The remains of South Sudan’s retired Bishop Paride Taban arrived in the capital Juba on Tuesday. Emeritus Bishop Taban died on November 1st, 2023 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi after a longing illness aged 87.
His body was received at Juba International Airport on Tuesday by Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, Vice President for Economic Cluster, Dr. James Wani Igga, and other senior government officials.
The body will be taken to St. Theresa Cathedral Kator at 2:00PM for requiem mass. It will then be taken to Nimule and Loa on Wednesday at 10:00AM and finally be put to rest at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral on Friday at 1:00OM.
Speaking following the arrival of the body at Juba International Airport, Cardinal Stephen Ameyu Martin Mulla, of the Catholic Church urged the public to mourn as people with hope in resurrection of Christ.
“May his soul rest in peace as we mourn him, let us mourn him like people who have hope in resurrection because Paride was a person that all of us remembered and all of us have been touched by him,” he said.
For his part, Vice President for Economic Cluster James Wani Igga strongly believed that God will put the late Bishop Taban to his right hand.
t saddened us to see his body lying before us and I am sure he would have still contributed for people and to this country, but the Almighty God knows the hour for him and every one of us,” the vice-president said.
Born in Opari of Eastern Equatoria State, Bishop Taban served as the first leader of the New Sudan Council of Churches, from 1990.
He was also the Auxiliary Bishop of Juba from January 1980 to July 1983, before becoming the Bishop of Torit, in Eastern Equatoria State, from 1983 to 2004.
He was ordained in May 1964 and consecrated a Bishop by Pope John Paul II in the Congolese capital Kinshasa in May 1980.
PEACE EFFORTS AND AWARDS
Taban started his peace efforts when he was sent to Rwanda in 1994 for reconciliation efforts following the Rwanda Genocide and following the outbreak of the civil war in South Sudan in December 2013 became renowned for his opposition to war.
In 2013, Taban was awarded the Sergio Vieira de Mello Peace Prize by the then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon for his work at the Holy Trinity Peace Village.
He also won the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation awarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in 2017 after co-founding the ecumenical New Sudan Council of Churches and for building Kuron Peace Village in South Sudan.
He was also awarded the prize for mediating between President Salva Kiir’s government and the defunct South Sudan Democratic Movement/Army (SSDM/A) Cobra faction led by then rebel leader General David Yau Yau.
These efforts led to the signing of the peace agreement between Kiir and Yau Yau ending four years of a deadly conflict that started in 2010 over election disputes in Jonglei State.
In 2016, he was appointed by Kiir as a co-chair of the steering committee of National Dialogue and in 2017 received the peace award of the United Religious Initiatives for Africa.
A year later in 2018, he received the Four Freedoms Award, freedom of Worship medal from the Roosevelt Foundation for “his life-long and selfless dedication to the cause of bringing freedom and peace to the people of South Sudan.”
