The role of clergy, we are told— is to comfort, to uplift, to foster peace among people. Yet in Rwanda, the Catholic Church harbored figures who did the exact opposite. Father Walter Aelvoet, a Belgian and Bishop André Perraudin, a Swiss—two men of the cloth, spoke not with compassion but with the cold conviction of ideologues. Their words reveal that they were far more than bystanders to the unfolding Genocide Against the Tutsi—they were collaborators in spirit, justifying violence through a narrative of “historic liberation.” They painted massacres as mere “understandable” reactions, wrapping hate in the language of salvation. Deep Down, I Was Happy All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1959—what should have been a day of peace became a day of horror. That morning, the first wave of mass killings against Tutsi began, sparking what would grow over the years into the full-scale genocide of 1994. Father Walter Aelvoet, a Belgian priest with the Congregation of the White Fathers, who had been stationed in Rwanda since 1952, witnessed this “Hutu rebellion.” Decades later, in a 16 April,1994 interview with Belgian journalist Gert Van Langendonck, of a Belgian Daily De Morgen— Aelvoet’s words betrayed not just a disturbing lack of remorse, but something darker: a satisfaction in what he had seen. “As something very painful,” he admitted about the killings, before going on to say, “But deep down I was happy. Something historical was happening: the liberation of a people.” It was as if each swing of a machete, each Tutsi corpse, was a step toward some twisted emancipation. For Aelvoet, these were not crimes; they were sacrifices on the altar of liberation, and his role as a priest was simply to observe, condone, and move on. In one of his horrifying recollections, Aelvoet described the Hutu “dancing with their machetes, shouting: ‘They must go back to Abyssinia. Good riddance!’” The phrase captures the hate-filled myth that Tutsi were “foreigners” who deserved expulsion or death. But for Aelvoet, the atmosphere wasn’t one of horror—it was one of celebration, of a people rising up to “take their place in history.” In this narrative, each body laid to rest was not a life lost but a page turned, a victory of “freedom” over “oppression.” Aelvoet was the clerical spectator, almost a curator of corpses, invited back for an encore viewing of the violence he framed as a historical necessity. “Father, come back tomorrow. We shall bring you a few more [Tutsi corpses],” he recalled being told. But for Aelvoet, this grotesque invitation was nothing to mourn; it was “understandable.” Aelvoet, who led the Catholic Seminary of Kabgayi, was more than just complicit; he was an enabler, a priest who stood ready not to console but to bless, to provide “burial” for an entire class of people. Aelvoet did not shy away; he buried Tutsi chiefs in Gitarama, viewing their deaths not as tragedy but as a turn of history. The sight of corpses, for Aelvoet, symbolized not loss but progress. To Aelvoet, the slaughter of Tutsi in 1959 was “comprehensible,” a natural expression of pent-up resentment—a twisted justification that erased the humanity of the victims and canonized the killers as unwilling actors in a grand historic correction. Even in 1994, as he reflected on the genocidal slaughter consuming Rwanda once again, Aelvoet saw no tragedy, only a repeat performance of a historical “liberation.” To him, the Tutsi dead were sacrifices on the altar of Hutu freedom—a grotesque rebranding of genocide as a necessary purging. He mused that the Hutu were “peaceful people” but had listened to extremists who stoked their anger. He considered the Tutsi response – explaining that “the Tutsi, for their part, were people who could control their anger. They had waited for thirty years before taking their revenge.” Here was a priest rationalizing bloodshed as a balancing of cosmic scales, casting each brutal act as merely a reaction in a never-ending cycle of retribution. Aelvoet’s empathy extended not to the victims but to the killers, his satisfaction veiled as sympathy. André Perraudin: Shepherd of Genocide Ideology If Aelvoet was distressing, Bishop André Perraudin was his match. Perraudin, who had been the Bishop of Kabgayi in 1959—the year the first anti-Tutsi pogroms erupted—crafted a moral framework that framed Tutsi slaughter as a form of righteous “emancipation.” Perraudin was not merely a bystander; he was an architect of the anti-Tutsi sentiment that the Hutu Power movement would weaponize years later. By April 1994, as Tutsi were massacred across the country, Perraudin commented on the genocide in words that betrayed a thinly veiled approval. In an interview with Le Journal de Genève on April 18, 1994, he said, “I condemn [the killers], but I try to understand them.” His so-called condemnation was no condemnation at all—it was an exoneration dressed in pastoral language. He cast the killings as the natural outcome of “anger” and “fear” against Tutsi dominance, reframing the killers as victims pushed to a desperate, understandable act. Perraudin argued that this massacre was not about human suffering but about the “correction” of a historical imbalance. “They act out of anger and fear,” he explained. “Out of anger against the murder of their President Juvenal Habyarimana on 6 April. And out of fear of returning into slavery.” For Perraudin, the Tutsi were not merely victims—they were an “oppressor” class whose deaths could be viewed as a painful but necessary step toward Hutu emancipation. He went even further, blaming the Tutsi victims for their own suffering. “We must remember that, for centuries, Tutsi believed in their natural right to command and dominate,” he said. In a few sentences, Perraudin cast centuries-old