You may not have heard the name of Blessed Floribert Bwana Chui, who was beatified on Sunday, June 15, in Rome, but it is likely you can identify with his struggle. At the Sant’Egidio African Easter Congress in 2002, he said:
Prayer is fundamental: I believe in the Eternal One, and I believe that in prayer He will grant me what I ask of Him. But, well, recent events seem to contradict what I just said. I’ve lost everything. Was I perhaps unjust? Why didn’t God listen to my prayer? Why didn’t He protect my life? But I also think that God is not a machine designed to fulfill my requests. So, I realize, rather, that prayer helps me understand what is happening, and it reminds me of my fragility—the fact that I am only a man, a man who always needs help.
With these words, he cut straight to the heart of perhaps the most common Christian doubt: What to do in an unjust world?
Floribert was a young man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from a well-to-do family, who dreamed of following Jesus. After university, he became a customs officer in Goma, responsible for reviewing shipments of food. He understood that protecting the health of his people was paramount, a continuation of living for Christ, for others. Therefore he refused to follow in his predecessor’s path of corruption, instead snubbing the bribes that had tempted many others.
This choice, rooted in faith, led many to hate him, culminating in his kidnapping, torture and death on July 8, 2007. But his life, rooted in the Gospel, lives on, a model for all Christians looking for direction in a confusing world.
Floribert was a leader of the Community of Sant’Egidio in the D.R.C. When Pope Francis visited the community in 2014, he described it as guided by three P’s: prayer, the poor and peace. These three P’s defined Floribert’s life and are again proposed to the church as a model for discipleship.
Floribert experienced the truth that has sustained the church for millennia: God speaks to us through prayer. Floribert understood that the well that never runs dry is the word of God, and he returned to it regularly, always keeping his Bible with him, even unto death. Prayer, hearing God’s word, reminds us that it is not our own entrepreneurial efforts or spontaneous initiative that create change, but rather our openness to let the Holy Spirit move through us and invite us into a new life.
Floribert was well acquainted with the overwhelming feeling of helplessness that many feel. In fact, it was so pervasive in Kinshasa that a well-known proverb warned any who dared to dream: Okanisi te yo nde okobongisa Congo, which translates to “Don’t believe that you will be the one to straighten out the Congo.”
But in prayer, Floribert allowed his heart to be touched by the Lord. He understood that the mustard seed of the kingdom is small. He understood that change began with personal conversion and that only from this and a new approach toward the margins of society could a new reality emerge.
He opened his life to those he met and experienced the beauty that comes from sharing life with others, especially the poorest. With the Community of Sant’Egidio in Goma, he began to care for local street children, the maibobo, bringing them food and taking them under his wing. He personally paid for the education of some and allowed his world to be turned upside down. These young lives, forgotten and discarded as collateral in the culture of waste, were considered by many locals as untrustworthy, mischievous and hopeless.
Floribert had learned the value of love freely given. In a world in which everything is bought and sold, in which everything has its price, Floribert lived freely, refusing to put a price on the lives of others. The Gospel invitation to love your neighbor as yourself, as Floribert experienced, means to get out of our comfort zones—which we build for protection but end up stifling us—and into the messiness of other people’s lives.
Floribert was not satisfied with mediocrity or small things. He dreamed of peace. He wanted peace for every child of the School of Peace, for all of Africa, and for the whole world. And he understood that it is only by living for others that we can have peace—peace not achieved by conquest or convincing but by the fraternal embrace that follows from a recognition of human dignity. Floribert’s was a vision where “peace brings everyone to the same table,” irrespective of ethnic tribe, social class or any other division.
In his Angelus address on July 2, 2023, Pope Francis meditated on prophecy in today’s world: “The prophet is the one who shows Jesus to others, who bears witness to him, who helps live today and build the future according to his designs.”
In the last months of his life, Floribert was repeatedly pressured to let spoiled food through his post. He refused, keeping his hands and heart clean, as Pope Francis said during his visit to Kinshasa. His “conscience formed in prayer,” as Pope Leo XIV described it, strengthened by love for the poor and a desire for peace, held firm in the conviction that “it is better to die than to accept this money.” He felt that the Gospel was not a book of rules but words of life, hope and salvation. For this he was tortured and killed. Yet the church recognized her son as blessed, and his memory lives on.
Floribert Bwana Chui is a prophet for our time, for all those, especially the young, who feel that there is no future, that evil is advancing, and that hope is lost. For those of us mired in uncertainty, Floribert’s embodied life of discipleship points to Jesus who says “come and follow me.”
In one of his last conversations, Floribert sought reassurance with a friend, Sister Jeanne-Cécile. In prayer, the poor and peace, we can make his question ours today and every day: “Do I live for Christ or not?”
