U.S. aid group in row over mass baptism in Sudan
NAIROBI, Feb 24 (Reuters) – A U.S. evangelical Christian aid agency has outraged officials in rebel-held south Sudan by baptising hundreds of Catholic school children, allegedly as Seventh Day Adventists, Sudanese officials said on Wednesday.
The Alabama-based National Association for the Prevention of Starvation (NAPS) visited south Sudan at Christmas, to deliver food, teach hymns and tell bible stories, witnesses said.
NAPS baptised around 275 children from a Catholic school in the small town of Panlit in the famine-hit Bahr el Ghazal region without consulting local authorities or parents.
Catholic and rebel officials said this contravened an agreement that NAPS would confine itself to humanitarian work.
Peter Ring, representative of the Catholic diocese of Elobeid, said the whole school had been baptised as Adventists in the local river.
“It is un-Christian,” said Ring. “It was like going to someone’s house as a guest and while he is not looking burning his house down.”
NAPS coordinator Anthony Paul told Reuters from his headquarters in Alabama they had baptised the children only at the head teacher’s request and believed them to be orphans.
He also denied they had been baptised as Adventists, although locals said the teachers and some of the children were already baptised as Catholics.
“We did not baptise them in the name of Adventists,” Paul said. “All they wanted was to follow the Bible and keep the 10 commandments.
Sudan is the recipient of a massive United Nations aid programme and dozens of non-governmental evangelical groups have poured aid into the south, which they see as the frontline in the battle to contain Islam.
Many other aid agencies are Christian-based, and there is often sharp competition between agencies in the provision of humanitarian relief and religious ministry.
The visit of NAPS has angered the Catholic church and the rebel officials who work closely with them.
“Most of the children were not even aware of what was happening,” said a southern Sudanese relief official in Nairobi.
Ring said the baptisms were performed in collusion with the Catholic teaching staff, which also consented to be baptised.
The headmaster and the head catechist at the school were later arrested and charged with acting without county authority and without consulting the diocese, officials said.
As they now consider themselves Adventists, they have also been barred from teaching at the Catholic school, Ring said.
“The community is very angry for the action carried out by the teachers and they are demanding that all teachers involved are removed from the school and be replaced by Catholic teachers,” he said.
Paul said NAPS gave the school money to buy five cows and grain but said this was unrelated to the baptisms.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Army is fighting Khartoum’s Islamist government for self-determination for the south and religious freedom for its largely Christian and animist people.
The rebels effectively govern much of rural south Sudan.
(C) Reuters Limited 1999.
Simon Denyer 
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