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Column Monday June 7 in Independent:
“Have the cover-up specialists of the past suddenly become credible un-coverers? Must not independent commissions be established to deal with such cases?”
In Rwanda, the most serious crime is not the clergy in “sex scandals”. It is the church’s role in genocide, and now its activism in denial. But unfortunately, this is of little concern to the Vatican
Despite the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, mass murders in churches, and the involvement of churchmen in this odious crime, the Catholic Church appeared to have lost nothing.
The significance of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was not evident at the Vatican. On Christmas day, 1994 Pope John Paul II offered his Christmas wishes from the central loggia of St Peter’s Basilica.
The Pope’s words on Rwanda, reported by L’Osservatore Romano on January 4, 1995 were elusive and disingenuous. The Pontiff avoided the word genocide and the ideology behind it; instead he described Rwanda as one of several “new centres of tension,” affected by “persistent forms of selfishness and violence” and the “tragedy of war” caused by “irrational passions.”
After the genocide, like other institutions with influence, the church had a responsibility, for the future of Rwanda, to develop a new awareness and to confront the ideology of ethnic hatred that had led to the genocide.
Regrettably, certain authorities in the Church opted for escapism and to maintain its ideological
Continue Reading:
Vatican loud on paedophiles but silent on genocidal priests
Monday, 07 June 2010 04:30 Tom Ndahiro
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