Belgique or Catholique: who to blame for Rwanda atrocities?

There was another force at play—one with a different agenda: the Roman Catholic Church, which controlled every aspect of life in Rwandan society.

By Kelly Rwamapera

This argument is informed by the information from Amateka ya Kiliziya, Defeat is the Only Bad News, Rwanda Before the Genocide, Imibereho y'Abatutsi kuri Repubulika ya Mbere n'iya Kabiri, Church and Revolution in Rwanda and experience as journalist in Rwanda.

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I have heard the voices of many Rwandans who, in the midst of their pain, blame Belgium as a nation for the suffering that Rwanda has endured.

While I acknowledge that Rwanda has faced grave atrocities, from the 1920s to the tragic events of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi, I must stand firm in my conviction that Belgium, as a country, is not solely to blame.

Belgium, as a country, is not even in the second chapter of this history and if we are to be considerate, Belgium deserves our sympathy, as it too is a victim in the same way that Rwanda is.

Belgium, as a colonial power, did indeed commit certain acts during its rule, but these acts, I believe, vanished with the memory of colonialism after Rwanda’s independence in 1962.

The legacy of Belgium, I argue, should not be overstated—greater even than that of the British in their neighbouring colonies.

Belgium had no real stake in promoting ethnic divisions in Rwanda.

There was no benefit to them, no reason to favour one group over the other—whether it was the Hutu or the Tutsi.

But there was another force at play—one with a different agenda: the Roman Catholic Church, which controlled every aspect of life in Rwandan society.

The Roman Catholic Church independently owned schools and controlled the education system, owned and controlled the media, controlled the business community, and even controlled farmers’ and workers' cooperatives.

They even exerted control over the Rwandan monarchy itself.

The Belgian government acquired Rwanda primarily through the lobbying of the Roman Catholic Church and had a simple agreement with the United Nations for their stay in Rwanda, which was renewable after ten years.

There’s no way one can entirely blame Belgium, as the country was in such circumstances where much of the authority was held by the Roman Catholic Church, which had invited Belgium after two decades of the church’s presence in Rwanda.

How it all began

The Church saw in the Tutsi monarchy an opportunity to impose Catholic teachings on Rwandan society.

It’s recorded in various catholic church literature that their ambition was to make Rwanda a Catholic nation, where every Rwandan would automatically become Roman Catholic.

After their failure to convert Uganda to Catholicism, and the turmoil caused by King Mwanga—who executed some of their converts—the Catholic Jesuit priest Hirth ventured south in search of a more organized people who could serve as the foundation for the Catholic mission in Africa.

Records from the Church itself, such as the writings of Jesuit priest Belvedere, show that this mission had been Rome’s priority since the early 1800s.

Yet it wasn’t until they discovered Rwanda—a land between rivers, untouched by other religions—that they felt they had found the perfect base.

As noted in Amateka ya Kiliziya, the history of the Catholic Church in Rwanda, when the Church discovered Rwanda, “it was like an apparition from heaven.”

The Church’s aim was not merely evangelism but manipulation and they targeted King Musinga, hoping that his conversion to Catholicism would set the stage for the conversion of the entire nation.

However, Musinga stood firm in his refusal, and Catholic records even compare his resistance to that of Martin Luther, the German priest who questioned the Catholic Church’s doctrines and became the founder of Protestantism.

In 1928-1929, King Musinga visited and stayed at the Adventist Mission in Rwankeri, located in Northern Rwanda, for an unrecorded period while addressing issues of famine and food distribution.

The Roman Catholic Church viewed Musinga’s stay with the Adventists as a final sign of his rejection of Catholicism and his preference for Adventism, which posed a threat to Rome’s goal of making Rwanda a Catholic nation.

By 1931, Jesuit priest Leon Classe had made his final move to depose Musinga and replace him with Musinga’s son, Mutara Rudahigwa, on the throne—Mutara, already a Catholic.

In the 1940s, Mutara performed a public ceremony that officially made Rwanda a Catholic nation, surrendering the nation to the Catholic Queen of Heaven and her son, sealing the nation’s future under the dominion of the Roman Catholic Church.

However, by the 1950s, Mutara began to deviate from the Church’s agenda he had helped establish.

