At audience with martyr's mother, pope prays for peace in Congo

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In the presence of the mother of the newly beatified martyr, Pope Leo XIV prayed that Blessed Floribert Bwana Chui would intercede to finally bring peace to Congo.

“This African martyr, on a continent rich in young people, shows how they can be a ferment of ‘unarmed and disarming’ peace,” the pope said June 16 during a meeting with people who had attended the 26-year-old’s beatification the previous evening.

Gertrude Kamara Ntawiha, Bwana Chui’s mother, and his two brothers, Tresor and Jean-Claude, were among the pilgrims at the audience with Pope Leo in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace. The pope greeted the three as he entered the hall and gave them special rosaries.

Bwana Chui was a member of the Congolese branch of the Community of Sant’Egidio, which described him as “a martyr of corruption” in the violence-torn Kivu region of eastern Congo.

After graduating with a law degree in 2006, he became a customs officer known for his repeated refusals to accept bribes to allow harmful and spoiled food into the country. Kidnapped July 7, 2007, his body was discovered two days later with evident signs of torture.

Pope Leo, reading his text in French, quoted what Pope Francis said about the martyr when he visited Congo in 2023: “He could easily have turned a blind eye; nobody would have found out, and he might even have gotten ahead as a result. But, since he was a Christian, he prayed. He thought of others, and he chose to be honest, saying no to the filth of corruption. That is what it means to keep your hands clean, for hands that traffic in easy money get stained with blood.”

Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, presided over the beatification ceremony and Mass June 15 at Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.

Pope Leo told the pilgrims that Bwana Chui’s decision to resist corruption “matured in a conscience formed by prayer, listening to the Word of God, and in communion with his brothers and sisters.”

The young man “lived the spirituality of the Community of Sant’Egidio, which Pope Francis summed up with three ‘P’s’: prayer, poor, peace.”

His service to the poor focused particularly on the children who were driven by the war to live on the streets of Goma, the pope said. “He loved them with the charity of Christ: he was interested in them and concerned about their human and Christian formation.”

“He was a man of peace,” Pope Leo said. “In a region suffering as much as Kivu, torn by violence, he carried on his battle for peace with meekness, serving the poor, practicing friendship and encounter in a lacerated society.”

“This Congolese layman highlights the precious value of the witness of lay people and young people,” the pope said.

“Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary and Blessed Floribert, may the longed-for peace in Kivu, Congo and all of Africa be realized soon,” Pope Leo prayed.