Editor,

RE: "Pope Francis fails to end Vatican silence on Rwanda” (The New Times, November 29).

If the Church’s misdeeds in the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda was limited to some of its clergy luring the hunted to their churches and then calling in the killers to massacre them or even the involvement of some of the clergy in the killings and other crimes, such as rapes of vulnerable women seeking protection from the clergy, that would be sufficiently despicable for an institution founded in the name of he who preached love.

But the Church’s involvement in the Genocide has deeper roots and is more structural, from sowing the divisions that would eventually destroy the Rwandan society and preaching of an ideology that said God himself blessed the extermination of one section of that society by the other (n’Imana ubwayo yarabatanze – "even God Himself has forsaken them”), thus even blessing the desecration of a place of worship by massacring refugees in it.

It extends to being an accessory after the Genocide by using its considerable power and influence to shield from justice those of its clergy and lay officials involved in the Genocide, including helping them to change their identities and continue to practice their clerical duties under false identities in remote parishes and other backwoods where it was hoped it would be difficult to track them.

The Church’s accessory behaviour extended to exerting pressure on other clergy, lay officials and the faithfully not to bear witness against other clergy or lay officials whose crimes during the Genocide they had witnessed.

No, the Church’s criminal role in the Genocide is much more than that of individuals or even one of failing to speak out or to use its influence to prevent it or to minimize it once it had started. The Church’s role was institutional and structural, before, during and after.

Mwene Kalinda

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Against his will, and after so many years, the Pope finally apologised to the USA for crimes committed by the clergy against that country’s children. I believe that we will also get an apology before the end of his reign.

Secondly, if we are unable to drag the Vatican to court, it does not mean we should keep quite. The Pope would never have apologised to USA had the media kept quiet about priests’ horrible crimes.

Armstrong