RUMBEK - An Italian bishop, Monsignor Christian Carlasse, currently working as a missionary in South Sudan, was shot in the legs by two men in a seemingly targeted attack against leaders of the Catholic Church.

  Two armed men knocked on the door of Mons. Carlassare, the bishop of Malakal, just after midnight on Monday morning, shooting at it until it opened. When they found the bishop, 43, they forced him to sit down and shot him in the legs. He is in a stable condition but has been transferred from Juba to a hospital in Nairobi for a transfusion.

  Mons. Carlassare, from Vicenza, is currently the youngest Italian bishop, and on March 8 he was nominated for ordination by Pope Francis, set to take place on May 23.

  Following the attack 24 men were arrested. William Kocji Kerjok, the Minister of Information for the Lakes State, spoke to the Juba Echo, saying, “police and other security forces have arrested several people inside the compound and other arrests will be carried out because we need to know exactly what happened in the Catholic Church of the diocese of Rumbek.”

  He continued, “we need to put an end once and for all to the violence against the leaders of the church.” He condemned the “attack aimed at the bishop,” adding that “this is not the first time that the leaders of the church have been targeted… Two years ago a pastor was killed in the county of Cuei-bet and this time they have launched an attack against the new bishop.”

  Mons. Carlassare has said, “pray not so much for me, but for the people of Rumbek who are suffering more than me.”

  “South Sudan,” Mons. Carlassare explained in an interview with Voce dei Berici, a publication from the diocese of Vicenza, “is not only a very young country, but half the population are less than 18 years old and they want young pastors. In Rumbek, in fact, we only do ministry with the young because the conversion to Christianity is a very recent thing. The work that we are doing in the next few years is to try to involve more adults and elderly people. Practically the opposite of what is happening in Italy.”

 jp-ol