The new Congolese blessed rejected the bribes because it followed Christ

The Congolese Floribert Bwana Chui is already Blessed and the Catholic Church will celebrate its liturgical party on July 8. The young man of the community of Sant’Egidio, killed in 2007 for refusing to accept bites, constitutes a “honesty and moral integrity model for the entire universal church”, says Aci Prensa Fr. Francesco Tedeschi, a postulator of his cause.

“He rejected the bribes because he followed Christ. His figure represents the hope that the Democratic Republic of Congo can leave not only corruption, but also of the curse of the conflict fed by dark economic interests,” he explains.

The Gospel lived without borders

He was born on June 13, 1981 in rubber, capital of Kivu, in eastern Congo, a region that has never known peace. When I was a student, He knew the community of Sant’Egidio – as they themselves report on their website— which prompted him to visit the poor, especially the aiboboname with which the children of the street in the region of the great lakes are known. Floribert, through the Peace School, wanted them to study and help them become the Congolese of the future.

“He was a young Christian who wanted to live the gospel without borders,” explains Fr. Tedeschi. “The experience with the community and the poor made him mature the certainty that with the Gospel it was possible to realize the dream of peace,” he adds.

He went to Kinshasa to work, to the Congolese of Control, the state agency that deals with verifying the quality of the goods that enter the country, but after a period of training in a capital full of opportunities, he decided to return to his native rubber, where his friends, his fiancee and the street children were.

First he received threats

After his return to rubber, Floribert began working in the customs of the city. There he detected the entry of food products in poor condition. “For the first time on that border, he blocked and ordered to destroy the merchandise. That decision unleashed the fury of local mafias that tried to bribe it, without success, and then began to threaten it,” explains the postulator.

Then Floribert consulted with a doctor from Sant’Egidio what there were if that game of damaged rice packages reached the population. “This confirmed it in the justice of his speech. He said that if he followed Christ he could not accept that money. That he was worth the lives of people than money,” says Fr. Tedeschi who has compiled more than thirty testimonies – like that of this doctor – to elaborate the position; The document about his life he delivered to The diocesan phase of beatification.

Another of them is that of Jonathan, one of the children he rescued from the street, when he asks why he helped him, Floribert replied: “Because for God all are the same, they have the same rights. God feels all peoples to the same table.”

He said no to the “dirt of corruption”

The young Congolese was only 26 years old when he was kidnapped. Two days later of his disappearance a motorcyclist found him lifeless. His body had the signs of the blows and the torture suffered during the hours of captivity.

“He could have ignored it; they would not have discovered it and even benefited. But, as a Christian, he prayed, he thought of others and chose to be honest, saying no to the dirt of corruption,” Pope Francis recalled during his visit to Kinshasa in 2023 before thousands of young people.

In addition to testimonies, Fr. Tedeschi also picked up significant documents that show his faith as a page of his personal Bible, where he had underlined the passage of the Gospel of Luke 3 in which John the Baptist urges not to demand more than because he already due already content with the salary itself. “He was one of the biblical texts he used during his meditations,” says the priest.

Last Sunday in the Basilica of San Pablo Extramuros in Rome, Cardinal Marcello Semerao, Prefect of the Dicasterio for the causes of the saints presided over their beatification.

A ceremony, which could not be held in rubber for the spiral of violence between the March 23 movement (M23), supported by Rwanda, and the Congolese army in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “The celebration in Rome was a sign of the open wound of a country still marked by war and violence,” he said.

“The Gospel changes your life”

Fr. Tedeschi personally met Floribert. A friendship that made him understand “how much the Gospel, if you really listen to it and make it life orientation, change your existence and make it a message for others.” Floribert Bwana is the fourth blessed of the Congolese Catholic Church and the first of the community of Sant’Egidio.