camps in which some three million displaced people are living in the war-torn Darfur region of the country: a region where the local population has been terrorized for months by the government-backed “Janjaweed” militia. The cardinal is being accompanied by Paul Chitnis, director of the Scottish International Aid Fund, Scotland’s answer to CAFOD in England, and the most important Scottish charity of humanitarian aid to the Third World, which has launched a series of aid projects in the refugee camps. Following a meeting held in Uganda, Sudanese religious leaders published a pastoral letter in which they ask for the setting up of a commission for truth and reconciliation that would investigate and seek to heal the deep divisions that exist between Christians and Muslims in Sudan. Cardinal O’Brien has sent them a message of good wishes. “Peace is the objective of all people of good will in Sudan. We hope that the pastoral letter will have a favourable impact on anyone who reads it. It would be wonderful if the Sudan could become a source of inspiration for peace for other countries that are going through a period of internal inflict”, declared the Cardinal. Keith O’Brien will also meet the Sudanese Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako during his visit.
