The Genocide Against the Tutsi, and the Rwandan Churches: Between Grief and Denial

Why did some sectors of the Rwandan churches adopt an ambiguous attitude towards the genocide against the Tutsi which claimed the lives of 800,000 people in three months between April and July 1994? What prevented the churches' acceptance that they may have had some responsibility in the genocide? And, how should we account for the efforts made by other sectors of the churches to remember and commemorate the genocide and rebuild pastoral programmes? Drawing on interviews with genocide survivors, Rwandans in exile, missionaries and government officials, as well as church archives and other sources, this book is the first academic study on Christianity and the genocide against the Tutsi to explore these contentious questions in depth, and reveals more internal diversity within the Christian churches than is often assumed. While some Christians, Protestant as well as Catholic, took risks to shelter Tutsi people, others uncritically embraced the interim government's view that the Tutsi were enemies of the people and some, even priests and pastors, assisted the killers. The church leaders only condemned the war: they have never actually denounced it. Focusing on the period of the genocide in 1994 and the subsequent years (up to 2000), Denis examines in detail the responses of two churches, the Catholic Church, the biggest and the most complex, and the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, which made a confession of guilt in December 1996. A case study is devoted to the Catholic parish of Congo-Nil in western Rwanda, led at the time by the French priest Gabriel Maindron, a man whom genocide survivors accuse of having failed to oppose the genocide despite his close links with the perpetrators. By 1997, the defensive attitude adopted by many Catholics had started to change in 1997 and 1998 and the Extraordinary Synod on Ethnicism 1999-2000 was a milestone. Yet, especially in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, tension and suspicion persisted and there has never been a persecution of the Catholic Church on the part of the state.