Une Minute avec Marie
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The Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994 did not spare Kibeho, the town of the apparitions: ten thousand people were killed in the town's parish church.
The apparitions of the Virgin Mary began on November 28, 1981, and ended on November 28, 1989. On November 28, 2006, the Jubilee Year (25 years) was inaugurated, and on this occasion, one of the three seers of Kibeho, Nathalie Mukamazimpaka, recalls:
“Our Lady taught me to pray the Rosary crown of the 7 Sorrows because she said that a tragedy was brewing in Rwanda. Our Lady asked us to change our lifestyle, to love the sacraments, to do penance, to pray unceasingly by reciting the Rosary of the 7 Sorrows for the conversion of the hearts of those who have strayed from God, and to be humble by asking forgiveness and forgiving.”
Bishop Augustin Misago of Gikongoro (in western Rwanda) comments:
“Forgiveness is central to the Gospel message... Without forgiveness, we cannot build a society based on the Gospel. Without forgiveness there can be no healthy society, only a society torn apart”.
Bishop Misago recalls the shock and concern generated by the visionaries' story:
“Today we can say with certainty that it was a prophecy of the Rwandan tragedy. But I remember that on August 15, 1982, on the feast of the Assumption, instead of seeing the Virgin full of joy, the visionaries witnessed terrible, frightening visions of corpses spurting out abundant streams of blood, left unburied on the hills, and no one knew what these horrible visions meant.
Now we can reread the events and think that they could be a vision of what happened in Rwanda, but also in the Great Lakes region where a lot of blood was shed, in Burundi, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo".
The Bishop of Gikongoro adds that Our Lady's message at Kibeho concerns all humanity. “We need a conversion of hearts to achieve greater justice. We live in a situation of global imbalance, where the rich continue to get richer and the poor to get poorer. It's a shameful situation that each of us must evaluate according to one's own conscience.”