After the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the church has been playing a crucial role to support government’s initiatives designed to reconcile and unite Rwandans. That is what the most post-Genocide religious teachings were about until today.
Despite the outcomes of such sermons, more challenges are still indicated such as former prisoners who are now going back to society after completing their sentences, children who are becoming aware of their parents’ role in the Genocide, orphans, among other challenges. All shows that more efforts are still needed.
In Kigali, the Catholic Church’s order Jesuit has organized a forum in honour of the congregation’s members and other Rwandans who died in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi to discuss the most relevant approaches to religious teachings in post-Genocide Rwanda.
The forum is held under the theme, “Reinventing Theology in Post-Genocide Rwanda: Challenges and Hopes”.
While delivering his lecture on ‘the role of the Church in the process of reconciliation in Rwanda’, Antoine Kambanda, the Catholic Archbishop of Kigali Archdiocese highlighted the role of Catholic Church to reconcile Rwandans with God as well as fellow citizens.
During the forum, the Church challenged to play a bigger role in educating Rwandans to be good citizens who don’t endorse destructive ideologies of divisionism and ethnic segregation.
Also, it was said that parents need to be at the centre of their children’s education and also support them in this task that often overwhelms them.
