Mission
Among the dead were sixteen women, including a young girl, and twelve men, two of them minors. Photo: Vatican News
Villagers had been preparing for an ordinary night. Instead, they awoke to gunfire, flames, and the frantic cries of neighbors. By dawn, at least 28 bodies had been recovered from Makuta and Django—two districts whose names now mark the latest chapter of a tragedy that has become routine in Congo’s eastern provinces
(ZENIT News / North Kivu, 11.19.2025).- The village of Byambwe, scattered among the green hills of North Kivu, has long survived on a fragile equilibrium: small farms, quiet parishes, missionary clinics, and a population accustomed to living on the edge of an unpredictable conflict. But on the night of 14–15 November, that fragile equilibrium was shattered once more, when armed men descended on the parish of St. Paul and left behind scenes so brutal that local clergy could scarcely find the words to describe them.
Villagers had been preparing for an ordinary night. Instead, they awoke to gunfire, flames, and the frantic cries of neighbors. By dawn, at least 28 bodies had been recovered from Makuta and Django—two districts whose names now mark the latest chapter of a tragedy that has become routine in Congo’s eastern provinces. Among the dead were sixteen women, including a young girl, and twelve men, two of them minors. The majority were killed in their homes, cut down while trying to flee.
For Father Katsere Gislain, pastor of St. Paul’s, the devastation was immediate and disorienting. Speaking to Vatican Radio, he struggled to identify a motive for the attack. “We do not know their reasons. That is the question everyone is asking,” he said. The attackers are believed to be militants of the ADF-NALU, a group with a history of targeting civilians and a reputation for moving swiftly from village to village, leaving few survivors. Their presence in the region is a constant shadow—visible, feared, rarely stopped.
Streets emptied by dawn. Families abandoned their homes with whatever they could carry, fleeing toward Butembo and Ziampanga. “It is a real exodus,” Father Gislain said. “People fear the attackers will return.” That fear is not unfounded; local sources claimed that armed elements were still moving through the area even after security officials arrived on site.
Government administrators and military officers reached Byambwe in the aftermath, surveying burnt homes and the charred remains of a parish health center. Their arrival brought reassurance, but not answers—and not healing. It was left to the parish, as so often happens in Congo, to offer the first fragile forms of consolation. Father Gislain gathered grieving families, celebrated a requiem Mass, and buried the dead. “It was all I could do,” he said quietly.
Two days later, thousands of miles away in Rome, the community heard its name spoken aloud. During the Sunday Angelus, Pope Leo XIV prayed for the victims of Biambwe, invoking peace for the eastern provinces. This gesture, modest on a global stage, carried enormous weight in a place where people often feel unseen. “We thought we had been forgotten,” the pastor admitted. “Hearing the Holy Father speak of us brought great happiness to our people.”
While the parish buried its dead, another tragedy came to light—one that unfolded the same night, only a short walk from St. Paul’s. A small hospital run by the Sisters of the Presentation was overrun by militants. Patients who could not flee were killed in their beds before the building was set ablaze. Women in the maternity unit died in the inferno, and witnesses reported that newborns were taken by the attackers. Fifteen people were killed inside the clinic, five more just outside. Several nearby homes were looted and burned.
From Italy, Father Giovanni Piumatti, a missionary who served more than fifty years in the region, confirmed the details. Violence of this nature, he explained, follows a darkly familiar pattern: speed, precision, and extreme brutality. In conversation with Vatican News, he described parents murdered as they held their babies, homes razed after medical supplies were stolen, and a village forced into mourning in the space of a single hour.
Local clergy believe the attackers are the same ADF militants responsible for July’s massacre in Komanda, where dozens of worshippers were killed during a religious service. Pope Leo XIV condemned that attack as well, reminding the world that “peace is the work of justice and the fruit of charity,” as the Catechism teaches. But the plea for peace has struggled to find traction in a region where instability has become the backdrop of daily life.
The Sisters of the Presentation had operated the Byambwe clinic for years, offering the only reliable medical care for miles. Their work centered on childbirth, basic surgery, and emergency care—services indispensable in an area where state infrastructure is largely absent. With their clinic reduced to ash, they now tend to survivors outdoors, under tarps or trees, as they wait for security assessments and the slow return of displaced villagers.
Humanitarian groups, clergy, and religious brothers and sisters continue to search for the missing, while displaced families weigh the risk of going home against the near certainty that the violence will not end soon. Byambwe now joins a long list of villages in eastern Congo forced to rebuild not just homes, but an entire sense of safety.
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