Priests Blamed in Some Rwanda Deaths
Rwanda’s foreign minister attacked the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, blaming some priests for aiding last year’s genocide in the Central African state by providing names of intended victims.
“The men of the church failed. The Catholic Church failed,” Anastase Gasana told a news conference in Brussels. He said his government had asked the Catholic Church to reconsider its role in Rwanda and change its policies.
“They have been asked to see how they can make deep reforms in their evangelical message,” Gasana said of the church.
He accused it of supporting the former government of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose death in a plane crash April 6 last year sparked the mass killings.
The majority Catholic and minority Anglican churches in the mainly Christian nation have been embarrassed by reports that priests played a role in the genocide of up to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus last year.
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