Bishop visits mutineers and Premier

THE next few weeks should make it
clear whether the Church is the one institution to retain any authority in the new Congolese Republic, where Catholics number some 40 per cent of the 13,000,000 population.
The only reports to reach London so far of missionary priests and nuns being attacked by the mutinous Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique come from the Lower Congo region.
Priests were reported among the Europeans set free at Thysville after they had been jailed by the mutineers, and there were one or two reports of nuns in this region being molested.
But elsewhere missionaries do not seem to have been attacked by the rebels who in some cases have taken the white priests under their protection.
'Safe'
Brussels Radio reported on Tuesday night that the Benedictines in Katanga province—where they work in the archdiocese of Elisabethville—were safe and sound and at their posts, as were the Benedictine Sisters.
The same was reported of a congregation of Sisters and also of the Mart Brothers at several points in the Congo, including Leopoldville, Stanleyville, and Bukavu, but the evacuation of two Sisters was reported from Luluabourg.
Several parishes in African quarters of Leopoldville were visited by armed patrols, and some missions were given a special guard by the rebel soldiers, who also rescued a white missionary from possible trouble. and escorted him to the house of Bishop Malula, the Congolese auxiliary of Leopoldville. Some white missionaries living alone in African districts, together with several Sisters, have withdrawn to the European sector of the city. All the others have stayed put and have not been molested.
Bishop Malula spent last Friday visiting all the different parishes of Leopoldville to encourage the priests and the Sisters. He also visited the army camp where he talked to the mutineers and to the army chaplain. He has also had an interview with M. Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister.
However, on Thursday last week European refugees arriving in Leopoldville from Thysville, where the mutiny of the Force Puhlique seemed to be most virulently infected by anti.Eurepean feeling, reported that nuns were among the women molested by drunken troops.
Attacked
The territorial administrator of the Madimba region was reported by B.U.P. as saying: "A group of mutineers who arrived from Madimba broke into the convent of Mbanza-Boma where many European women had fled. There also women and nuns were raped at gunpoint." Very few English Catholic missionaries are working in the Congo, since this vast territory is entrusted for the most part to the Belgian provinces of missionary orders and congregations.
One exception is the diocese of Busankusu, in Equator province, about 125 miles north-east of Coquilhatville, entrusted to the Mill Hill Fathers. They were invited out to the Congo in 1904 by King Leopold.
Two Englishmen from the north are known to be working there. They are Fr. John King and Fr. Thomas Finnegan, both from Co. Durham.