This week marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the murder of up to a million people, mostly Tutsis, by the Hutu majority.

This week marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the murder of up to a million people, mostly Tutsis, by the Hutu majority. It is, among other things, a shameful episode in the Church’s recent history. As Robert Calderisi wrote in a devastating chapter in his book, Earthly Mission, “Priests, nuns and lay Catholics participated in the genocide. Church leaders did little to prevent the butchery, and some even seemed to encourage it.”

It wasn’t only Catholic Christians who seemed animated by the Devil. Calderisi quotes the retired Anglican Archbishop of Kigali, Emmanuel Kolini: “There were no differences between the Churches. Not one priest or bishop died defending others. So how can we talk about moral leadership?” Indeed. One of my memories of the time was the spectacle of Belgian nuns getting out of the country sharpish, leaving their Rwandan brethren behind. That reading about the shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep didn’t really count for much, did it?

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