South Sudan: two nuns attacked and robbed on the road to Juba

On Sunday 30 August 2026, two Carmelite sisters, Sister Helen and Sister Ansa, were returning from morning Mass on the road linking Torit to Juba, the capital of South Sudan. Armed men halted their journey. One of them struck Sister Helen on the head with the barrel of a rifle; wounded, she had to be taken to the capital for treatment. The assailants stripped both sisters and the other passengers of their money and their belongings. The attack caused no death.

The Bishop of Torit, Msgr Emmanuel Bernardino Lowi Napeta, at once organised relief from Juba, where the two sisters were taken and where Sister Helen received the care she needed.

A first, still fragmentary report speaks of two children whom the bandits are said to have carried off as they fled. It is not confirmed, and we give it for what it is: an unestablished allegation, to be verified, not an accepted fact.

This road is already marked by blood. On 16 August 2021, at the same place, two religious of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the superior general Sister Mary Daniel Abut and Sister Regina Roba, were killed in cold blood as they returned to Juba after the centenary of the parish of the Assumption.

The fifth commandment and the blood that cries out

The Church has never wavered on this point. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, expounding the fifth commandment, teaches that the precept "Thou shalt not kill" forbids not only murder, but every act of violence and every injury unjustly done to one's neighbour, down to the inward movement of hatred. The blood of the innocent is never a matter of indifference to God: from the very first murder it rises from the earth as a voice. "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to me from the earth" (Genesis 4:10).

Of those whom God has set apart for His service, Scripture is graver still: "Touch ye not my anointed" (Psalm 104:15).

The measure

To strike on the head a woman consecrated to God as she returns from the altar, to strip her, to terrorise defenceless travellers: tradition knows only one name for this. It is a double violation, of the fifth commandment by the blood, and of the seventh by the theft added to it. That the same road has already drunk the blood of two religious in 2021 does not make this assault an accident: it is a cross laid upon a people, and upon a Church that, in South Sudan, still climbs to Calvary.

For the faithful, the answer is neither vengeance nor despair, but prayer and the support of those who carry the cross to the end. We give thanks that no life was lost this time, and we commend to God the wounded sister, the plundered passengers, and those said to have been carried off, should it be confirmed. The blood of the servants of God is not shed in vain: it remains, in the ancient word, the seed of the Church.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), exposition of the fifth and seventh commandments. Holy Scripture according to the Vulgate: Genesis 4:10; Psalm 104:15.