The Fourteenth National Dialogue, which brought together more than 2000 citizens as the rest of Rwandans followed the dialogue via different media platforms, ended with a call for all Rwandans to work harder to improve their services and develop their country.

As he officiated at the closure of the dialogue, President Paul Kagame urged all Rwandans to always seek and provide better services and strive to implement anything that is within their abilities to execute.

"To improve service delivery, you need to change your mentality and believe in your right to demand what you are due,” the President said.

Kagame also cautioned against accepting the argument that today’s rich nations took centuries to achieve development as an excuse to accept slow pace of the country’s development.

"We should not accept for the standard of expectation for developing nations to be lowered, we should aim to be the best we can be,” Kagame said.

"Our mindset should be about achieving everything that is within our abilities,” he added.

Role of the Catholic Church in the Genocide against the Tutsi

Speaking following a presentation by Dr Jean-Damascene Bizimana, the executive secretary of the National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide (CNLG), President Kagame said the Vatican owes an apology to the people of Rwanda over the Church’s clergy and ordinary members’ role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

"I don’t understand why the Pope would apologise for sexual offences, whether it is in the US, Ireland or Australia, but cannot apologise for the role of the Church in the Genocide that happened here,” Kagame said.

Last month, leaders of the Catholic Church in Rwanda apologised for the role played by some of its members in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi through a joint communiqué signed by nine bishops representing all the Church’s dioceses in the country.

The announcement was read in Catholic Churches countrywide on Sundays as the end of year message of the Church’s jubilee of God’s mercy, but it was met with a very controversial debate as many Rwandans said the apology should have come from the Vatican.

The Government of Rwanda reacted to the bishops’ communiqué with a call for the Vatican to apologise for the Catholic Church’s "culpability in connection with the Genocide” and President Kagame reiterated the call yesterday.

In a subsequent news conference after the National Dialogue, the Head of State said the role of the Catholic Church in the Genocide in Rwanda can be traced back to the intertwining of the Church and colonialism.

Held every year, Umushyikirano is an annual gathering that gives all Rwandans, both in the country and abroad, the opportunity to ask their leaders questions directly and engage about the country’s challenges, opportunities and growth agenda.

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