By Paul Dobbyn
RECONCILIATION with the alphabet was one obstacle Rwandan Fr Emmanuel Nsengiyumva didn’t expect to encounter on his path to healing after the deep wounds left by 1994’s genocide in his home country.
During a horrific 100 days as many as 1 million Rwandans were killed or tortured in the conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi people.
The then 18-year-old seminarian was also in danger, fleeing for his life.
His two brothers were murdered during the genocide.
His anger over these and other events almost cost his vocation.
But eventually he was healed from this anger and “the voices” eventually called him back to his true vocation.
“I had to forgive everyone, every place, every sort of thing, even God, even the people who were killed,” he said.
“I was even in conflict with alphabet: the a’s, the b’s, the c’s, the d’s…
“Sometimes I would wonder why: Why I was angry against the alphabet?
“Then I realised, they used it to make lists of names…they killed those on the lists, starting with the first letter of the alphabet.
“One of my relatives was killed because his name started with B.
”So somehow I had to come to reconciliation even with the alphabet.”
Fr Emmanuel said on a recent trip to Brisbane as the guest of Catholic Mission, such wounds would be almost impossible to face without “the healing light of God”.
He visited the archdiocese in June to give a face and a voice to the organisation’s appeal to help complete the Our Lady of the Apostles Church which has been under construction in the 38-year-old priest’s parish of Nyamata.
The priest revealed another shocking fact about the genocide of 1994 when talking about his parish.
“Two of the Catholic churches in Nyamata have now been taken over the Government,” he said.
“They are national memorials to those who were killed in the genocide.”
One church now contains the remains of more than 45,000 genocide victims, the majority of them Tutsi, including over 10,000 who were massacred inside the church.
That so many people died seeking shelter inside God’s house has been another hurdle towards healing and reconciliation in Nyamata parish and elsewhere.
Fr Emmanuel was born in the capital Kigali in 1976, the fifth of sixth children, into a family he described as “not rich, but not too poor”.
The killings began during the Rwandan Civil War, which broke out in 1990 between the Hutu and Tutsi people.
In 1994 Emmanuel, a young seminarian, was in his third year of studies at the St Vincent Minor Seminary in Ndera, just east of the capital, when the situation dramatically worsened.
On April 6, an airplane carrying Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down on its descent into Kigali, killing all on board.
Genocidal killings began the following day – soldiers, police and militia quickly executed key Tutsi and moderate Hutu leaders, then erected checkpoints and barricades and used Rwandans’ national identity cards to systematically verify their ethnicity and kill Tutsi.
These forces recruited or pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects and other weapons to rape, maim and kill their Tutsi neighbors and destroy or steal their property.
The young seminarian fled for his life with fellow students.
He escaped but two of his brothers were killed.
“Trying to choose my path, but trailing behind such a horrific background affected my life,” he said.
“Now I can confess that I delayed entering the major seminary because of the genocide.”
At 21, he headed to university studying electromechanical engineering at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, which took him to Uganda and Kenya for certain course components.
About that time, he started hearing “the voices”.
“They were the voices of people I met as I travelled about,” he said.
“These voices were telling me I should return to the priesthood.”
Following completion of his engineering studies, Fr Emmanuel felt that, thanks to the love of God, he had moved forward on the difficult journey of healing and forgiveness.
He finally entered the St Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Kabgayi in 2004.
Ordained in August 2011, he immediately knew what his mission would be.
“When I became a priest, the effects of the genocide elevated me to a level of being one of the channels that God has to use to heal his people,” he said.
It’s a complex situation as Hutu offenders return from jail and back to their communities.
The Hutu woman Concilie is among those he has found to lead the community to forgiveness and reconciliation. Her story is both tragic and inspiring.
Concilie married a Tutsi man.
“Together they had 11 children, which is fairly normal in these parts of Africa,” Fr Emmanuel said.
“In 1994 when the killing started, she went into hiding with five children and her husband was with the other six.
“Eventually they were found and not only was her husband killed but all the children as well.
“Concilie was tortured for trying to save her children.”
Fr Emmanuel said the trauma from such terrible losses had made her aggressive, also turning her to alcohol.
“Then Concilie started attending healing programs for forgiveness and reconciliation run by a charismatic group in the Catholic Church,” he said.
“She got a bit healed and started to ask neighbours for forgiveness for her aggression; eventually she also forgave those who had killed her children and husband.
“Her actions became like an open door through which many others entered to ask for forgiveness from each other.
“Now Concilie is among the key figures leading forgiveness and reconciliation efforts in the parish of Nyamata.”
Fr Emmanuel said there was still enormous work to be done in this ongoing journey.
“This healing process depends on how much we open ourselves to the healing light of God,” he said.
“This is a huge job … basically we are reconstructing human beings, one by one as we turn churches into centres of healing.
“The faith here is strong – at our parish’s partially completed Queen of the Apostles Church there are three Masses every Sunday attended by as many as 1200 people.
“The completion of this church will be an important symbol of hope for the future.”
The Rwandan priest’s visit to Australia, taking in at least a dozen dioceses over nearly two months, has been an enormous morale boost, he said.
“I am seeing the universality of the Church in action,” he said.
“The support I have received when I speak of my mission in Rwanda is very much appreciated.
“I can see we are not alone; we are united as sons and daughters of God and can pray for one another.”
For more information, or to support Fr Emmanuel’s work, visit www.catholicmission.org.au.
