A bold, far-sighted initiative to create a Catholic university in Sudan has now passed the crucial make-or-break stage and is now on course to succeed, according to the man who is pioneering the project.
Against a backdrop of widespread devastation following almost 25 years of war in the south of the country, the Catholic University of the Sudan is the centerpiece of the bishops’ plans to help the country recover from decades of violence, famine and mass displacement of people. More than 50 years after the project was first conceived, the university finally opened its doors to the first intake of students who arrived last September at what is planned as the main campus in Juba, the southern provincial capital.
Now, in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, Father Michael Schultheis, the university’s acting vice chancellor, said that with funding in place, cooperation from other colleges in Sudan and backing from the regional authorities, the project is at last developing according to plan. The US Jesuit priest, who has worked in education in Africa for 30 years, said, “There is rarely a perfect time to get moving with a project like this – especially in Sudan. But our attitude was just to get something started.”
Father Schultheis continued, “We are very encouraged by the way things have developed since those very early days. What we have found from the students is that there is strong desire to study and learn.” With education in southern Sudan being among the worst in the world and adult literacy at below 30 percent, Fr. Schultheis explained that for most people university studies are very demanding. He stressed the importance of an introductory (propedeutic) course, which the 35 students who started last September are now undergoing.
The priest went on to explain that the initiative would be impossible without start-up support of $54,700 from Aid to the Church in Need, which was among the first of a series of organizations to give key funding to the project. Fr. Schultheis said, “We are all very grateful for what ACN has done. For the students, this is a wonderful opportunity to train and study at a level that was until now closed to them.”
Noting how until now there have been only three universities in southern Sudan, he said that for the bishops, the priority is to train people to start rebuilding – especially in southern Sudan – where basic government structures need to be developed, new roads, buildings, health clinics, schools and other fundamental services. Fr. Schultheis, who has an economics doctorate, explained that the Juba faculty is proposed as a center for arts and social sciences, offering degrees in economics and business administration, computer sciences and social and religious studies.
Father Schultheis added that the university administrators planned to open a second campus in the southern Sudanese town of Wau, probably in August, which would provide a center for agricultural and environmental sciences – biology, ecology, and economic systems in a rural environment. Within a year, the university administrators expect to open a third faculty for civil and mineral engineering based initially in Wau but quickly moving to new premises further north in Kadugli or Malakal.
Following agreement by the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference in July 2007 to push ahead with the university project, the Government of Southern Sudan’s ministry of science and technology decided that the new college should run its education program. This gave the university administrators the green light to generate maximum publicity to attract students – especially through dioceses and parishes – and hence 80 students applied for the first year, a number which halved as the registration process got underway.
Within less than two years, the project has at last begun to realize the vision first conceived by the bishops in the late 1950s soon after Sudan’s independence from Britain. The matter was raised again when former Sudanese president Jafaar Nimeiry met Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1983, months before the country slid into civil war, a conflict which put a halt to the whole project.
