The Church Faces the Spiral of War in the DRC

Confusion. The term is not too strong to describe the political and humanitarian situation in the DRC at the beginning of 2025. It is a climate that is worrying in the Church: “I urge all parties of the conflict to commit themselves to the cessation of hostilities and to the protection of the civilian populations of Goma and other regions affected by military operations,” declared the Sovereign Pontiff at the end of the January 29, 2025, public audience.

Anxiety is indeed at its height in Goma, capital of North Kivu, in the east of the DRC, since the armed groups of the March 23 Movement (M23) seized the city, pushing thousands of civilians into exodus: "Great is the suffering of the displaced who no longer know where to go; the population is experiencing a great tragedy,” warned Bishop Willy Ngumbi of Goma, one of the 42 dioceses of a country which has about 50% Catholics out of 109 million inhabitants.

The M23 secessionists entered Kivu on January 27. Witnesses contacted by Fides reported "hellish scenes," particularly at the Munzenze prison where several thousand prisoners live. The police themselves opened the doors of the penitentiary and now all the prisoners are out at large, adding to the chaos created by the arrival of the armed rebel groups.

To understand the vise in which the Catholics of North Kivu find themselves, we must place the events that shook the DRC in the context of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. After the final victory of the Tutsi Paul Kagame, which marked the end of the atrocities, the Hutu militias, accused of numerous crimes, took refuge in neighboring North Kivu and tried to reorganize.

It was then that the new Rwandan government, still uncertain, undertook to destroy these Hutu militias through preventive campaigns in which the spirit of vengeance often took over. The Kigali regime thus waged a war by "proxy," that is, arming groups that fought under their own colors. This is how the March 23 Movement was born in 2012. It was the latter that had just defeated the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) in Goma.

But contrary to the original intention of preventing Rwanda from being the target of the exactions of a reconstituted Hutu power, the main motivation for the takeover of North Kivu is now economic, and has been for a long time. In 2021, a United Nations report stated that “the main reasons for the conflict in the DRC have become one of access to five major mineral resources: coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt, and gold, and the control and trade of these materials.”

The FARDC surrender in Goma is a new snub in particular for France, accused by public opinion in the DRC of not having done everything necessary to contain the Rwandan aggression on the national territory. Thus, on January 28, 2025, popular anger erupted in Kinshasa (DRC) leading to an attack on the French embassy where a fire was brought under control.

“These attacks are unacceptable. Everything is being done to ensure the safety of our agents and nationals,” posted Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, on X.

In the hell of Goma, Bishop Ngumbi, for his part, launched an appeal for unity, warning against “the great temptation in these circumstances to seek to divide ourselves, to fall into stigmatizing one another.”

In North Kivu, which remains one of the most populated regions of the country, the bishop implores: “We must remain united; we must remain in fraternity.” Several days after the capture of Goma, looting continued to increase in the city, worsening an already deplorable humanitarian situation.