Church sources in Khartoum said the expulsion of a South Sudanese priest and two Christian Brothers was due to “questions of administration and not a decision to target the Catholic Church.”
Missionary agency MISNA said the expulsions were connected with the Catholic Language Institute-Khartoum or CLIK, a school of Arabic for expatriate missionaries started in 1989.In the latter years CLIK was frequented mostly by lay people.
Church sources said CLIK was closed because it was operating in new terms and it did not have a license.
The expulsion of Fr Santino Maurino and the two brothers, who ran CLIK on behalf of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, was due to that administrative gap and not an intervention to affect the relations between Church and government.