For the past 22 years, the Arab Muslims in the north of Sudan waged a bloody battle with the mainly Black Christian and Animist southern Sudan.

Christian families were torn apart as family members were sold into slavery. Children were forced to become child soldiers. And more than two million people have died in the conflict.

But since a peace accord was signed a year ago, an uneasy peace has settled across most of the north and south of Sudan.

It's time to begin rebuilding lives. But even as peace is restored in the south, international attention turns to the western province of Darfur.

The Sudanese government is accused of carrying out a deliberate ethnic cleansing of Black Muslims. Thousands have died in Darfur in the past three years. Many of those who were able to escape, have flooded across the border into southern Sudan - a region already weakened by war with the north.

Bishop Macram Max Gassis said, "These are human beings destroyed by the war, traumatized by the war. Forgotten by the international community.
Are they also going to be forgotten by the church?"

The diocese of Bishop Macram Max Gassis cuts a swath right through the central part of Sudan. It goes deep into war ravaged Darfur and into the hotly contested Nuba mountain region.

The bishop is helping to lead the charge to bring aid to refugees from Darfur and rebuild the ravaged south of Sudan.

The Catholic Diocese of Sudan is drilling wells for clean water, building schools and providing medical care -- bringing hope to the bruised and battered people of Sudan.