We Pray to Saints
The Associated Press recently ran a profile on Joshua Milton Blahyi, who fought through the Liberian Civil War as Gen. Butt Naked.
Gen. Butt Naked was the essence of war, embracing its violence and evil. His Butt Naked Battalion consisted of drunk and drugged teens and boys who went into battle in flowing dresses, colorful wigs and dainty purses looted from civilians. Their leader wore only laced-up boots and his weapon.
He claimed to have entered a pact with the Devil at age 11 in which he made regular human sacrifices and fought in the nude to ensure protection on the battlefield.
He told AP that many
of those sacrifices involved young children he would kill. His battalion
was equally brutal, once using the skull of a victim for soccer practice.
Gen. Butt Naked started fading in June 1996 when he said he saw God. Naked on the front line, God told him he was Satan's slave, not the hero he believed himself to be.
Today Blahyi is is an evangelical preacher leading a crusade against war and warlords.
Blahyi's conversion is a reminder of the most spiritual victims of the Liberian Civil War. A monument to those victims (picture at left) stands about an hour south of St. Louis on the grounds of the Ruma Convent.
The cemetery on the convent grounds is the final resting place for five members of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ who were killed in 1992 by rebel troops.
Sister Barbara Ann Muttra, Sister M. Joel Kolmer, Sister Shirley Kolmer, Sister Agnes Mueller and Sister Kathleen McGuire were all veteran missionaries who provided health care services and schooling in Liberia.
According to one eye witness report, one of the security men who was staying with the sisters for their protection wanted to visit a sick relative at home. Sisters Barbara and Joel left with the security man. Along the way, they picked up two soldiers from the West African countries monitoring the cease fire in the region. Their vehicle was ambushed by soldiers from the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and all were killed.
Sister Barbara, 69, had served in Liberia since 1971. Prior to her African mission, she helped refugees for three years in Vietnam during that bloody civil war.
Sister Joel, 58, was an elementary school teacher for 25 years in Illinois and Iowa before first arriving in Liberia in 1982.
Three days after the ambush, NPFL soldiers arrived at the sisters' house in Gardnersville. In a bizarre twist that recalls the satanic influence of Gen. Butt Naked, their commander claimed to be "C.O. Devil."
Sister Kathleen and a Lebanese security man met the soldiers at the convent gate where the men demanded the keys to the convent car. After taking the keys, C.O. Devil reportedly shot Sister Kathleen in the arm. The same bullet struck and killed the security man. C.O. Devil then reportedly fatally shot Sister Kathleen in the neck.
Sister Kathleen, 54, had spent the summer in Ruma before traveling to Liberia for the first time in 1991.Along with Sister Agnes, she had provided programs to help the people of Liberia deal with the trauma of the civil war.
The soldiers told those still in the house to come out. He separated Sisters Agnes and Shirley from the others. Sister Shirley began begging the soldiers to spare the lives of the others. Witnesses said C.O. Devil then shot the other two nuns down.
Sister Agnes, 62,was a teacher and nurse who first arrived in Liberia in 1987. Sister Shirley, 61, had been a nun for 45 years, spending nine years in Liberia. The provincial superior of Ruma province from 1978-83, she had reopened the St. Patrick High School in Liberia after warfare had forced the order to suspend its mission for a short period. The mission had only been back in Liberia for 20 months before the nuns were killed.
Warlords have assumed power in Liberia and most experts believe the peace is fragile. Many have questioned allowing the sisters to return to such an environment, but it was the sisters themselves who most wanted to go back and help the people of Liberia cope with the terror of war.
Someday -- probably not in this lifetime -- the Catholic church will likely canonize the Martyrs of Liberia, turning the cemetery on the Ruma Convent grounds into a pilgrimage point for American Catholics. After all, there is no other place in the United States where five saints are buried.
And it would be fitting that the memories of these holy victims of the atrocities of Liberia outlive the legacies of their killers.
In a war where soldiers assumed the name of the Devil and pledged allegiance to Satan, the true heroes were five women who died offering health care, education and the peaceful teachings of Jesus.