Bahr El Ghazal, since it was - according to British records - "the only trade which has any money in it in these parts, except perhaps ivory" and for some years no anti-slavery posts were set up because of "financial reasons." However, it is not definitely clear whether Deim Zubeir and surrounding areas were still part of it. In any case, there was some presence of Greek merchants in Deim Zubeir, as trade was dominated by the Greeks in Sudan.thumb|1933 map of Deim Zubeir area|alt=|left In 1923, the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus - also known as the Verona Fathers - moved to realise "a long-dreamed plan of expansion in the west" by preparing the grounds for the founding of a mission station in Deim Zubeir. Already in 1905, their German Bishop Franz Xaver Geyer had visited the town on his tour to make an assessment of missionary potentials. 18 years later, Provincial Superior Father Angelo Arpe sent a Southern Sudanese catechist, Baptist Mufighi, to Deim Zubeir:"This was a major step for the Verona Fathers. In early times, the mission had been very hesitant about doing evangelistic work among Muslims. Mufighi began a school in Deim Zubeir but faced much opposition from the strong Muslim community there. When Baptist gathered children for his school, Tabaan, the man in charge of the Muslim school, ordered Baptist's school to be closed, and all the children sent home. Mufighi refused. He declared that he must be arrested first, and so presented himself to Major [Mervyn] Wheatley, the District Commissioner. Wheatley ruled that the new school should be allowed." The government approval to found a missionary station on the Southern fringe of the widely islamised North-Western Bahr El Ghazal has been considered by Lilian Passmore Sanderson as reflecting "the hardening of official policy against Islam in the South." And she stresses that "Ten years earlier, permission would almost certainly have been refused on the ground that Deim Zubeir was too sensitive an area for a mission station."For the first years, Mufighi was visited several times a year by Arpe and Father Giuseppe Pagliani at the nascent station. The mission was then officially founded in March 1926 by the fathers Luigi Bernhardt and Giacomo Gubert, who settled in a government compound. In December of that year they were joined by Pagliani, who stayed for altogether more than a decade and "- according to