Fr. John Garry RIP - A Good and Joyful Man

 

1994 September Fr. John Garry Nimule Sudan

There is an excellent hour long interview with Fr. John in 2022 at this link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSytXxnc_u0

John passed on suddenly 21 October 2025 in his home in Tullamore Ireland.  This is my small tribute to a man who was kind to everyone and always joyful.

I arrived in Torit Sudan in October 1991. I had visited Palataka mission on several occasions before I moved there from Torit in May 1992.  Fr. Leo Traynor had asked us Maryknoll Lay Missioners to leave Torit because of insecurity from the war.  We arrived in the afternoon of 16th May.  John was living with Fr. Tom McDonnell and neither of them knew we were coming. Leo explained to them what had happened in Torit and they gave us each a big spacious room on the second floor of their house.

1992 Tom Lis Agatha John Abrehet Susan Giovennina

We stayed in Palataka only two weeks trying to assist the 3000 boys in the FACE (Friends of African Children) foundation school with health care. On 28th May Khartoum captured Kapoeta and Fr. Leo brought the Maryknoll Cloister Sisters and S. Doreen, Sacred Heart Sister, to Palataka the next day. Bishop Taban sent a letter with them asking all expatriate personnel to leave the diocese for a while. 

On Sunday morning, 31st May, John was preparing to go to Panyikwara to say Mass.  Commander William Sebit came early with many soldiers and told him they were ordered to take his truck for an important mission.  John handed over the keys and went in another truck to say Mass.

After John left, another man came from Torit. He told Tom that other diocesan vehicles had been confiscated in Torit. The concern was that the SPLA would return to Palataka and take more of our vehicles.  Maryknoll had one vehicle and the Comboni Sisters had another, both hardtop Landcruisers.

John returned midday to chaos and confusion.  He was adamant that all of us expatriate women should take our belongings in our two vehicles and move to Loa Parish, 60 miles away. We left at 4pm. He was concerned that Khartoum might try to come out of Torit towards Palataka and meet us on the way.  He told us if we saw people running towards us to turn around and go back to the mission. 

I wonder what it was like for John and Tom to watch us drive off a few hours before dusk, not knowing what would happen to us. There were no radios or any means of communications at all. We arrived safely in Loa well after dark. Sometime later, John and Tom also left Palataka. But they went south, directly into Uganda. I had left my guitar in Palataka knowing that the Acholi were musically inclined and would surely enjoy using it. John wasn't so generous. He took it to Uganda and returned it to me later; this time with a sticker on the inside that said, Palataka Honey.

John had been happy working in Kenya. When he was assigned to Sudan without consultation he obeyed. But it was challenging.  Around the same time, Sr. Joanne, MMM who had been at his parish in Kipsaramen Kenya had been assigned to Ethiopia and agreed to go.  He told her later that her courage helped him to accept his transfer to the Diocese of Torit. When he arrived, he spent three months learning Latuho.  It is a very difficult language. After three months the bishop asked him to learn Acholi and work in Palataka! Once again he obeyed.  It is an easier language but I give credit to John for keeping at it!!!! He became quite fluent in Acholi! As you will see, Palataka was a 600 acre farm and the place for this farmer's son to settle.

John wanted to do more than grow maize and soya beans. The UN brought in corn/soya blend for the malnourished. He had heard of a program at the U. of Illinois, USA to train farmers on how to extrude soy beans after harvest. So he came to Urbana IL and stayed in our home for a long weekend, along with S. Sean/Nina Underwood, to learn how to extrude the soy beans and process the product to remove the bitter taste.  His idea was to put an extruder on the back of his pick up truck and drive it around to the various fields at harvest time and process the harvest on site. Unfortunately, the research into mobile extruders was still in progress. While he waited for them to progress, the war encroached and dashed his hopeful plan for feeding the hungry.

A lot happened with the war and by Oct 1992 I ended up in Nimule. In November William Nyuon took Palataka while John was in Nairobi for treatment of his back. 

1993 July John Susan Patrick Fleming Lis

John's nephew, Dr. Patrick Fleming, came to work with our medical team in Nimule in July 1993.  He is now an orthopedic surgeon.  But at that time we had many patients with trachoma, an eyelid infection that causes scarring that pulls the eye lashes down and into the eye.  The lashes scratch and scar the cornea causing pain and eventually blindness. Patrick took on this challenge and did surgery on several patients to evert the eyelids and prevent these problems. He came at a time of particular insecurity, especially in Palataka. Patrick left in August and by September it was no longer safe for John to stay in Palataka.

1993 Doreen Taban Rita John

So John relocated to Nimule to live and work in our parish with Leo. It was another difficult transition for him.  The local language was Maadi, one of the most difficult languages in the diocese.  We mainly used Juba Arabic and English to communicate. John struggled to find his place as mayhem continued to unfold with the SPLA.

