Remembering Bishop Daniel Zindo (October 20, 2011)!
12 min readBy Manasseh Zindo
Sudan Tribune: September 19, 2009 — Sudan is mourning the death of her Third Anglican Archbishop who succumbed to his to illness on Friday September 18, 2009 in the Sudanese capital Khartoum. Sadness greeted me this morning when I was woken by a phone call to be informed that the Most Revd Joseph Biringi Marona is dead. I immediately called the current Archbishop Daniel Deng who confirmed that Marona was no more. His body will be flown from Khartoum to Juba, the headquarter of Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) where he will be laid to rest alongside his predecessors.
I cannot account my emotion without remembering October 20, 1998 when my late father was taken from us in a cruel, road carnage. Retired Archbishop Marona, 68, and my later father Daniel Zindo were known as twin bishops when they were consecrated in 1984 by the first Archbishop of Sudan The Most Revd Elinana J Ngalamu. I remember the colourful ceremony very well in Yambio. They were first consecrated in Maridi Cathedral where Marona would later become the first Bishop. My father was then enthroned as the second bishop of Yambio replacing the late Bishop Yeremaya Datiro who died in 1983.
My siblings and I would from the 1984 onward acquaint ourselves with Marona and Mama Eunice his wife. We would welcome them to Yambio frequently and they would reciprocate in Maridi. The twin hypothesis of Marona and Daniel Zindo was that they were nearly age mate, born in 1941 and 1942 respectively of parents who did know each other. The two men at some stage attended missionary school in Yambio in the 1950’s but the Lord would bring them together as the youngest priests to be consecrated bishops at 42 (Zindo) and 43 (Marona).
Archbishop Marona was loved in Yambio as he was in his own Diocese and he knew almost every priest in Yambio by name. When the civil war broke out in Western Equatoria the twin bishops were all away in Khartoum where they were confined but they Lord would one year later after the liberation of Yambio reunite them with their families in exile as Maridi became a bloody town where thousands of people were killed as the well equipped government forces resisted incursion by the rebel Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA).
Marona’s family had fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1990 while we went to Central Africa Republic (CAR). In 1993 Bishop Zindo returned from exile to work in the SPLA controlled area, his twin brother in the Lord followed him and back again they were in full control of their respective Dioceses. As it is commonly the case in leadership Marona and Zindo had to deal with bitter rivals from within their own clergy who felt they were short-changed when the two men were transparently elected bishops. Because of these enmities Zindo would later survive death attempts on his life including a well calculated car crash in the 1985 which he survived as his time was yet to come.
The two newly consecrated bishops were to encounter tougher times ahead when ECS was plunged into leadership crisis with Marona and Zindo standing by the newly and constitutionally elected Archbishop of ECS, His Grace Benjamin Wani Yugusuk who was recognised by the worldwide Anglican body as the primate of Sudan. The crisis emanated because the first Archbishop of Sudan His Grace Elinana Ngalamu did not accept his retirement and went on to consecrate rival bishops in each Diocese. It was difficult time for the ECS as I saw it.
Back to the twin bishops. In 1994 Zindo who was until then the Dean of ECS and Archbishop Yugusuk with Marona as the Secretary of the Episcopal Council managed to work out a modality that recognised the bishops consecrated unconstitutionally and ECS was once again reunited. In the same year, renowned Catholic bishop of Torit Paride Taban stepped down as chairman of the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), and Zindo was elected the new chair. He stepped down after his three term in office expired to assume his new role as the Acting Archbishop of ECS following the retirement of Archbishop Benjamin Yugusuk.
The story of Zindo and Marona resemble that of American tennis stars and twin sisters Serena and Venus Williams who once in a while are called to face each other in their quest for supremacy in tennis. Zindo and Marona faced each other in 1984 as well when they were consecrated assistant bishops under Yambio Diocese where there was a vacant, and one of them had to become Diocesan bishop. In the contest Zindo was elevated the Diocesan Bishop and Marona was his assistant until Maridi became a full-fledged Diocese.
