Catholic Priest, Reverend Father Jean Ndorimana, has urged the Catholic Church’s highest office, the Vatican, to establish the truth about the church’s role in the 1994 Genocide of Tutsis.

Ndorimana was this Thursday presenting his third book ‘DE LA REGION DES GRANDS LACS AU VATICAN, Intrigues, scandales et idéologie du génocide au sein de la hiérarchie at telecom house.

He noted that the church’s leadership should be strong enough to face the challenge of telling exactly what happened in their churches among their congregation in 1994 if they really mean and understand what they say in the repentant prayer that opens the Holy Mass.

Ndorimana is of the view that the Vatican has accepted to be misled by the same people who participated in the Genocide.

"They say there was a double Genocide but sincerely had the Tutsis had the same means to fight back, they wouldn’t have been killed in such big numbers,” the priest noted.

The priest shows how the Catholic Church played an active role in Rwanda’s politics right from the colonial times, at independence and organising the killings of Tutsis in 1953; 1959; 1973 and in 1994 when they were tormented and killed in big numbers.

He added that the same people who oversaw the killing of the Tutsi continue to torment them by denying them to join the priesthood telling the Vatican that they are either traumatized or not fit while those still there are forced to abandon the vocation.

While still Vicar General in Cyangugu diocese (currently the Western Province) Ndorimana tried to bring to book seminarians whom he knew had taken an active role in the killings only to be failed by his Bishop who would either have them ordained priests or transferred to European countries without his knowledge. 

Ndorimana’s book shows how the church’s leadership misled their congregations while those who tried to oppose them were usually isolated or forced to give up priesthood.

The 345-paged book shows how the ideology is spreading across borders to Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and parts of Uganda.

Officiating at the book presentation, the Minister of Culture and Sports, Joseph Habineza, hailed Ndorimana for his courage to tell the truth urging other religious leaders to help their followers do the same.

Theodore Simburudari, the president of IBUKA, a Genocide Survivors’ umbrella association, said that church leaders’ actions are important in reconciliation among Rwandans which can not be attained without telling the truth.

Ends