In Eure department in Normandy, north-western France, you will find a quiet little parish - la Paroisse Gisors vallee -d'epte - with a congregation of about 20,000 people, and a dozen priests going on with their daily lives. They are devoted to God, or so it appears.

 

Among the priests living, comfortably, in Eure is one particular individual with a very dark past.  Hiding in plain sight is Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka.

 

About 22 years ago, when he arrived in the region, Wenceslas was embraced in Gisors, a commune of Normandy, by people moved by his story. He was a refugee, he lied, from the genocide in Rwanda. He lied that he was lucky to have survived the killings. His parents died. He almost lost his own life for helping people to escape the death squads. Things are still not good, he lamented, saying it's not safe for him to go back.

 

People who had never seen, among others, a photograph of him with a cross around his neck and a gun on his hip outside his church, Sainte-Famille, in Kigali, believed his story. Others, especially his friends and French politicians with ties to the former genocidal regime in Rwanda who knew his dark past – his protégés – pulled all strings to affirm his lies and protect him.

 

When survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi called on the Roman Catholic church to distance itself from Wenceslas by stripping him of his position, the curate in Gisors, Father Michel Moran, would not have any of it. Moral actually organised a vigorous defence of the priest, including a de facto trial by parishioners who listened to carefully selected witnesses and then declared Wenceslas to be innocent.

 

It’s a long story.

 

In Rwanda, Munyeshyaka’s reputation is one that is never forgotten, especially by survivors of the 1994 Genocide. He is responsible for the death of thousands of Tutsi, and is accused of raping Tutsi women who sought refuge in Sainte-Famille parish, which he headed in 1994.

 

On August 2, 1994, Munyeshyaka, along with 28 other Rwandan priests in Goma, eastern DRC, where the bulk of the then defeated genocidal regime’s army, militia and other followers had fled to, signed a negation document sent to Pope John Paul II in which they justified the Genocide committed against the Tutsi. They put the blame and responsibility for the killings of more than one million Tutsi on the RPF which had just stopped the genocide and liberated the country.

 

Later, with the help of the genocidal regime’s network in France, Munyeshyaka – like many other top Genocide perpetrators – fled to France, as a ‘political refugee’, and settled in and started serving as a priest at Gisors Parish in Evreux Diocese of France, until December 2021, when he was ex-communicated.

 

Munyeshyaka officially admitted that he had sired two children out of the three he was accused of. This led to his dismissal from priestly duties. He was prohibited from conferring any sacrament or to celebrate them.

 

Just like that, the Catholic Church that had remained protective to him, even when he faced the most heinous of crimes – genocide and crimes against humanity, drew a line.

 

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Munyeshyaka is not the only genocidaire being harboured by the Catholic Church.

 

Meeting Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in May 2017, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the Catholic Church’s role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

 

“The sins and failings of the church and its members disfigured the face of Catholicism,” the Pope said.

 

His statement does not echo the Catholic Church’s refusal to sanction the priests and religious leaders involved in the Genocide. And history testifies and truth hurts; the Vatican  remains silent on these genocidaires.

 

Between 25,000 and 30,000 Tutsi were shot dead at several parishes they had sought refuge at, mostly at the hands of the ‘people of God’ they had trusted to protect them.

 

Tutsi priests, Tutsi seminarists and Tutsi refugees who had taken refuge at the Major Seminary of Nyakibanda were killed. Among the perpetrators was Father Thaddée Rusingizandekwe, a native of Kibeho, then professor at the Major Seminary of Nyakibanda.

 

Father Anaclet Sebahinde betrayed Father Pierre Ngoga who was taking Tutsi from Kibeho to Burundi for refuge, and was assassinated.

 

Father Emmanuel Uwayezu was among supervisors of Tutsi massacres at Kibeho Catholic Church, while Father Joseph Sagahutu and bourgmestre Juvenal Muhitira supervised the Tutsi massacres at Muganza Catholic Parish, now Nyaruguru district.

 

These priests involved in the Genocide are still roaming free, serving the holy communion bread, with the same hands that bear the blood of innocent souls.

 

Apart from priests, nuns also got involved as well in the massacres of the Tutsi. About 7,000 Tutsi who took refuge in the Benedictine Sisters’ Monastery in Sovu and at their Health Center were killed by Mukangango Consolata (Sister Gertrude) and her colleague Mukabutera Julienne (Sister Kizito) who poured fuel on the garage where the refugees were hiding and set it on fire.

 

Today, the two nuns are serving the Church in Belgium despite having been convicted of Genocide crimes by a Brussels Court in 2001.

 

These instances are a few among many other testimonies by survivors. Most Catholic parishes by 1994 experienced killings of Tutsi, which involved victims and perpetrators affiliated to the Church.

 

But 29 years later, the church still remains silent, with total impunity, about the genocidaires who are still in service.

 

How long will this this impunity by the Catholic Church last? Will the Vatican deny justice to Genocide survivors for ever?