one of Sant’Egidio’s “Schools of Peace”, external<\/a> – which offer food and other assistance to get children an education.<\/p>\nToday Goma’s School of Peace is named in honour of him and has become an actual school.<\/p>\n
But in the early 2000s, the young undergraduate was often helping street children financially with school fees or food – or assisting them to become self-reliant in a city where almost everyone was struggling.<\/p>\n
“What struck me,” said Fr Tedeschi, “was how Floribert was someone who took the life of others very seriously and more importantly, he would ask himself a lot of questions to understand what the roots of poverty were – the misfortunes of people.<\/p>\n
“He liked talking, to confront these problems.”<\/p>\n
Kositi’s reach went beyond DR Congo’s borders. In Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, some 100km (60 miles) east of Goma, Bernard Musana Segatagara, a Sant’Egidio fellow, also remembers him.<\/p>\n
“Changing Africa and building peace was our shared dream as we observed a growing network of friendship. I think living in a region of tension was making our friendship even more special,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n
After graduating in 2006, Kositi began training as a customs official in the capital, Kinshasa, before taking up a senior post on the border between Rwanda and DR Congo in April 2007.<\/p>\n
The rice dispute involved a consignment of around four or five tonnes – which he had tested as he was worried about its safety and then ordered that it be destroyed.<\/p>\n
“At first that pushed the smugglers to try and bribe him, and later to threaten him. And Floribert always refused,” Fr Tedeschi said.<\/p>\n
“He refused based on his Christian principles. At one point he asked a doctor – a nun working in Goma, who was a friend – so he could really understand the dangers this rice would have represented to the civilian population.<\/p>\n
“And that’s what led him to think: ‘So me as a Christian, I can neither accept money nor that these people risk dying because of this poisoned food just because of corruption.'”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kositi took up his mission – and in particular his efforts focused on helping street children, Fr Tedeschi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-294811","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114922881294126566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}