Religion in Rwanda

[2] There are small communities of Hindus and Buddhists, comprising mostly foreign adherents, typically businessmen from China and India as well as university professors and students.

The genocide started after the death of the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, in the shooting down of his plane above Kigali airport on 6 April 1994.

The full details of that specific incident remain unclear but the death of the President was by no means the only cause of the mayhem (ethnic tension in Rwanda is not new and disagreements between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis are common but the animosity between them grew substantially after the end of the Belgian colonial regime).

In the period leading up to the genocide, 1990–1994, major splits emerged within most churches between moderates who promoted democratic change and conservatives allied with the Habyarimana regime.

At the St Paul Pastoral Centre in Kigali about 2,000 people found refuge and most of them survived, due to the efforts of Fr Célestin Hakizimana.

[13] On November 20, 2016, the Catholic Church in Rwanda released a statement signed by nine bishops apologizing for the role of its members in the genocide of 1994.