Following Zindo’s departure at the helm of NSCC in 1997, Marona replaced him as the chairman and also served his three term in office. When Zindo suddenly died in a car crash, Marona replaced him as Dean and acting Archbishop until his election as the third Archbishop of ECS in bitterly contested election as we saw it in Limuru Kenya in 2000. Marona emerged and defeated his closest challenger Bishop Michael Lugor of Rajaf Diocese.
I met Marona many times and remember him very fondly that I do not know which occasion to account for but the most exciting encounter for us was in 1999. I was in London and Archbishop Marona was in the UK, he was travelling from Salisbury Diocese to meet Archbishop George Carry of Canterbury at the Lambeth Palace, and there was no body to receive him on arrival. Canon Andrew Deuchar then Secretary for Anglican Affairs at the Lambeth Palace asked me if I could receive Marona at Waterloo Station and take him over to the Palace. I accepted and was driven to the nearby Waterloo station. Marona arrived, looked around and started walking towards the exit; I don’t know where he was going, probably to take a taxi to the Palace. I approached him and he was amazed to see me, we hugged each other (the Sudanese way) and I look him to the Lambeth Palace.
Although the inevitable was to occur because of his deteriorating health, I did not expect it so soon. I last saw him in Juba in 2005 in poor health and he told me that he would opt for early retirement which he eventually did, and for which I saluted him for the bold decision. In this part of the world of ours, leaders want to cling to power until death but that was not Marona.
When he became the Archbishop in 2000 and accepted to return to Khartoum, it was a bold move too because we feared for his life but he was a fearless man who believed in God. God loved him and has now relieved him from this troubled world. I pray for Mama Eunice and the many children he was fathering. It is my prayer that the Lord will continue to take care of them.
Now that he has been reunited with his twin brother in heaven, I want to pay countless tribute to their reminiscence and exemplary work as bishops. They fought good fight and finished the race, may God reward them for dedicated service as true soldiers of the ministry to which they were called by God.
Manasseh Zindo is a Sudanese Media Personality, currently studying for a Masters Degree in Peace Studies & International Relations in Nairobi Kenya, and son to the late Bishop Daniel Zindo. E-mail: manassehz@yahoo.com
by Lisa Barrowclough
The voices of Anglicans speaking out of personal pain quickly brought the plenary on making moral decisions out of the realm of theory. Two presentations and a video offered stark stories
of very human struggles. The session, said plenary coordinator Bishop Victoria Matthews of Edmonton (Canada), sought to “find a way forward for the leaders of the Church.”
Bishop Mano Rumalshah (Peshawar, Pakistan), the first presenter, spoke of deadly dangers that daily face Christians in regions where Islamic teaching is law. Bishop Rumalshah recalled the May 6 death of Roman Catholic Bishop John Joseph. His last word’s were “… in protest
against [the blasphemy law] and other black laws, and in the name of my oppressed Christian people, secularism and democracy, I am taking my life.”
The death generated “acute public debate on the morality of his action, because in common language, what he did is called suicide,” Bishop Rumalshah said.”But is it possible to think of Bishop John laying down his life as an act in the same fashion as that of Jesus? Isn’t this also in keeping with the call, `take up your cross and follow me?”‘ Bishop Rumalshah told of a 15year#old Christian schoolgirl who was accused of insulting the holy prophet of Islam in
her classroom. More than 200 local Muslim clerics signed an oath to kill her.
“With the consent of her family and, perhaps, even her religious leaders, she converted to Islam to save her life,” he said. Two of his parishioners in a part of the diocese where Islamic law is fully enforced were offered a stark choice: to be converted to Islam and accepted as a lawful husband and wife, or to be tried under an adultery ordinance and be liable to capital punishment. They became Muslims.
“In both these cases, there is a deep sense of guilt and remorse, and even spiritual strain,” Bishop Rumalshah said. “In these situations of apparent apostasy, what needs to be our moral and pastoral responsibility?” Conversely, Christian converts are legally disinherited of all possessions and ostracised for the rest of their lives.There are rumours of a proposal to make both the baptiser and the baptised liable for prosecution under the draconian blasphemy law, which usually means death.
