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Posted on 03/20/2017 12:14:27 PM PDT by detective
Pope Francis on Monday begged forgiveness for the "sins and failings of the church and its members" during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, and told Rwanda's president that he hoped his apology would help the country heal.
In an extraordinary statement after Francis' meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the Vatican acknowledged that the church itself bore blame, as well as some Catholic priests and nuns who "succumbed to hatred and violence, betraying their own evangelical mission" by participating in the genocide.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
“And last I checked he was the church”
Pope Francis is not in any way the church.
The Pope and all of the hierarchy are meant to be servants of the faithful. Being imperfect men some of them do a better job than others.
The Catholic Church is the one true church founded by Jesus Christ and the apostles. The faithful are the church.
If anyone shares in the blame it would be france who divided the country on tribal lines (mostly imaginary) and favored one tribe over the other. Since france was a mostly secular country where religion was suppressed the RCC had little to no influence there.
They were not “handed over”. A mob went into the church with machetes and killed the people hiding there.
That is true to some extent, even though people, including priests from within the Catholic Church participated, some of them in saving lives too, it bears to be noted. The Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda did not plan it. Yet more than a mere few among that Church did nothing to stop it (if not participating, themselves) and some priests did more than just going with the flow...
It's not that simple. Francis the talking fill-in-the-blank did say what is being reported.
There were humans involved. Many of them were Catholic. Other denominations were represented among "the bad guys", too.
Tutsi ran to churches trying to find sanctuary. Mobs still found them. In some occasions priests essentially opened the doors --assisted-- so to speak.
In about 30 minutes of reading I also came across 2 accounts of RC priests protecting people. One hid Tutsi women in a bathroom (for about 3 months) another had a whole church full, and did anything he had to do, including bribing would-be murderers (to not kill).
Short list of bad guys;
Athanase_Seromba In one instance, a church with allegedly nearly 2,000 Tutsi hiding inside was "bulldozed", survivors shot, with a local mayor doing the heavy lifting (giving orders) part of the dirty work.
The mayor; Grégoire Ndahimana
A different incident;
Wenceslas Munyeshyaka ...Govt slams France's dismissal of Munyeshyaka Genocide case;
A military tribunal in Rwanda has found a Catholic priest, resident in France, guilty of rape and involvement in the 1994 genocide and sentenced him in absentia to life in prison. He was found to have delivered hundreds of adults and children to the genocidal militias, which brutally slaughtered them. ... The military tribunal found Munyeshyaka guilty of rape and of aiding militias in the killing of hundreds of Tutsi refugees at the Holy Family Cathedral in downtown Kigali, where he was head priest.
Another priest;
Emmanuel Rukundo
A Seventh Day Adventist pastor
Elizaphan Ntakirutimana
In February 2003, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found both Ntakirutimana and his son Dr. Gérard, a physician who had completed graduate work in the US prior to returning to Rwanda, guilty of genocide committed in Rwanda in 1994. The Tribunal found it proven beyond reasonable doubt that Ntakirutimana, himself belonging to the Hutu ethnicity, had transported armed attackers to the Mugonero complex, where they killed hundreds of Tutsi refugees. He was convicted on the basis of eyewitness accounts. A number of the convictions were overturned on appeal but the sentence was unchanged. Ntakirutimana was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He was released on December 6, 2006 after serving 10 years under arrest or in prison, and died the following month.
Another civil servant/local politico;
Jean-Paul Akayesu
As mayor, Akayesu was responsible for performing executive functions and maintaining order in Taba, meaning he had command of the communal police and any gendarmes assigned to the commune. He was subject only to the prefect. He was considered well-liked and intelligent.During the Rwandan Genocide of mid-1994, many Tutsis were killed in Akayesu's commune, and many others were subject to violence and other forms of hatred. Akayesu not only refrained from stopping the killings, but personally supervised the murder of various Tutsis.[1] He also gave a death list to other Hutus, and ordered house-to-house searches to locate Tutsis.
How and why did this occur within comparatively majority Christian African nation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Rwanda#1994_Genocide
Timothy Longman has provided the most detailed discussion of the role of religion in the Rwandan genocide in Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, published in 2010.[5] Longman argues that both Catholic and Protestant churches helped to make the genocide possible by giving moral sanction to the killing. Churches had longed played ethnic politics themselves, favoring the Tutsi during the colonial period then switching allegiance to the Hutu after 1959, sending a message that ethnic discrimination was consistent with church teaching. The church leaders had close ties with the political leaders, and after the genocide began, the church leaders called on the population to support the new interim government, the very government supporting the genocide.
link to 24 page pdf (of Timothy Longman's work);
and a link from google cache (that leaves it a bit scrambled, but loads easier and faster for those whose browsers encounter difficulties opening pdf' [copy & paste into browser location bar];
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RuIWu6iE4D4J:home.sandiego.edu/~jmwilliams/longmanonchurchandgenocideinrwanda.pdf+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I was able to find the above info easily. Posting it took a bit more time...
On this thread, I think I like what I want the USA back said;
But the Catholic Church did not organize it or carry it out.
