Oxfam aid for missions in Congo

Catholic Herald Reporter
The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief has this week made a grant of £3,000 for food relief trucks for Catholic missions in the trouble-torn Congo.
Back in London from a fiveweek tour of the Congo and other African States, Oxfam representative David Carter told me of the "outstanding heroism" of Congo missionaries.
Only a few days before the latest reports of nuns being injured by rebel hordes reached England, David Carter was in Leopoldville speaking to Bishop Toussaint of Wit:4a in troubled Kwilti Province.
The bishop, with three of his missionaries killed, 90 priests evacuated, and 26 out of 30 missions closed down. was even then planning to reopen stations in the north of the Province.
The scorched earth policy of the rebels organised by former Congolese Minister of Education Pierre Mode, meant that the missions were completely without food. Hence the Oxfam trucks.
Asked if he thought the Congo, Ruanda and Burundi troubles were abating a little, David Carter was doubtful.
In the past weeks, he had seen at first hand the work of relief agencies. Catholic, Protestant and Baptist. He had seen. too, the aftermath of the Ruanda massacres when 10.000 Tutsi tribesmen were killed in three weeks by Hutus: he visited a vast camp of 12.000 Tutsi refugees in Burundi waiting for homes in other lands: in Uganda, perhaps, or Tanganyika.
And he had encountered both the helpfulness and the hindrances of governments. "What do you do,' he asks. "when officials will work only for bribes, when food• stocks are, not distributed and people starve because of red tape. when even ambulances cannot he sure of reaching their destinations."
Joint Bible in Stormy Congo Page 2