Mission priest inspires vocation in young man he baptized in 1979

Sudanese Father Alfred Loro Caesar, left, and Comboni Father Michael Barton pose for a photograph on Aug. 7 outside the Archbishop O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis.

By Mary Ann Wyand

With God, all things are possible.

Comboni Father Michael Barton, a native of Indianapolis who has served the Catholic Church in southern Sudan as a missionary priest from 1978 to 1986 and from 1993 to the present, believes that but admits that God still surprises him.

Last summer, Father Barton met a Sudanese man that he baptized as a 6-year-old boy during a missionary visit to the Bari village of Yaro in 1979.

Now 33, the man is a diocesan priest for the Archdiocese of Juba, but they didn’t meet in Sudan or even in Africa.

While he was home for a family visit, Father Barton met Father Alfred Loro Caesar at St. Pius X Church in Indianapolis when the Sudanese priest was making a mission appeal during weekend Masses there in August.

It’s hard to imagine, Father Barton said, that he would meet one of the tens of thousands of Sudanese children he has baptized—during 22 years of missionary work in Africa—half a world away in his own hometown.

But then again, he said, smiling, God works in amazing ways.

“I was 6 years old when I was baptized by him in my own village,” Father Loro said during an Aug. 7 interview at the archdiocesan Mission Office at the Archbishop O’Meara Catholic Center in Indianapolis.

“That is all I can remember,” Father Loro said. “Our village is not far from the parish where he served among the Bari [people]. He even taught me a little English.”

Father Loro attended a Comboni grade school as a child and was confirmed in the Church, but had to flee from Yaro to Juba in 1988 because of the civil war in southern Sudan.

“He suffered during the war,” Father Barton said. “It was very difficult for the boys. He had to run away to many places. He had to flee for his life several times.”

Father Loro entered the seminary in the Archdiocese of Juba and was ordained in 2005.

During his mission appeal visit to the U.S. last summer, Father Loro preached at Masses at Catholic churches in Connecticut, Delaware and Indiana.

“We met when he was baptized in 1979,” Father Barton said. “The first time I am able to concelebrate Mass with him is … in my own hometown.”

Their unexpected reunion was amazing, Father Loro said. “I told him he inspired me very much. … I found my way to the seminary.”

Now Father Loro serves as the rector of the minor seminary in the Archdiocese of Juba, where 75 young men are studying for the priesthood this year.

In his mission talks, Father Loro shares the good news of the Church in Sudan

and recounts horrifying statistics from the 21-year civil war that ended in 2005 and the current holy war waged by Muslim extremists in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Despite this new conflict and threats to the Jan. 9, 2005, peace accord, Father Loro and Father Barton recently returned to Sudan to serve God’s people as best they can in the wake of continuing violence there.†