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Kibeho: Mary renews Rwanda’s hope

Posted by Press release on 9/1/2008, 9:51 am
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ACN News, Monday, 7th January 2008 – RWANDA (With photo of Pilgrims gathered before Our Lady in the shrine of Kibeho - Please credit the picture: ‘Image: ACN’ ) Mary renews Rwanda’s hope By John Newton RWANDA’s bishops are launching a huge campaign of evangelisation after the huge success of silver jubilee celebrations which climaxed with a Mass attracting more than 50,000 pilgrims at the Marian shrine of Kibeho. Following the anniversary celebrations marking the apparitions of Our Lady to school-children in Kibeho, the national Episcopal conference is planning a campaign of catechesis and evangelisation to mark the year of St Paul. Pope Benedict announced that to commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of St Paul’s birth, a special year dedicated to him will run from June 29, 2008, to June 29, 2009. Papal envoy Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, was chief celebrant at last month’s Jubilee Mass at the Kibeho shrine in the south of Rwanda The Mass, which was concelebrated by 13 bishops and 408 priests, lasted for more than five hours. In his homily Cardinal Dias said that the message of Our Lady of Kibeho “has not yet entered our hearts, that conversion has not yet come to us” and reminded people of the three requests made to the visionaries – conversion of heart, unceasing prayer and offering all our suffering for the conversion of the world. Some pilgrims claimed they saw the Virgin Mary with her Son in her arms during the consecration of the Eucharist. ACN representatives travelled out to central Rwanda to attend the Mass. Afterwards, they spoke to pilgrims include Candide, a widow aged 60, who said the shrine had given her hope. “I adopted a child, who died of AIDS at the age of 28,” she explained. “I didn’t have the means to care for him and I was afraid I might lose my trust in God if he did not get better. “He died in the space of 48 hours, from meningitis, but without suffering – and my faith remained intact.” Kibeho had changed her spiritually: “I never liked reciting the rosary, but now I belong to a rosary group in our parish and love to pray the rosary each morning before Mass.” Many pilgrims walked barefooted to Kibeho at the height of the rainy season. Some even travelled for a week on foot to get to the celebrations. The apparitions at Kibeho began on 28 November 1981 when 16-year-old school girl Alphonsine Mumureke reported seeing the Virgin Mary. Within a couple of months other children also described receiving apparitions. In 1982 the visionaries described terrifying pictures of thousands of corpses, some without heads. The celebrations at Kibeho have given renewed confidence and hope to a country decimated by the civil war which broke out in 1994, in which about 800,000 Rwandans were killed in just 100 days. Among those who died was one of the Kibeho visionaries. Editor’s Notes: Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action. Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world. The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide. For more information, please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web:www.aidtochurch.org

Responses: Re: Kibeho: Mary renews Rwanda’s hope - Denis Nolan 10/1/2008, 12:43 pm « Back to thread

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