The testimony concerns what happened in the summer of 2002 in Kitgum district, in northern Uganda, in an area attacked by the notorious LRA rebels (Lord's Resistance Army).

Hic sunt leones/dracones (here are lions/dragons) is reportedly a common phrase on medieval maps. It denoted unknown and unexplored regions, often very dangerous ones. Hic sunt leones is a phrase used in a similar way by Brother Jorge, the wicked monk in the novel The Name of the Rose, referring  to the dangerous knowledge contained in the books in the library, or when the novel's main character, Brother William of Baskerville, finds himself in the library  facing a map of Africa, which represents exactly that unexplored and dangerous region. There are countless stories about dangerous monsters roaming the edges of the world, but although people are convinced that monsters live in distant lands, it is surely also true that monsters can be found close to home, in our own surroundings and everyday life, and often within ourselves.

Remembering one's own past is an exercise we should all perform in order to confirm the importance of discernment with regard to the facts and events that matter in our lives. That is why I decided, in our weekly column "Hic sunt leones", to recall an experience I lived through eighteen years ago in Uganda. It is not simply a matter of properly recognising Divine Providence, but also an attempt to confront, by looking back, what is still happening today on the peripheries of our poor world: the debate about good and evil, about what is permitted or forbidden, about grace and sin, in order to overcome every kind of fundamentalism.

The account that follows, for me who writes it, dispels fear but is also, above all, an image of a drama I cannot forget. The testimony concerns what happened in the summer of 2002 in Kitgum district, in northern Uganda, in an area attacked by the notorious LRA rebels (Lord's Resistance Army). By God's mercy, these rebels are no longer present in Ugandan territory today, although they continue to ravage various parts of Africa. Under the leadership of their historic leader, a visionary madman named Joseph Kony (in the Acholi language: "grass") they continue to kill and destroy, especially in the Central African Republic and in areas of the former  Zaire and South Sudan.

On 28 August 2002, together with two Comboni brothers, I found myself in a place called Tumangu (in the Acholi language: "the place where the wild beast lives"), a village lost amid the tall grass, some thirty kilometres east of Kitgum. At that place, not far from the Sudanese border, with a name that was anything but encouraging, Father Tarcisio Pazzaglia, Father Carlos Rodriguez Soto and I meet a group of rebels, on a difficult peace-mediation mission promoted by the Catholic Church and other local religious leaders.

I won't hide that I felt fear, a great fear that still comes back even today. When that day returns to my memory, a feeling of being lost comes over me. I think it was a real miracle to manage to avoid death in such circumstances.

It is, to say the least, shocking to come face to face with these madmen who fight wearing some kind of rosary around their necks, in the name of a supposed god with bizarre demands: they strictly forbid eating white chickens, owning cattle of the Ankole ethnic group, and above all they command that anyone who drinks alcohol or smokes tobacco be killed. However, I take comfort in knowing that my two companions had already had the chance to live through this kind of experience in the past, and always successfully. On our arrival, Father Tarcisio was the first to speak, greeting everyone with disarming spontaneity. The rebels, little more than teenagers, all in camouflage clothing, make us sit on three chairs under a tree. I imagine there were about fifteen of them.

It was up to Father Carlos to explain the reason for our visit: to establish contact that could help dialogue in order to achieve peace. Suddenly a rebel jumps up and shouts: "Soldiers, soldiers, government!" Endless bursts of machine-gun fire followed, and bullets sprayed everywhere. The huts were smashed and turned into burning brushwood. We lie on the ground, heads turned aside, no longer able to count the blows.
Splinters fly everywhere, and a piece of burning roof hits Father Carlos, who had taken shelter under a hut, on the arm. All three of us hide under a tree, where only a few minutes earlier we had been talking with the rebels, waiting for someone in authority to recognise us. We scream at the top of our lungs: "We are missionaries, don't shoot." Soldiers are all around us, pointing their machine guns at our heads. We remain lying on the ground. Screaming at us, they accuse us of belonging to Al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile we hear children crying. I see some tied by the legs and thrown to the ground like chickens. A woman on the ground is bleeding, but no one helps her. Other people are beaten to death. They are accused of collaborating with the rebels. They take several personal belongings from us while a soldier jumps on our backs and some of them kick us. One of them deliberately lights a cigarette and then puts it out on my back. The soldiers, screaming, tell us we have no hope. "You'll soon be killed," they say in English.
This psychological abuse lasts about forty minutes. We look at each other in silence, thinking the worst. Father Tarcisio says to me: "Giulio, I think this is it." "All right," I answer, "let's pray to Father Raffaele Di Bari". I think of all my loved ones and of Father Raffaele, our brother whom the rebels killed in 2000. I ask him to intercede for us. I don't know what will become of my life, but I feel a great surrender and calm, a strange coldness. Suddenly a policeman steps forward. I had met him twenty years earlier in Kampala, and he recognises me. Thanks to him my life is saved. You can only imagine the relief, the joy, when he tells us we can get up.

However, our adventure is still not over. We have to get back to our mission in Kitgum, but we are still far from our  car. Government soldiers therefore order us to follow them through the tall grass so we can escape the rebels. They tell us they belong to a mobile army unit and were not informed of our meeting with the rebels. We walk through the savanna, under the sun, for eight hours or more.  Utterly exhausted, we reach the barracks at Pagim, a few kilometres from Kitgum. We ask for a little water, but it is refused us. We are then bundled into a vehicle, a jeep.
However, in Kitgum, instead of taking us back to the Catholic mission, for inexplicable reasons the army places us in detention. We are shut in a metal hut four metres across, with a window and a door. They take away our shoes and clothes, our trousers stay on. We again ask for a little water, but in vain. We won't be able to drink until eleven o'clock the next day. During the night we make our confession, and in the morning we are finally brought out, barefoot, escorted by intelligence soldiers who have come from the town of Gulu. They are much kinder than their colleagues we had dealt with until then, and let us get dressed and drink. They ask us many questions, and shortly afterwards fly us by helicopter to Gulu, to the highest local military authorities, who question us again.

According to the official version given by the Kampala authorities, the mobile unit fired on us because the relevant bodies had not been informed of our peace mission. However, Monsignor John Baptist Odama, Archbishop of Gulu, officially denies this. The local press repeats his words, recalling that the Kitgum authorities had been informed in advance, in accordance with the regulations. In the end we are told it was a "misunderstanding". We are released, but we remain shaken. We cannot help but think of the local population devastated by the war, a war we hear nothing about, except when news breaks of some missionary being kidnapped or killed.
Today, after some time, looking back on those tragic moments, I am more and more convinced that what we went through is a small thing compared with what is suffered by those who are exposed, from morning to night, to daily violence, murder and other horrors. As I write, I feel how  inadequate words are. It is one thing to write at a desk in a newsroom. It is quite another to watch blood flow with your own eyes, to smell the stench of corpses so strong you can barely breathe. Father Tarcisio, who died in 2018, telephoned me every year on 30 August to celebrate the day of our liberation.

One thing is certain: that civil war – from which arms dealers grew rich - ended after twenty years of unprecedented violence, causing at least 100,000 victims and more than a million displaced people. It ended in 2007, thirteen years ago. During the conflict, large numbers of school-age children were abducted.  Even today, it is not known what happened to many of these children. This time, dear readers, I sat down and began to write with a clear purpose: so that it will not be forgotten.

HIC SUNT LEONES