I was disturbed by Gerald Caplan's facile and superficial accusations against "the Roman Catholic Church" in his article about Rwanda's genocide (Pambazuka News 150). Who is this "Roman Catholic Church" of which he speaks? Many, many official church people were killed in those days as were many lay members. The Roman Catholic Church suffered terribly along with everyone else.

Caplan accuses the Pope of not having apologized for the role of the Church in the genocide. It is hard to understand why a journalist of such reputation ignores the statements that the Pope has made wherein he acknowledges the role that some members of the Church played. In the Church there were both perpetrators and victims.

But the "Church" which encompasses all of the people of God cannot be accused. Many in the Church risked or gave their lives to save members of another ethnic group. There were heroes just as there were villains. We are all guilty of that crime. We are all responsible for its healing. Caplan's article hardly takes us in that direction.

GERALD CAPLAN RESPONDS: Strangely enough, my criticism of the RC Church as an institution is hardly controversial at all. I'd say that most survivors I've met, even those that continue calling themselves Catholics, agree; that in the many presentations at which I've named the Church as one of the great betrayers of Rwanda over the past century, including at a major conference in Kigali in April, no one, Rwandan or otherwise, has ever challenged me; and that almost all students of the genocide concur about the perverse role of the Church. It's true that many Catholics were killed during the genocide, including priests and nuns, and that many played a heroic role in trying to save or protect Tutsi threatened by the genocidaires. But against that are the large number of documented cases of priests and nuns who actively cooperated with the genocidaires.

This of course can be interpreted as individual actions. But the collective responsibility of the Church goes well beyond the despicable actions of certain of its members. It was Catholic missionaries who created the false stereotypes of Hutu and Tutsi in the first place, which led to the unbridgeable chasm between them. It was the Church, through its control of the education system, that brainwashed all Rwandans into believing their destructive ideology. It was the Church that made Rwandans believe that ethnic identity was paramount. It was the Church that effectively co-ruled colonial Rwandan with the Belgians. It was the Church that gave moral legitimation to the Hutu dictators who ruled the country after independence. It was the Archbishop of Kigali to whom Mme. Agathe, wife of President Habyarimana and head of the conspiratorial Akazu, personally confessed. It was the same Archbishop who agreed to join the executive committee of the ruling party for many years, even though that party was based explicitly on Hutu supremacy and anti-Tutsi discrimination. It was the Church at both the highest and the parish level that failed to protest in the years prior to the genocide as anti-Tutsi propaganda washed over the country and massacres of Tutsi accelerated.

All this was bad enough. Then came the genocide. Throughout the 100 days, the Church as an institution failed utterly ever to condemn the genocide, indeed ever to acknowledge that there WAS a genocide happening before its very eyes, not to say with its cooperation. Never did it demand that the genocidaires halt their targeted killings. Nor, after it was over, did the leaders of the Church in Rwanda ever acknowledge their corporate responsibility or apologize for their complicity and/or passivity. As for the Vatican, while it has acknowledged that certain bad apples existed, it too has consistently denied any institutional responsibility. Indeed, it has actively hidden priests suspected of aiding the genocidaires. And to this day it uses language that subtly questions whether there ever was a genocide. In his message on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, the Pope said that in 1994, "serious fighting broke out between Hutu and Tutsi". That's a quite remarkable way to describe an elaborate conspiracy by Hutu extremists to annihilate all of Rwanda's Tutsi civilians. But this way, the Pope need make no apologies for his Church's role, and indeed he has never done so.
It took the Church 2000 years to apologize for its central role in creating and promoting anti-Semitism during its first 2 millennia. Maybe Rwandans just need to learn more patience.