Monday 7 January 2008
 
By John Newton
 
Rwanda’s bishops are launching a huge campaign of evangelisation after the huge success of silver jubilee celebrations which climaxed with a Mass attracting more than 50,000 pilgrims at the Marian shrine of Kibeho.

Following the anniversary celebrations marking the apparitions of Our Lady to school-children in Kibeho, the national Episcopal conference is planning a campaign of catechesis and evangelisation to mark the year of St Paul.

Pope Benedict announced that to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of St Paul’s birth, a special year dedicated to him will run from June 29, 2008, to June 29, 2009.

Papal envoy Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, was chief celebrant at last month’s Jubilee Mass at the Kibeho shrine in the south of Rwanda

The Mass, which was concelebrated by 13 bishops and 408 priests, lasted for more than five hours.

In his homily Cardinal Dias said that the message of Our Lady of Kibeho “has not yet entered our hearts, that conversion has not yet come to us” and reminded people of the three requests made to the visionaries – conversion of heart, unceasing prayer and offering all our suffering for the conversion of the world.

Some pilgrims claimed they saw the Virgin Mary with her Son in her arms during the consecration of the Eucharist.

ACN representatives travelled out to central Rwanda to attend the Mass. Afterwards, they spoke to pilgrims include Candide, a widow aged 60, who said the shrine had given her hope.

“I adopted a child, who died of AIDS at the age of 28,” she explained. “I didn’t have the means to care for him and I was afraid I might lose my trust in God if he did not get better.

“He died in the space of 48 hours, from meningitis, but without suffering – and my faith remained intact.”
Kibeho had changed her spiritually: “I never liked reciting the rosary, but now I belong to a rosary group in our parish and love to pray the rosary each morning before Mass.”

Many pilgrims walked barefooted to Kibeho at the height of the rainy season. Some even travelled for a week on foot to get to the celebrations.

The apparitions at Kibeho began on 28 November 1981 when 16-year-old school girl Alphonsine Mumureke reported seeing the Virgin Mary.

Within a couple of months other children also described receiving apparitions. In 1982 the visionaries described terrifying pictures of thousands of corpses, some without heads.

The celebrations at Kibeho have given renewed confidence and hope to a country decimated by the civil war which broke out in 1994, in which about 800,000 Rwandans were killed in just 100 days. Among those who died was one of the Kibeho visionaries.

[ACN]