The leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has asked for forgiveness anew for the role played by the Roman Catholics during the Rwandan Genocide. An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a genocide that lasted 14 days while the world watched on. In the aftermath of the aborted ethnic cleansing, a number of organisations and international bodies were named as accomplices and sponsors of the brutal killings.
France, which openly backed the Hutu regime, was pointed out as the major supplier of weapons used in the killings. They have since remained in a torrid relationship with the Paul Kagame-led Rwanda. The United Nations, which displayed an acute unconcern and unwillingness to stop the killing by instructing peacekeepers not to shoot, has since apologised for its role, accepting it could have done better to prevent the bloodshed especially when the writings were clearly and boldly written on the wall. For the record, the United Nations Peace Corps were on ground when the killings started and additional reinforcement and request to combat the killers by soldiers on round were rejected by the United Nations executives.
The Roman Catholic Church, which was the road through which the Belgians walked into Rwanda, was a major player in spreading propaganda, planning and executing Tutsis and Hutus during the genocide. At least, an estimated 8,000 people including Tutsis and Hutu priests died within the premises of Catholic churches where they were seeking refuge. The Ntarama Catholic Church saw at least 5,000 people killed on 15th August 1994. Father Athanase Seromba also ordered his church bulldozed, with about 2,000 Tutsis inside. Father Wenceslas Munyeshyacka helped draw up a list and participated in the killings. The Roman Catholic Church all through the period maintained close political ties with the ruling government. However, in spite of all these reports, the church had until November 2016 maintained their innocence in the crime. They stated that though individual priests and nuns might have committed offences, the priests are not necessarily the church.
The committee of Catholic Bishops in Rwanda, however, in November 2016 apologised for the role of the church in the genocide. The statement recorded the first time since the genocide that the church would acknowledge its role in planning, aiding and executing the killings. While some priests in Rwanda refused to read the apology to their members, the latest comment by the Pope shows the church has come of age to fully accept what it did. However, the Pope’s statement is all but short of an apology. Even if it comes off as one, at that, what the victims of the genocide, especially those ones that died directly from the actions and inactions of the church, deserve is justice, not apologies.
Ever since the case against the murderous priests has been established in the aftermath of the genocide, the Roman Catholic Church has not only smuggled those priests out of Rwanda, they have made sure that the arms of law never caught up with them. They have relocated the priests to Belgium and France with one of them changing his name and continuing as a parish priest.
These priests are as guilty as the members of the Interahamwe militia who murdered over 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. They should, therefore, be allowed to answer to their charges. The people who died at the hands of men they trusted with their lives deserve more than an apology. They deserve justice and should not get less. Until justice is served, until the church stops sheltering the accused priests from attempts to hold them accountable, whatever is put forward in the name of apology by the church remains invalid. For now, according to Philip Gourevitch, the author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, as quoted by The Guardian , the only thing the statement of Pope has done is to display a significant progress towards acknowledging the deep stains on the church.
