The day before he died, Father Monga baptized 175 people along the banks of the Mbomou River. One hundred sixty of them were Christians who had recently been driven from their homes by violence in the region. He spent his last hours as a free man standing in the water with the displaced, welcoming them into the church.
Father Monga chaired Zémio's Peace Committee, a body working to hold together a fragile truce among communities caught between several armed factions, soldiers of the Central African Armed Forces, and mercenaries from a Russian private military company who all operate in the area. Bishop Aurelio Gazzera of Bangassou, a missionary in the country for 35 years, said the priest "was deeply committed to dialogue" and that "it is possible that he was killed to block the peace process currently underway in Zémio."
Father Monga was buried July 1 at Saint Peter Claver Cathedral in Bangassou. Bishop Gazzera said crowds lined the road to bid him farewell, "deeply moving scenes that reflected the affection and respect the local people felt for him." He urged the faithful not to lose heart.
A Peacemaker Cut Down
Now here is a strange thing, my friend, and I want you to sit with it a moment. This was not a soldier cut down in a firefight. This was a man who spent his last day in a river, pouring water over the heads of the poor and the driven-out, telling them they belonged to God. And for that, somebody put a bullet in his head.
The world calls that senseless. I call it exactly what the Book says it would be. Our Lord never promised His people that peacemaking would be safe. He promised it would be blessed.
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." (Matthew 5:9)
Notice what that verse does not say. It does not say the peacemakers shall be applauded, or protected, or thanked by the men with the guns. It says they shall be called the children of God. That is the reward, and for a man like Father Monga, standing in a river with 175 souls the day before he died, it was reward enough.
There is a second word for what this priest did, and it is the same word the Lord used of Himself.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)
Father Monga did not know, standing in that water, that his hours were numbered. But he had already spent years choosing the harder road — sitting down with rival factions, walking into villages other men avoided, trying to talk gunmen into laying down what they carried. That is a kind of dying before the dying. A man who gives his days to peace has already handed over his life; the bullet only finishes the paperwork. You may never stand between armed men in the Central African Republic. But you know what it costs to be a peacemaker in your own house, your own street, your own church — to be the one who forgives first, who speaks the hard truth in love, who will not let bitterness win. The world will not thank you for it either. It rarely does. But Heaven keeps better books than the world does, and every peace bought at a price is remembered there. Pray for the Christians of Zémio, driven from their homes and now grieving the man who baptized them in a river days before he died. And ask the Lord to make you, in your own small corner, the kind of peacemaker that costs you something. That is the only kind worth being.