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Vatican beatifies Congo customs worker for resisting corruption
The Vatican on Sunday is beatifying a Congolese customs worker who was killed for resisting a bribe, giving young people in a place with endemic corruption a new model of holiness: someone who refused to allow spoiled rice to be distributed to poor people.
The head of the Vatican's saint-making office, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, is presiding over the beatification ceremony on Sunday at one of the pontifical basilicas in Rome, St. Paul Outside the Walls.
The event is drawing Congolese pilgrims and much of Rome's Congolese Catholic community, who will be treated to a special audience on Monday with Pope Leo XIV.
Floribèrt Bwana Chui Bin Kositi was kidnapped and killed in 2007 after he refused to allow rancid rice from Rwanda to be transported across the border to the eastern DR Congo city of Goma.
As an official with the Congolese government's customs quality control office, the 26-year-old knew the risks of resisting bribes offered to public officials. But he also knew the risks of allowing spoiled food to be distributed to the most desperate.
'On that day, those mafiosi found themselves in front of a young man who, in the name of the Gospel, said 'No.' He opposed,' his friend Aline Manani said. 'And Floribèrt, I think that for me personally, I would say for all young people, is a role model.'
