Remembering six Assumption Sisters killed in Rwanda

Sister Cathy, a Religious of the Assumption from the Twickenham community wrote on X (Twitter) today: @SrCathyRA - 30 years ago today, six Assumption Sisters were killed in Rwanda. We remember them with love, and pray for peace wherever there is violence & hatred.

A reflection on the Assumption Sisters website reads:

'Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.' John 12.24

30 years after the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, faith enables us to find in the contemplation of the life of Christ the meaning and direction of our history. The foundation of the Congregation of the Religious of the Assumption in Birambo, our mother house in Africa, is an incarnation in the image of Christ, who by his life and works announced the Good News of salvation. His passion and death introduced him into the glory of the resurrection, which allowed him to remain eternally with us in a more universal way.

We remember our sisters Gratia Maria, Boniface Eugénie, Alphonse Marie, and Novices Hilda and Anne Marie who perished with so many other innocent people, including the priests and Josephite brothers of the Birambo parish on 26 April 1994 because they were Tutsis.

Through them, the congregation crossed the waters of passion and death to enter true life. Today, their memory, which goes beyond the land of Birambo, is a celebration of life given to the very end, and achieves in us what the resurrection of Christ achieved in the lives of the apostles and the Church: the mission in Birambo and in the country continues in a renewed way and bears witness to the reconstruction of a more positive history.

We remember also Sister Marie Kristofa disappeared after she was caught at a check-point 'to be handed over to the authorities'.

We remember the lives of our sisters and their blood shed together with the sacrifice of so many victims of this genocide. Let us ask the Lord that their lives, together with those of so many brothers and sisters who continue to die today because of fratricidal violence, may be a seed of Reconciliation and Peace for the people of Rwanda and for the peoples who today are bleeding to death because of violence and wars.

LINKS

Prayer resources:
https://jpic-assumpta.org/index.php/2020/04/21/memoire-de-nos-soeurs-tuees-au-rwanda-le-26-avril-1994/

Sisters of the Assumption: https://assumpta.org/en/