A crowd gathered at the Mount Vernon Knights of Columbus
council hall in Alexandria last month to hear Bishop Emeritus
Macram Max Gassis, exiled bishop of the El Obeid Diocese in
Sudan. He painted a landscape that pained him to tell; his
homeland is a nightmare. Bombings, genocide, slavery, rape,
civil war and Christian persecution are ongoing horrors.
In 2000, the Diocese of El Obeid, which includes nearly the
entire eastern half of the country, received its first saint,
St. Josephine Bakhita, a former slave. Yet the violence
persists. As a fellow Knight of Columbus, Bishop Gassis came
to share these gruesome stories in the hopes of raising
awareness about the ongoing suffering in his diocese.
“I don’t like to brag about what I do. But I tell you in my
lifetime, and I’m still living, thank God, I’ve built three
hospitals,” he said. One was bombed and rebuilt, but all
three hospitals run solely on the donations that Bishop
Gassis collects. “We are a giving and a receiving church.”
Although he continues to share his message, it does not come
without a price. “He pretty much has a death warrant,” said
Grand Knight, John Dailey.
Yet, Bishop Gassis continues to speak out and has for the
past 26 years. His first time was in 1990 at the U.S.
Congress when he testified about the crimes the Sudanese
government committed against its people. During this time he
traveled to Europe and then to Georgetown University Hospital
to receive treatment for bile duct cancer.
“Divine providence – I depend so much on divine providence,”
he said. It would be divine providence when shortly after his
surgery he was warned not to return to Sudan because he would
be murdered. Today, he believes it is his calling to live in
exile from his diocese so that he may still continue to
support them.
“I have not forgotten my church,” he said to the crowd and
then alluded to how he has tried to sneak back into Sudan.
Since learning of the threat to his life, Bishop Gassis has
appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Commission four
times. He was awarded 12th annual William Wilberforce Award;
received the Catholic University’s President’s Medal; and he
was nominated for the Noble Peace Prize in 2012, yet these
accolades cannot mend the separation from his flock.
He calls himself a beggar for Christ.
In closing he led a prayer and asked, “Pray for me, so that I
may be like a lion.”
“A journalist one day asked me, ‘how do you manage to laugh
and give a smile while your people are under constant
bombardment?’ And I said to him, ‘My friend, if you look at
the canine of the lion exposed don’t think that the lion is
smiling … this external joy is a mask.’ I don’t want
to go around crying … I must be positive and
courageous to pick up that cross, it is my cross. Jesus gave
it to me and I keep it … the only thing I ask of
people, like this beautiful group (here) is to (help me) lift
it up. That’s why the lion. Strength and courage.”