He sought to establish secular schools, replacing the Catholic seminaries that had dominated education.

He visited the Adventist school at Gitwe, and in doing so, became an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Roman Catholic Council of Bishops issued a stern warning, declaring that only Catholic education should be allowed in Rwanda, that Rwanda must remain a Catholic nation.

The Roman Catholic Church did not relent, publicly announcing that whoever went against the church’s mission was an enemy of Rwandan society.

It is then that the Roman Catholic Church put emphasis in radicalizing Hutus like Kayibanda, Gitera, Manyurane and others who attended their schools or worked for the men in cassocks.

Mutara, desperate, sought support from Adventists and other Protestants, but they were not equipped to politicize religion in the way the Catholic Church had.

In his moment of need, Mutara sought aid from the British and the United States, but in July 1959, he died—just hours after receiving a yellow fever injection—before he could travel to the USA.

The UN implicated Catholic priest Perraudine but he argued that he was not with Mutara when he died in Bujumbura after receiving a yellow fever vaccine.

The True Struggle: The Roman Catholic Church, Not Belgium

The true struggle in Rwanda lies not with Belgium, but with the Roman Catholic Church.

Let us be honest: Rwanda’s path as a nation was not determined by Belgium’s influence, but rather by the Church’s iron grip.

First, the Roman Catholic Church controlled education: all schools were under its authority, and the curriculum was designed to serve its goals.

No wonder, then, that the instigators of the genocide ideology in the 1950s and the 1959 massacres were individuals educated under the Church’s watchful eye.

Figures such as Kayibanda—who would later become Rwanda’s first president—were products of the Church’s teachings, members of the Legion of Mary, a Catholic order, and employees of the Church.

Second, the Roman Catholic Church controlled both the monarchy and the Hutu extremists.

Belgium, as a colonizer, may have had an army and development plans through the United Nations, but once it departed in 1962, its influence ended.

The Church’s influence, however, remained firmly entrenched in the fabric of Rwanda.

Third, the Church controlled the business community and farmers’ cooperatives.

They initiated TRAFIPRO (Travail, Fidélité, Progrès/Work, Faith, Progress), a workers’ cooperative that further consolidated their power.

Fourth, the Roman Catholic Church was behind the creation of the first political parties in Rwanda—political parties based on ethnic lines.

All those who founded these parties were employees of the Church, educated and shaped by its doctrines and even lived at Kabwayi with Perraudin.

Fifth, the media also fell under the Roman Catholic Church’s influence. The Church shaped Rwandan society with its agenda, reaching as far as Rwandans could read, write, and listen.

All newspapers, theatres, and other forms of media were controlled by the Catholic Church, with the opinions consumed by Rwandans filtered through the Catholic priests.

It was the priests who shaped the public narrative until Catholic-backed extremists, the Hutus, came to power and used their newfound control to spread hatred and division.

Kayibanda, as editor of two Catholic Church newspapers, played a key role in this.

Sixth, the seeds of ethnic division first appeared in the Catholic seminaries, where both Hutu and Tutsi students were embroiled in conflict.

By the 1940s, racial and ethnic tensions were rife among the white and black Catholic priests, Nyundo and Nyakibanda seminaries, Barundi and Banyarwanda catholic students and Hutu and Tutsi students in the seminaries.

It is evident that the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in Rwandan schools were spreading the divisions.

Seventh, the Roman Catholic Church was the first to label Tutsis as enemies of the faith, enemies of society, and later as communists.

Such labelling of Tutsis was adopted by Hutu extremists in their agenda to kill Tutsis.

Even the Belgians were victims in this struggle, pawns in the Church’s larger game to manipulate the state and implement its agenda.

Let us look not at the Belgians, but at the true source of division: the Roman Catholic Church.

It is the Roman Catholic Church that used its power to sow hatred, to turn a people against one another, and to make Rwanda a nation under its control.

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If you’ve found value in this work, I would deeply appreciate your support. I have more on this subject, but daily needs have made it difficult to find the time and focus needed. Your contribution can make a significant difference in overcoming this challenge.

Thank you for your consideration.

Kelly Rwamapera

Tel: +250788240436

Email: KellyRwamapera@gmail.com