By Joyce Coronel | May 20, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

GLENDALE — Many Americans have a vague idea about the crushing poverty of Africa, but members of St. James Parish are actually doing something about it.

Fr. Robert Aliunzi, AJ, a native of Uganda and the pastor of St. James since 2005, has awakened his flock to the suffering of the children in his homeland. For more than 20 years, brutal violence, much of it at the hands of the rebel “Lord’s Resistance Army” plagued the northern region of the country.

More than 20,000 children were abducted by the LRA and turned into child soldiers, forced to commit atrocities. Fr. Aliunzi said the rebels even made some children kill their own parents “so they would have no one to go back to.”

The hardship suffered by orphans is all too familiar to the 47-year-old priest, who experienced it firsthand.

One of 10 children, he was only 5 years old when his father died. The following year, his mother and aunts drowned in the Nile River. Fr. Aliunzi and his siblings were forced to fend for themselves.

The eldest brother, then 17, married and took over as the father figure.

“We grew up barely surviving,” Fr. Aliunzi said. “We did odd jobs, sometimes getting taken advantage of, working the fields. Sometimes we had no food at all, but the greatest obstacle for us was the school fees.”

For many families, paying tuition and school expenses is an insurmountable obstacle. And for orphans, it’s nearly impossible. That didn’t stop Fr. Aliunzi’s thirst for knowledge.

“I used to sometimes sneak in the classroom and hide, sometimes being chased away from school for weeks,” Fr. Aliunzi said. “We would work in the fields for weeks just to get something.”

While he was away at a seminary high school, civil unrest in Uganda drove his entire tribe, including his siblings, to a refugee camp in the Sudan where they languished for six years. Fr. Aliunzi was 16 and all alone.

A Spanish priest from a neighboring parish took pity on the boy and paid his school fees. The cleric was later shot and killed by soldiers in 1980.

“He was helping a lot of orphans like me,” Fr. Aliunzi said.

Fr. Aliunzi was ordained a priest in 1991, began teaching and eventually became a high school principal.

By then, years of civil unrest and rebel violence had shattered the economy, not to mention the country’s educational system and infrastructure. Many children are still unable to go to school and illiteracy is rampant.

“I saw bright children, some of them orphans and some who didn’t know where their parents were, and I had the uncomfortable situation of having to chase them away,” Fr. Aliunzi said.

He chose eight children and started paying their school fees from what he was earning.

By 2004, Fr. Aliunzi was paying tuition for 12 students from his meager $200 monthly salary. He raised more money for students by growing vegetables and selling them to the university.

In 2005 his religious order, the Apostles of Jesus, told him he was going to be sent to a place he’d never heard of before: Phoenix. Fr. Aliunzi took all the money he had in savings and paid a whole year’s tuition for the 12 students.

One of the first people he met in Phoenix was Rosalie Weller, a former teacher and the counselor at St. James. Weller had a deep desire to help the people of Africa, even before meeting her new pastor.

“I said, ‘help me find a charity where the government doesn’t get a bite out of it and the overhead is not great,’” Weller said.

Fr. Aliunzi told her about his dream to eventually build a high school in Uganda. He had already formed an organization called EENU, Efforts to Educate the Needy Children of Uganda.

Not only did Weller choose a 12-year-old girl named Agnes to sponsor, she took the idea to the St. James parish council, which adopted the EENU as an outreach program. Immediately, 45 more children were sponsored.

Fr. Aliunzi then brought his message to other parishes in the Phoenix diocese. Parishioners from St. Thomas More, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Theresa have all stepped forward to help. Today 70 children are being sponsored, but there are 1,000 more on a waiting list.

The $60 sponsors pay monthly covers tuition, healthcare plus room and board for the students.