myths as justification for genocide. To him, the Tutsi victims were merely aristocrats getting their due in the name of “justice.” He described the genocide not as a moral horror but as a balancing act, a return to equality under the Hutu Power ideology he had helped foster. Bishop Perraudin, as a mentor of the founders of PARMEHUTU, had long influenced the ideological groundwork that enabled the massacres. His writings and sermons painted Tutsi as oppressive feudal overlords, a narrative that planted the seeds of hatred and justified eventual genocide. Perraudin’s words were not those of a spiritual leader—they were a manifesto of resentment. To him, the slaughter was less an atrocity than an exercise in historical balance, a course correction that allowed Hutu extremists to reclaim a “lost dignity.” For Perraudin, the killers were not criminals but unwitting champions of equality. His rhetoric took the structure of a fable, casting Tutsi as a once-proud “race” whose supposed oppression justified retribution. Both Aelvoet and Perraudin, through their publications and interviews, fostered a narrative that resonated with Hutu-Power extremists, dressing up genocide as liberation. To these two European missionaries, the bodies left in churches and fields were not victims of hatred—they were merely casualties of history. With each massacre, these clerics saw the “correction” of social order; with each corpse, a triumph of “liberation” over oppression. Clergy as Insiders and Enablers of Genocide Aelvoet and Perraudin were not simply priests; they were pillars of a genocidal ideology that provided religious and historical justification for the mass killing of Tutsi. Their public reflections in De Morgen and Le Journal de Genève reveal a narrative that did not merely excuse the violence but exalted it as a pathway to liberation. To them, the killers were not bloodthirsty extremists but reluctant heroes, emancipating themselves from a “feudal” history by exterminating an “oppressor” race. This theology of genocide—crafted with a precision that only men of faith could wield—allowed Hutu extremists to see themselves not as murderers but as freedom fighters. By framing the Tutsi as perpetual oppressors, they erased the humanity of the victims, making it morally permissible, even commendable, to “liberate” Rwanda by eradicating them. In the end, their words did not merely echo the killers’ sentiments—they elevated them. With priestly blessing, the machetes swung not in hatred but in liberation. Rwanda’s blood-stained soil became, for these men of God, a garden of freedom watered by sacrifice—a tragic testament to how faith can be twisted, how holy men can become the silent, smiling patrons of atrocity. Together, Aelvoet and Perraudin were not just spiritual guides but ideologues of genocide. They were insiders who wove a theology of hatred that allowed Hutu extremists to view themselves as champions of liberation. For them, the mass killings were not crimes but necessary rites in a twisted vision of history, where each Tutsi death was a step toward Hutu “freedom.” Aelvoet and Perraudin’s voices echoed a perverse logic: that liberation required blood, that justice meant death. Aelvoet could watch Hutu “dancing with machetes” and feel satisfaction, while Perraudin could “understand” the genocide as the correction of an age-old “injustice.” They were men of faith turned apostles of hate, offering a theological stamp of approval for atrocities. A Toast in Hell One can almost imagine Aelvoet and Perraudin raising a toast, perhaps over champagne, each time another Tutsi village was razed, each time another wave of “liberation” swept across Rwanda. Perhaps they toasted to the success of their ideological project, muttering blessings over the massacres as sacred rituals, steps on the divine path to a “freed” Rwanda. “To liberation!” they might have cheered, sanctifying each killing as a triumph of their moral crusade. If there were medals for genocidal ideology, surely Perraudin would have pinned one on Aelvoet and vice versa, congratulating one another on the “courage” of their convictions. Aelvoet, perhaps, would have praised Perraudin for “understanding” the killers, while Perraudin might have commended Aelvoet for his “historical insight.” Together, they embodied a holy alliance, a dark symbiosis of faith and hatred that cloaked genocide in righteousness. One can almost imagine the private conversations of Aelvoet and Perraudin in April 1994, as the genocide escalated. Perhaps they toasted, glasses raised, to the “progress” achieved by machetes, the “liberation” brought forth by bloodshed. Perhaps they discussed which twisted verses of scripture best justified a hatred so entrenched that it turned human beings into brutal avatars of “historical justice.” Aelvoet and Perraudin would perhaps call such an evening a theological debate—discussing who truly bore the “burden of guilt” in Rwanda’s dark history, and concluding, with the pious calm only they could muster, that it was the Tutsi who had “brought this fate upon themselves.” And with a grim nod, they might recite to each other how all things are permitted when one cloaks them in the “justification” of history. If there was ever a toast in hell, these men would surely have raised their glasses. For Aelvoet, each body buried in 1959 and 1994 was not a tragedy but a liberation. For Perraudin, every massacre was a step toward cosmic justice. They preached peace but cheered on genocide, raising their goblets not to salvation but to slaughter. These clergies did not sit apart from the genocide; they sat in the front row, wearing robes of righteousness, applauding a spectacle they deemed both historical and divine. In their twisted view, genocide was not sin—it was sacrament.
