The Catholic Church and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Rwanda

Nikubwayo, Jean Clement (2009) The Catholic Church and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Rwanda. Licentiate thesis, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

[img] PDF (The Catholic Church and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Rwanda)
The_Catholic_Church_and_the_Challenge_of_Reconciliation_in_Rwanda_-_Jean_Clement_Nikubwayo.pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only

Download (5MB)

Abstract

During a period of one hundred days between April and July 1994, over 800,000 men, women and children were killed in the Rwandan genocide. The highly organized and systematic extermination resulted in the death of nearly two-thirds of Rwanda's Tutsi and moderate Hutu population, and led to the rapid displacement of more than a million people in Rwanda and neighboring countries. This tragedy revealed a failure of political, social and religious institutions to prevent and to stop the genocide.The Rwandan government, which was supposed to protect the population, organized the extermination of a part of its population; the international community failed to engage in preventing that human tragedy. Religious leadership failed to condemn injustices and human atrocities perpetrated during genocide. Genocide is an evil of forgetting God and rejecting his commandments. It is hard to understand how people who believe in God and profess Jesus Christ as Savior can commit such evil. At the time when the genocide happened, Rwanda was one of the most Christianized countries in the world. Statistics show that in 1994, 89.8 percent of the Rwandan population claimed membership in a Christian church and 62.6 percent were Catholics. One would want to understand how in a highly Christianized country genocide was made possible. How could a country reputed to be Christian, and majority Catholic, be unable to resist forces of hatred and self-destruction?

Item Type: Thesis (Licentiate)
Uncontrolled Keywords: the dynamics of reconciliation in post genocide, the church as agent of reconciliation, reconciliation through church's rituals, Rwandan church and the ministry of reconciliation, ethical foundation of reconciliation, scriptural resources for reconciliation, truth and reconciliation, justice and reconciliation, the move to the reconciliation process, the dynamics of reconciliation in post genocide, catholic church and the Rwandan tragedy, Hutu and Tutsi identities and political manipulation, naming the atrocities,
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BJ Ethics
Divisions: Afro-Christiana
Jesuitica
Depositing User: JHI Africa
Date Deposited: 11 Apr 2014 08:08
Last Modified: 27 Oct 2014 12:00
URI: http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/61

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item