There has been no talk of compensating people for their loss, the priest says. "So how can we talk about forgiveness and reconciliation where there is no justice?"
Now for the past few months, Muslim civilians have been hunted down in the Central African Republic. This is usually explained as a collective spasm of Christian-led revenge. But Mbarta says there is a deeper reason.
Later that afternoon, he meets me behind the closed door of my hotel room. He's brought with him a scruffy-looking guy named Joseph Baba, who wears a thick coat despite the equatorial heat. From the pocket of that coat emerges a square of pink tissue paper. Unfolded, it reveals six uncut diamonds.
The Central African Republic, the priest says, is awash in diamonds and gold. For various historical and cultural reasons, most of the traders of those jewels have been Muslim. Over the decades since independence, he says, there's been growing resentment of the middleman traders by the mostly Christian miners. Even the priest isn't immune to it: His father was one of those villagers who eked out a living by panning gold from the rivers.
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