1993 Nimule church

Christmas 1993 John Marj Lis Susan Nina Pauline

By January 1994 Khartoum had begun its offensive to retake Nimule. On 3rd April, Easter Sunday, 100,000 people in the AAA camps for displaced people up near Loa parish began to move at the command of the SPLA. Between 30-40,000 people walked through Nimule to Sau which was 17 miles south of us.  They were resettled in the Mogali One and Two camps. Amidst all this turmoil we made a special meal on 13th April to celebrate John's 25th ordination to the priesthood. 

John's ministry evolved to include regular visits to the internally displaced peoples' camps (IDP) in Mogali. He told me an endearing story about Magdalena...

In the IDP camps, meager amounts of grain that required grinding by hand between two large stones, pulses, salt and cooking oil were distributed intermittently, never in adequate quantity.  All of my patients were decidedly lean.  Many were severely malnourished.  Magdalena was a small, wiry woman of middle age with jet black skin stretched tautly over her prominent bones and joints.  Her smile displayed bright white teeth that splayed in various directions as she ran up to greet a guest.  She would grab the person’s hand with both of hers and shake them excitedly in a pumping fashion.  There were very few guests to witness her enthusiasm.

     John was one of the fortunate few.  He arrived in Mogali Two one hot sun searing morning on his motor bike to say Mass, having bounced and jostled over a rutted 15-mile path from the mission compound in Nimule. He knew his parishioners and often cringed at their destitution.  For some unknown political reason there had not been any recent distribution of relief food.  People were very hungry.  He carried his few liturgical vessels in a knap sack on his back and set them up on a small table provided under the shade of a bent over, lonely, withering tree.  Magdalena helped to gather the women and children on the dusty ground in a semicircle in front of him.  One or two elderly men were privileged to sit in a rickety, bamboo locally made chair.  But women felt most comfortable sitting on the ground on a reed mat with their legs at right angles to their torso, stretched out in front of them.

     Mass was said in English.  There were more than ten local languages among the faithful and many of them could understand the regular repetitive prayers in this academic language.  Among themselves, they used a simple form of Juba Arabic to communicate.  But no one knew that language well enough to understand the complicated ‘high’ Arabic used in books for prayers.  Magdalena was Nuer, having come from hundreds of miles to the north.  

     Religious liturgies were event markers.  Few patients could tell me the date they were born.  The most frequent answer given to me was a description of the weather or some cataclysmic event in the community.  But everyone knew the date they were baptized as well as the name of the priest who presided, most often a Comboni Missionary priest. Rather than celebrating birthdays, John was often asked to say a Mass for the anniversary of someone’s Baptism.

     But today was just an ordinary Mass.  When this simple, nondescript liturgy ended, John quietly packed up his ruck sack on the back of his motor bike, planning to slip away quickly. Magdalena was distraught.

     “Abuuna, aren’t you going to wait for a small breakfast?” she called out to him using an endearing Arabic title meaning ‘Our Father’.  He turned towards her hesitantly and kept his eyes down a bit.

     “Ah Magdalena, there’s no food at all in the camp and everyone is very hungry.  I’d feel ashamed to be taking your food.”

     “Don’t worry about that,” she smiled with all her teeth shining brilliantly.  “Many of the women each gave me a spoonful of maize meal so I could prepare a bit of porridge for you before you go back to the mission.  Why shouldn’t we give you something to eat when you so generously feed us with the Body of Christ every week?  A small bowl of porridge is nothing compared with this beautiful gift.  It’s our way of saying thank you for coming to see us.  Saying Mass for us is crucial.  Without it, we could never survive in this place.”

     Acknowledging the essence of the liturgy that he thought had been completed, he sat down with them to savor the community porridge over a friendly chat.

The Khartoum government offensive continued. With their troops stationed at Pageri, the SPLA blew up the bridge at the Aswa river 12 miles north of Nimule and the river became the frontline.  From June to August all diocesan personnel in Nimule relocated to northern Uganda. 

In September Bishop Taban asked John and I to investigate working in Pajok, the town on the border of Uganda south of Palataka.  For John this was attractive.  For me it would mean a new adventure. The local SPLA commander was a good man but he cold only guarantee our security in this small village.  Without the ability to serve surrounding communities we returned to assess Nimule. There we found 30,000 people in the Mogali camps with no support for the health care provided by the few local health care workers who lived there.  The need was immense. Bishop Taban approved a small group of us to return to Nimule and travel to Mogali regularly.

By March 1995, Irish GOAL workers had returned as well but could not manage the insecurity where they worked north of us.  Upon leaving they asked John if they could turn over their large stores of medical supplies to the diocese. He agreed but asked them to move the items to the diocesan seminary in Kocoa, northern  Uganda. We would travel to Kocoa on Saturdays to pick up the supplies we needed for the coming week.  One of our trips was surprising....

