Pope Francis met the South Sudan bishop-elect Christian Carlassare on Monday. He was shot in the legs shortly after his nomination to lead Rumbek diocese owing to which his consecration was postponed last year.

He had a private meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, 11 days before his episcopal consecration, scheduled for March 25.

The pope, who is to visit South Sudan’s capital city of Juba on July 5-7, prayed for Carlassare after the attack, according to the Vatican.

Carlassare, a member of the Comboni Missionaries, was shot in both legs during the early hours of April 26, 2021, just over a month after Pope Francis named him bishop of Rumbek, filling a vacancy that had lasted for almost a decade.

The 44-year-old Italian had served as a missionary priest in South Sudan’s Malakal diocese since 2005.

He was shot by two armed men who fired multiple bullets at his door, gaining access to his room in a block that houses priests serving at the Diocese of Rumbek’s Holy Family Cathedral.

In a video recording from his hospital bed the day after the attack, the bishop-elect described the shooting as life-threatening but called for reconciliation and “justice with the same heart of God” among the people of Rumbek.

On May 5, 2021, before his discharge from the hospital, the bishop-elect said that he was imploring God for an end to “violence, division, [and] selfish desires” in the diocese of Rumbek.

“I bend low in front of God to intercede for the church of Rumbek. I pray for the conversion of sinners,” Carlassare said in a message recorded by ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner.

In June 2021, police in South Sudan’s Lakes State arrested a second person suspected of involvement in the shooting. The arrest brought the number of those detained concerning the incident to six, among them Father John Mathiang, who served as Rumbek’s diocesan coordinator.

The Diocese of Rumbek serves around 200,000 Catholics in central South Sudan, an area with a population of 1.7 million.

The town of Rumbek was the capital of the country following the end of the Second Sudanese Civil War in 2005 until South Sudan’s independence in 2011, when the capital moved to Juba.
-CNA