The killing was part of an ongoing civil war between the Tutsi’s and the Hutu's over who would control Rwanda. There were bad feelings on both sides.
Some priests identified with their congregations and supported them during this war but the Catholic Church did not did not plan or execute this genocide.
If Pope Francis wishes to express regret for the actions of a few priests, that would be fine.
But for Pope Francis to apologize for the entire Catholic Church and say the Church was responsible is a terrible decision. Francis is accepting the dishonest anti-Catholic propaganda and falsely blaming the Church Francis is supposed to be serving.
I’ll have to take your word for it. I merely posted what an eye witness said.
I can agree with you in this. I just said the same thing.
It does beg the question though -- what is "the Catholic Church" if among other considerations that not include the people?
Seems to me he's buying into being held to the same standards he the Catholic Church espouses (and that being used as form of trap too, by *some*, of course).
Perhaps part of what complicates extricating "the Catholic Church" for things such as this, is the other-side-of-the-coin; when "the Church" claims credit to itself for what it's members do that is laudable?
The church can “claim credit” for what its member do if what they did was done as part of their work in the church with its encouragement and approval.
I am sure there were priests in Rwanda who acted nobly and honorably during the killings. Those few priests who acted badly were not acting as priests.
By the way, Rwandans are devout Catholics for the most part.
I have known several of them and heard their stories.
Local churches did play a role in setting up the catastrophe.
Liberation theology (liberation from our oppressors!) is part of a theological running subtext within Catholicism. It may be much subdued in North America (morphing into other sympathy forms) but elsewhere is a different story.
Last time around, RC Cardinals elected a South American Jesuit to be 'Pope" too.
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Genocide, Religion, and Modernity
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
May 11-13, 1997
"In a number of communities where I conducted research, people testified that pastors and priests and other church employees participated in the violence that occurred. Church personnel were apparently involved in meetings held in mid-April in which the organizers of the genocide told mayors in the southern prefectures of Butare, Gikongoro, and Gitarama, many of whom had resisted the genocide and protected their Tutsi citizens, that they would be removed if they did not support the genocide. It was immediately after these meetings that the massacres began in these areas."
It's painful to read, though.
Still we must. Not to pin blame then call it a day, but to understand how things like that can occur, and what that can teach any of us.
Yeah. Pretty ugly alright.
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That is essentially the same thing I said.
Longman blames the churches, not those who incited the mobs or who actually killed the people.
There had been a long running civil war in Rwanda between Tutsi’s and Hutu's.
People went on the radio every day during the killings ordering people go to targeted villages and to kill everyone including women and children. Mobs were orgnized and armed and taken to villages to kill innocent people. In fact, Rwandans have told me that the radio broadcasts admonished the mob members for being less than enthused and for not killing enough women and children.
The point is Pope Francis refuses to recognize the many contributions and accomplishments by faithful Catholics throughout the world. Francis is quick to falsely attack Catholics in general for things that Catholics are not responsible for.
I have met and gotten to know several Rwandans in the U.S. The are very devout Catholics and when they tell the story of the horrific killing none of them blame the Catholic Church.
That is essentially the same thing I said.
Here, it's not about "what you said" it's about what you left out.
It appears you are attempting to rejecting Longman's thesis about what roles churches did play (for both ill, and some good too, but less of that latter) while accepting what he wrote about radio broadcasts & mob incitement?
Who are you trying to convince. Me, or yourself?
He has to openly pronounce all the exceptions to anything he may say --- each time he says most anything?
Live by tribalism, die by tribalism(s).
I am not saying that no religious people were involved. What I am saying is there were examples of individual priests doing bad things but also of many individual priests who helped to protect the victims.
Longman’s piece dishonestly blames the Catholic Church for actions of individuals when for the most part the Catholic Church was a force for good. Longman appears to be anti-Catholic and I disagree with some of his conclusions.
Longman also does not recognize the role of the Catholic Church in rebuilding Rwanda and helping the survivors.
But my main point is that Pope Francis attacks the Catholic Church and refuses to recognize the good things done by Catholics throughout the world.
No, it does not. What it does it accurately access what role religious organizations did play in the tragedy --compared to sweeping that away with blaming individuals only on the one hand, while frantically hand-waving about what good was done by individuals among the Catholic Church in the aftermath.
Does anyone else do any "good things"? You appear to ignore those.
This whole affair has been a pain.
Where did it start?
In comment #16 you had said;
Priests and nuns "in groups"? What groups? With groups of others that were not necessarily composed entirely of priests and nuns, more than a few took part --- assisted.
It matters little of they were not routinely the ones swinging the machetes. Nodding approval is enough to make whoever did so accessory, in part. In more than just a few cases assistance provided in slaughtering Tutsi was not restricted to only nodding approval.
There are credible accounts of that. But you blame all that on individuals, alone.
That is where I do not agree. Longman dishonestly blamed the Catholic Church in my opinion. But his opinion is not the problem, it is Pope Francis dishonestly blaming the Catholic Church.
Let's just agree to disagree.
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