Early one bright sunny Saturday morning,  John drove me in our big, medical Toyota Landcruiser on a day trip to pick up medical supplies in Kocoa.  It was the rainy season.  Even at this early hour the hot humid air hung heavy as the bonnet of the car batted away freshly grown grasses that clogged the radiator screens with their seed laden heads.  The car wheels matted down the grasses creating two lines of smashed passage by infrequent vehicles that traversed this ‘panya’ route; the route most frequented by rats through the forest. There were only two of us in the front of the car. It was a challenging trip for my priest/driver and boring for me in the passenger’s seat as we lurched along at a snail’s pace.

     I hung my arm over the open window to my right with my head turned in the same direction to keep the sun on the back of my head.  As I watched the ground tediously move from front to back of the car a man’s body rolled into view, lying supine but only from the waist down with tangled entrails exposed.  My eyes locked and the car stopped.

     “Did you see that?” John asked.  I numbly replied yes, turned my head away and looked straight ahead through the windshield.  Only later did I learn that John was referring to the torso of the man that he saw hanging among the branches of a tree on the left side of the car near him.

     We were both completely silent as he began to move the car forward again, inch by inch, slowly following a slight curve to the left.  The forest shadows blocked out the sun as we saw a man standing in the road ahead with one hand raised while the other clutched an AK47 slung across his chest.  He was young, wearing the army uniform of the Ugandan Peoples Defense Force. John brought the car to a dead stop and killed the engine as the short, thin Ugandan soldier began to walk towards us. He stopped on the driver’s side of the car and spoke to us through the open window where John had rested his forearm.

     “You are from Sudan?” the soldier shouted in harsh staccato English.

     “Yes,”  John replied in similar, curt special English. 

     “You see that hole in the ground?” The soldier pointed the weapon in his hands to a substantial cavity in the ground ahead of the car.  We stared through the windshield to the disturbed pile of dirt in front of the vehicle, every muscle of our bodies frozen in place.

     “That was a landmine that blew up.  It killed those who were trying to lay it last night.  What’s more, it was set for you people,” the soldier barked.

     I leaned forward and asked incredulously, “But why would anyone want to kill us?” 

     We knew the soldier was referring to the Lord’s Resistance Army, commonly known as the LRA.  They operated on both sides of the border as a rag tag ‘army’ of Ugandans from the Acholi ethnic group.  John knew their language well, having worked with them for many years in Sudan. This rebel group was born from the visions of a woman known as Alice Lakwena.  She claimed God told her to rebel against the government of Uganda and form a new government based on the ten commandments.

     In her old age, Alice sought refuge in Kenya and a former Catholic catechist, Joseph Kony, took up her mantel back in Uganda, continuing her crusade.  Since the Acholi lived on both sides of the border, they could easily cross into southern Sudan through the bush and set up camps in remote forests.  Having supplied the LRA with means to communicate their location, Sudanese aircraft could then drop all manner of supplies to their remote locations.

     “You are the missionaries,” the soldier replied to my query.  “You are giving the people hope.  In a war when there is an enemy to be defeated, the enemy cannot be given hope.  If you are ever leaving Sudan, do not tell anyone you are going to get your medicines or anything like that.  And do not go in the same way or at a regular time.”

From then on we followed the soldier's advice! In June 1995 John left Nimule to attend the Faith and Mission course at Dalgan Park in Navan Ireland. He returned to Kiryandongo Uganda with Tom McDonnell to work for six years with Sudanese refugees there, most of whom were Acholi.  I visited in January 2002 and it was evident that he was very happy there. He avoided getting in the picture with the women health care workers but his house is in the background. John was always putting us women front and center.

2002 Jan Kiryandongo health workers
John's house is in the back

We kept in touch over the years.  I eventually moved to Kitale Kenya when he was the assistant regional in Nairobi for the St. Patrick Society.  When our hospital was inundated with hundreds of patients during the postelection violence in 2008-2009 he sent funds donated from Ireland to cover the medical needs of the many displaced people from Mt. Elgon who had rarely had access to health care. When he moved to Surrey England to do fund raising for the SPS he offered me a room to stay overnight on my long haul flight back to the USA.

What a shock  to hear of his sudden passing on 21 October 2025. For a man who had faced death so many times earlier in life, it seems unfair that we didn't have a chance to say goodbye. But John knew better than most of us how important the present moment is and he attended to it with enthusiasm and his joy filled smile. While I will miss him, I am sure he continues to cheer all of us along in our life journeys. May he rest in peace. For us, may his memory be a blessing.

2020 Fr. John Garry Ordination Jubilee