ANTHONY LOYD | DISPATCH
Diamond-rich African country is a zombie host for Wagner Group
Russia has infiltrated every aspect — cultural, military, political and economic — of the impoverished Central African Republic. Anthony Loyd writes from Bangui in part one of a two-part series
The Times
As the exorcism progressed to the swing of the thurible, swirling incense and tumbled words of prayer, a sheen of sweat gathered on the priest’s face.
Monsignor Serguei Voyemawa crossed himself and placed his hands on the head of the young girl who sat bowed on a wooden stool at his feet, with flickering candles on each side. He had been summoned to drive out the evil spirits within her.
“Her parents told me that the girl was possessed, strangely sick and visited by phantoms in the night,” he told me. It was the ninth of 12 similar sessions the child had undergone in the Saint André’s Russian Orthodox church in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic (CAR).
Monseigneur Serguei Voyemawa is the first priest from the CAR to belong to the Russian Orthodox Church
ANTHONY LOYD FOR THE TIMES
As the last prayers ended, the
