In this new season of the Church inaugurated by Pope Francis, and in the search for the revitalisation of consecrated life with the celebration of the Year of Consecrated Life (2015), we are invited to engage in a personal exodus and to move towards those who live on the geographical and existential outskirts of the human heart.

It is in this sense that I would like to describe the work during the civil war that recently broke out in the Central African Republic engaged in by Fr. Bernard Kinvi and by Fr. Brice Patrick Nainangue, the animators of the Camillian mission of Bossemptele which is a part of the Camillian Vice-Province of Benin-Togo.

We are faced with a terrible and dramatic reality! Our religious saved the lives of thousands of Muslims, risking their own lives. During these times of religious pluralism, when the need for inter-religious dialogue is discussed, our religious brothers are offering us a magnificent example.

Father Bernard Kinvi is the director of the John Paul II hospital of Bossemptele. During these clashes, this hospital – which is funded by the NGO of the Order ‘Health and Development’, a body which exists to promote various social/health-care services – the parish church and the school of the sisters of St. Teresa of Turin were the settings for the saving of hundreds of Muslim refugees who were fleeing from the civil war.

Father Bernard Kinvi, for this courageous action in defence of the lives of over 1,500 Muslims, received the international prize of the organisation ‘Human Rights Watch’ (HRW). In the months of November and December 2014 he took part in the series of events organised in Paris, London, Rome and Geneva where he was awarded the prestigious Alison Forges Award in recognition of his work and that of the Camillian community.

Father Kinvi also spent some days in the our generalate house in Rome, telling us about his experiences before a very interested audience. I believe that it is incumbent upon me to publicise and explain this event within our Order and not only through our system of internal communication, the web site www.camilliani.org and Newsletter: I think it is also useful to engage in reflection on these facts and to subject them to further analysis. I thought about this text and wrote about it starting from the writings transmitted to the wider public by journalists and by the great international secular press – a true hymn of respect and appreciation for the human rights of hundreds of thousands of people involved in the violent civil war that broke out in the Central African Republic.

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