“Should we be encouraging public baptisms of those converting from Islam in such a climate? Or do we make `secret believers’–a choice I once ridiculed, but now I am struggling to accept,” he said. “As always, what we need are new signposts for our generation which are applicable in our respective contexts.”
Violence as a way of lifeBishop Daniel Zindo (Yambio, Sudan) brought many in the room to tears with his story of how murderous violence erupted in his home. “Here was our son#in#law who rebelled against us and killed my wife Grace Zindo, our son Yoane Khalifa, and then 30 minutes later killed himself too!” he said, as gasps echoed in the room. Minutes before the violence erupted the bishop had left to make a pastoral call.
Bishop Zindo placed his story in the context of the culture of violence created by 32 years of civil war, a culture in which a God of peace can quickly seem irrelevant. “Killing human beings . . . has become a game of interest only,” he said. Personal and social violence are profoundly related. Violence in a society,”because it rises in the human heart, so easily finds a way of becoming violence in our own homes.” He asked, “How does one raise children and grandchildren who have witnessed killing and suicide to believe in a God who seeks peace, and our Lord who is our peace? How does one proclaim the good news of God’s love to our own families—let alone to a society—who have experienced first hand a culture of violence?”
In the video, prepared by Trinity Parish, Wall Street (New York), actors related the stories of 10 unnamed people who have confronted difficult personal dilemmas.
“My ancestors lived here long before the English and French came to our shores,” began the story of a native Canadian. “We lost our land and rivers, some say we even lost our souls. “The missionaries said we must not follow our own spiritual traditions but must worship their God. `The white man brought the Bible, but we got the church.’ Our culture vanished, and we were left with nothing.The government has apologised and offered compensation, but for many of us the question remains, “Who am I?”
The narrator asked, “As bishops, can we stand alongside cultures within our culture?” A woman said, “My husband and I once served as missionaries in the Far East. Today we live with a baby girl we adopted from an orphanage in Beijing. “The orphanages in China are filled with hundreds of thousands of female children. When they become teenagers these girls are forced to live on their own as peasants or prostitutes. My mind is seared by the memory of our arrival at the orphanage, a group of girls aged 7 to 10, smiling, laughing, waving to us from a balcony. Hours later, departing with a six#month#old cradled in my arms, the same girls stood by …in silence.”
The narrator asked, “As bishops, are we able to provide leadership?” A gay man living openly with a partner sings in the choir of his parish church but does not feel welcome. He senses that some parishioners wish he would go away, “that a man who does not conceal his sexual preference, who might ask a blessing upon our union, the love we share, does not belong in their church.”
But a priest feels called to counsel gay men to resist their orientation. “`Do not lose heart,’ I counseled them. `Genuine intimacy between two men—without physical contact—is possible.Through prayer, you will find the courage and discipline to share your love, yet be celibate, faithful to one another and to the Church you love.”‘ The narrator asked, “As bishops, what message do we want to send to the gay community?” Other stories raised the issue of AIDS in the context of an African culture that calls for the widow of a man who died of AIDS to marry his brother, who also may be HIV positive, of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Between each of the sets of stories, the video asked, “Will the Church help show the way forward?”
More than a supermarket choiceIn an address that prompted rousing applause and a standing ovation from participants, Bishop Rowan Williams (Monmouth, Wales) offered a concluding focus on how the Church could make moral decisions.
He reminded his colleagues that making decisions is not as simple as “being faced with a series of clear alternatives, as if we were standing in front of the supermarket shelf.” Decisions, instead, are “coloured” by the sort of decision#maker. “The choice is not made by a will operating in the abstract, but by someone who is used to thinking and imagining in a certain way.” He referred to the writing of Welsh philosopher Rush Rhees and British Catholic theologian and moralist Herbert McCabe and summarised their points by stating “[it is] not that ethics is a matter of the individual’s likes or dislikes… On the contrary, it is a difficult discovering of something about yourself, a discovering of what has already shaped the person you are and is moulding you in this or that direction.”
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