Bernard Kinvi, a Camillian who works in the Republic of Central Africa, is amongst the finalists of the Aurora Prize which every year is awarded to ‘a person or group of people who have put their lives at risk to allow other people to survive’. The prize was established by Vartan Gregorian, Noubar Afeyan and Ruben Vardanyan, the co-founders of ‘100 LIVES’, a project created to commemorate the individuals and institutions that saved the lives of many Armenians during the genocide that took place a hundred years ago.

Fr. Bernard Kinvi was asked for the names of one or more organisations to which to give the sum of one millions dollars that was given as a prize by the association.  Fr. Kinvi, in agreement with the General Consulta of the Order, decided to use the money of the prize to create or advance projects that work to promote public health, in particular for the communities of African countries in which as Camillian religious we have health-care institutions for sick people and for the training of local workers.

Over the last forty years, the provision of care to the sick without any kind of distinction based on religion or race has been our way of building bridges of dialogue and peace.

The Story of Fr. Kinvi

    Bernard Kinvi is a Camillian priest who manages the hospital of the Catholic mission in Bossemptele which is in the north-west of the Central African Republic. When in 2013 a brutal guerrilla war broke out in the country, Fr. Kinvi was able to save the lives of hundreds of Muslims who were besieged in their villages. He took them from their homes and gave them refuge in his church. As a response, the militias with Catholic majorities, known as the anti-Balaka, began to attack the Seleka bases, that is to say the bases of the Muslim minority. The heads of the Seleka faction managed to flee but left the civilians to face the anti-Balaka forces. In city after city, the Muslims were attacked and massacred. Their homes and their mosques were destroyed.

One of the cruellest attacks took place in Bossemptele where the anti-Balaka forces killed more than eighty people. For many days, Fr. Kinvi looked for Muslims who had survived the attack. Many of them were children and when he found them he took them with him to his church for safety. Despite repeated death threats from the anti-Balaka group, Fr. Bernard managed to save about a hundred people during the conflict. In March 2014 the peace-keeping forces in Africa evacuated most of the Muslims in Bossemptele and transferred them to Cameroon.  They joined the 100,000 Muslims who had already left the country. About seventy people, amongst whom a dozen disabled children, stayed in the Catholic mission because they were thought to be too weak to face up to a journey.

Undaunted, Fr. Kinvi continued to welcome the Muslims. Relying only on his own resources, recently he has been trying to help people who remained at the mission to join their families. In 2015 Fr. Bernard Kinvi was awarded the Human Rights Watch Prize for the courage and dedication that he demonstrated in protecting civilians in the Central African Republic.