International

Catholic Complicity and Rwanda Genocide

By Jason Beaubien

Published April 21, 2005 at 9:00 PM PDT

This story was published more than 19 years ago.

Human-rights advocates are demanding an apology from the Catholic Church for its alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, arguing the church did not do enough to stop the killings.

Now, an international court is trying several Catholic priests for their alleged role in the massacres, in which Hutus murdered 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The Archbishop of Kigali declined to be interviewed but in a written response to questions by NPR he says the church didn't have the power to stop the killings. He adds flatly that no Rwandan clergy were involved in the genocide.

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International

Jason Beaubien

Jason Beaubien is a Peabody award-winning journalist. He's filed stories from more than 60 countries around the world. His reporting tends to focus on issues in lower-income countries. Often his reports highlight inequities, injustices and abuses of power. He also regularly writes about natural disasters, wars and human conflict. Over the last two decades he's covered hurricanes in the Caribbean, typhoons in the Philippines, multiple earthquakes in Haiti, the Arab Spring, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the drug war in Mexico.

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