The Catholic Church has dismissed Wenceslas Munyeshyaka from clerical duties, nearly two years after he was suspended after he was found to have abdicated his vow of lifetime celibacy, when he sired a child with a woman.

The edict to defrock Munyeshaka came from Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church globally through a bishop in the Bishop of the French diocese of Evreux, Christian Nourrichard. It was the same bishop who had suspended him back in 2021.

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The priest, who sired the child about 13 years ago according to documents from a French court, maintained a relationship with the mother, who also hails from Rwanda and their affair was inadvertently revealed by a French prosecutor back in 2017, triggering an investigation by the church.

However, many Rwandans and anyone interested in justice think that Munyeshyaka’s extracurricular activities should not have taken precedence over the atrocities he has stood accused for nearly three decades now, and continued to enjoy protection from Vatican.

Munyeshyaka was tried and convicted by the Gacaca courts in Rwanda for masterminding the Genocide against the Tutsi in different parts of Kigali where in 1994 he worked as the vicar of Saint Famille Catholic Church located in the Central Business District.

He has also been indicted by a UN court, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for genocide crimes. He is known for among others brandishing a gun and military attire at the height of the Genocide as he visited different killing grounds around Kigali.

Infamously, he gave away hundreds of Tutsi who had sought refuge at his church to the killers to end their lives and also participated in the picking of girls from among the refugees to be fed to the Interahamwe to rape and later killing them.

All this information was available for over two decades including photos of him with military wares but the Church chose to let him continue doing his pastoral duties in France where he has lived since fleeing the country in 1994.

It is therefore disheartening that an affair with a woman has been the one to cost him his sacerdotal job, and not the mass killings he presided over.

Either way he remains a free man and will probably join his lover and probably formalize their union with no justice served for those whose relatives he killed.