After recently visiting the Tigray region of Ethiopia, which suffered one of the deadliest conflicts of the 21st Century, Bishop Paul Swarbrick, Lead Bishop for Africa, has said that some people there are so traumatised by war that when they see birds in flight, they automatically mistake them for drones.
Speaking on our Catholic News podcast, Bishop Swarbrick shared some of his experiences visiting Tigray in March this year at the invitation of CAFOD, the overseas aid and development charity of the Bishops’ Conference.
He said:
“You will have heard of the use of drones in modern warfare – particularly relating to Gaza and Ukraine – but what I was made aware of is how people instinctively now, if they see black dots in the sky, even in the distance, they associate them first with hostile drones rather than with birds or wildlife. That’s the mentality that they now have after their experience of warfare.”
The conflict took place in the Tigray region of Ethiopia from 2020 to 2022 between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian federal government and its ally, Eritrea.
A peace deal was brokered in November 2022 but the region is still extremely unstable and impacted by the conflict which some estimates suggest resulted in the deaths of 600,000 people.
An emotional Bishop Swarbrick shared some stories of the horrors inflicted upon the displaced people he met:
“I’d met with displaced persons. This was in Mekele in Tigray, and it was the first day of my visit there. And I listened after I’d visited the displaced persons and seen the sadness in the eyes of the old people – just the lostness of people there.
“I was invited to listen to a report on the work of the Daughters of Charity, and it’s affecting me now, actually. What hit home so much was just the awfulness of what was done to one of these women in particular. I didn’t meet her. I was just told about her.
“But the way she had suffered violence, rape – it’s just the level of evil that is so planned and so calculated.”
Bishop Swarbrick said that while the Church’s work in areas like Tigray has an incredibly important humanitarian dimension, it is also has a special role in bringing the message of the Gospel to a suffering people.
He said:
“Christ said, ‘My peace I give you, a peace not of this world, is my gift to you.’ That doesn’t mean that all other efforts are a waste of time. But what it means is that the human spirit is crying out for something that this world alone cannot provide.”
He added: “But there’s something that awakened in us when we encounter the Lord that is able to overcome being overwhelmed by the bad stuff.”
You can listen to the full interview with Bishop Paul Swarbrick here or on our Catholic News channel.
A gallery of photographs from Bishop Swarbrick’s March 2025 visit to Ethiopia.
