Clerics slew, but pews packed
2004-03-02 09:31
Nyange, Rwanda - People still fill the churches here despite the fact that some of the worst massacres of the Rwandan genocide 10 years ago occurred on church territory and part of the clergy was deeply involved in the slaughter.
Some priests and nuns joined hardline Hutus as they hunted down and murdered up to one million members of the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. Far from protecting people who sought sanctuary, they threw open the doors and invited in the machete-wielding killers.
Two Roman Catholic sisters, who willingly ran for supplies of gasoline to burn alive hundreds of people, are serving long prison sentences in Belgium.
In previous pogroms against the Tutsis the churches had been places of refuge. People flocked to them again when the killing started in 1994, little knowing that they would meet their death there by fire, bullet, grenade and machete.
"More Rwandan citizens died in the churches and parishes than anywhere else," said the human rights organization African Rights.
Nothing but a patch of red earth is left of the church of Our Lady of the Visitation, which was crushed by bulldozers along with the 2 000 people cowering inside in April 1994. Behind where it used to stand, a smaller church has been built from the blackened beams of the original and awnings.
At the Mother of God at Kibeho, where several thousand Tutsis died when Hutu militia set fire to the thatched straw roof, part of the building is again in use as a place of worship. The sacristry is piled with the skulls of some of the victims and as an official memorial of the genocide, it remains under the control of the government.
"Even in the church, we left the traces of what happened," said the parish priest, the Rev. Janvier Gaspore, as he prepared to officiate at three marriages. He pointed to the blackened black beams alongside the iron girders that hold up the new roof of corrugated iron.
Many Christians converted to Islam after the genocide, driven by the fact that the Muslims generally behaved better during the genocide.
But nine people out of 10 in this densely populated nation of eight million define themselves as Christians. More than half the population is Roman Catholic.
The figures conceal a complex situation. There are those whose faith has been shaken, but not completely destroyed. Others insist the church was not involved at all. And many say they are not believers, but continue to go to church because they offer a structure for society.
"My faith was a lot stronger before than it is now, because I was in the church and I saw how they destroyed it," said Charles Kagenza, a survivor of a massacre in the church at Nyange, his eyes brimming with tears. "I saw the extent to which man can become evil."