NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — As the war in Sudan enters its fourth year Wednesday (April 15), the bombed Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Khartoum’s Omdurman constantly reminds Christians of the brutal conflict.
The church that stood for 81 years is now in ashes after it was bombed in 2023. On its ruins in Sudan’s capital city, Episcopal Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo stood days before the war’s third anniversary and told Christians, “God is with the people in good times and difficult times.”
“We thanked God for His protection during the three years of the war,” he said at the site where shelling in the early months of the conflict brought the church down, destroying its roof and burning everything inside – including the pews, Bibles and hymnals.
Sudan is a Muslim-majority country where only an estimated 5% of the population is Christian, according to Pew Research Center. But Kondo told RNS that over 5,000 Christians — including leaders from other denominations — had on Friday gathered at the site of the church, which was also in the past a traditional convening point for Episcopalian Christians on Easter Monday. The coronavirus pandemic, and later the war, stopped the meetings.
The war began on April 15, 2023, as a dispute between the Sudanese Armed Forces, the government army led by Chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and a powerful paramilitary group, Rapid Support Forces, commanded by his former deputy, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti.
Clerics in Sudan recalled how the war sent Christian leaders in the capital and …