Days after President Paul Kagame of Rwanda warned Catholic pilgrims who “worship poverty” that he would round them up and jail them, Catholic clergy in the East Africa nation remained tight-lipped, even as the warning reverberated across the region.
“The church doesn’t think it should be so concerned about this. It chooses to remain quiet,” a Catholic priest who did not want to be identified told OSV News in a telephone interview.
“I learned that many young people, as many as thousands … wake up in the early morning, walk for three days to go to (a place) where a vision appeared, a pilgrim land, a place associated with poverty,” Kagame told a youth conference. “No one must worship poverty. Do not ever do that again … If I ever hear about this again, that people travelled to go and worship poverty, I will bring trucks and round them up and imprison them, and only release them when the poverty mentality has left them,” Kagame, who is himself a Catholic, said.
Yolande Makolo, Kagame’s spokeswoman, told Agence France-Presse. that the leader never mentioned “a specific pilgrimage site, and certainly not Kibeho,” referring to the most famous shrine in eastern Africa. But in Rwanda, the local media interpreted the reference as pointing to an annual pilgrimage undertaken by thousands of youth to Our Lady of Kibeho shrine.
Picture: Rwandan President Paul Kagame is pictured during a ceremony in Kigali April 7, 2023. (OSV News photo/Jean Bizimana, Reuters)