"On Tuesday, September 30, we arrived at Kibeho from Cyangugu. It was an enjoyable journey, and I was very happy to reach this holy place of pilgrimage.
I wish to provide some bit of historical context as I have done for other sites in France that I visited previously.
Kibeho is a small town in Rwanda where there is located a Catholic high school for girls that was named some time ago "Girls College of Kibeho." It was in this school On November 28, 1981 that the Virgin Mary appeared to a girl named Alphonsine Mumureke. Alphonsine was a lively student, not known for being particularly pious, and so when she began to say she had seen the Virgin Mary, many did not believe her, including the headmistress of the school. The region of Rwanda where the school was located was one known for widespread practices of witchcraft and sorcery, and some began to fear that the girl was under such influences.
She bore the full brunt of the other students' skepticism. They would bully her, they would put mud in her bed, and she described the time before each apparition as being particularly "hellish" as the students would test and prod her.
Seeing this situation, she asked the Lady whether it would be possible for her to appear to another girl of a different background and social status. So it was that Our Lady appeared to Natalie Mukamazimpaka, a very religious girl who was also studying at the high school. The third and final visionary to begin receiving apparitions was Marie Claire Mukangango, the leader of those who persecuted Alphonsine. This stunning reversal did much to assuage people's doubts about the authenticity of the apparitions. There were others who claimed to have had apparitions or visions, but these were not approved subsequently by the Vatican, and the authenticity of what they saw has not been confirmed.
The public apparitions lasted until 1989, ending on the same day they began. Over the course of these apparitions, extensive examinations were done on the children and on the phenomena to determine whether what was occurring was indeed supernatural. The local bishop set up a theological and a medical commission to investigate for a prolonged period of time. The theological commission was composed of theologians and priests who verified the doctrinal orthodoxy of what the messages said. The medical commission conducted extensive tests on the girls during the apparitions and psychological and physical evaluations over a long period of time. They found that the girls during ecstasy were disconnected from the physical world in ways impossible to explain through natural causes. For instance, during ecstasy, the visionaries would not react to pain, even to a candle being placed very near their hands. Further, they would not blink at a camera flash during the apparition nor move their gaze from a fixed point, whereas a few moments before the ecstasy, they would blink at the flash and look around normally. Not only that, but they on at least one occasion would look at the sun for prolonged periods of time, sometimes up to an hour with no ill effects such as burning of the retinas. Finally, the commission initialed long term psychiatric evaluation; they found no significant disorder such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, or hysteria. As a result of this in depth investigation, it is incredibly hard to deny the supernatural nature of what happened at Kibeho.
The message that Our Lady transmitted at Kibeho was one of a call to repentance and conversion, a warning of the sick nature of the world, a delineation of the nature of sacrificial suffering and its importance, and a call to prayer, particularly the Rosary. The Virgin Mary spoke grievingly about the moral decay the world was experiencing, and she called Christians to a proper understanding of suffering such as making little sacrifices in day to day life. She called Christians to pray the Rosary every day, and she called them to renew devotion to the Seven Sorrows Rosary, a meditation originally from the thirteenth century that no one in Rwanda knew much about at the time.
Alphonsine became a nun subsequently, entering a community of Sisters of Bethlehem. She currently lives in Italy. Natalie currently still resides in Kibeho, living a life of prayer and meditation, as instructed by Our Lady.
Among the many moments in the story of Kibeho, one apparition in particular struck observers more than the others. This was the apparition of August 15, 1982. It was the feast of the Assumption of Mary, and naturally everyone was expecting a joyful message. Instead, Our Lady appeared in tears, inconsolable. She showed the girls devastation, killing, the streets running with blood, dead bodies. It was a deeply disturbing and somber apparition, a call to conversion that was more desperate than what hardly any expected. The scale of the meaning of this apparition did not become clear until years later.
In April of 1994, a catastrophic genocide erupted across Rwanda. The causes were many, and the tensions had been slowly building for years, but the effects were quick and devastating. Thousands of Tutsi, an ethnic group in Rwanda, were slaughtered by vengeful Huti, another ethnic group. The rampages were government sponsored, overseen by prefectures and national police and military. However, great harm came also from local animosity, Hutu in small villages attacking and killing their Tutsi neighbors. In Kibeho, the killing was particularly bad. In the parish church, many Tutsi took refuge, thinking that they would be spared because of the holy place. They were wrong. The murderous crowd, clubs in hand, broke their way through the walls of the church and cut down those inside. When we visited the church on Wednesday, we saw where they had marked on the walls where the walls had been broken in. It was during the genocide that Marie Claire, the third of the visionaries, lost her life with her husband.
After the genocide, in 2001, the local bishop officially approved the apparitions. Every year, Kibeho receives many pilgrims from all over the world seeking a deeper connection with Our Lady.
Upon arriving on Tuesday night, we went to the apparition chapel where we prayed for some time. This chapel was in a building that was formerly a dormitory for the school; it was in this building that Our Lady first appeared. Among those in prayer there was Natalie, the visionary.
The next morning, we went to the basilica, a church completed not long ago that is unique architecturally, not having an equivalent anywhere in the world. I include a picture of this building. It was just outside this church that we had the extraordinary opportunity to meet with Natalie and speak with her for some time. She only spoke Kinyarwanda, the local language of this country, so Br. Henry (who speaks Kinyarwanda) translated for us.
We presented to her the Children’s Rosary, and she expressed joy at our mission of spreading the Rosary and devotion to it because that is part of the message of Kibeho. She said that often prayer of the Rosary is left to the old, so she was happy our effort was directed toward the young, especially since she was called to pray the Rosary when still quite young herself.
She encouraged us to meditate and reflect on the messages of Kibeho and Fatima and Lourdes as well in order to receive inspiration directly from our Mother. She encouraged us to remain faithful to the Rosary since it is such a powerful prayer, and she assured us of her prayers for the movement as well.
All of us felt a bit like we were walking on a cloud after this conversation since it is quite rare to be able to speak to Natalie, and it is even rarer for her to accord significant time to pilgrims for speaking.
Afterwards, we met with the chancellor of the diocese who took us to a local primary and secondary school, St. Paul’s in Kibeho, where we met with the students and head teacher after a Mass they had organized for us with the whole school. We distributed rosaries and explained how to start a Children's Rosary. They were excited to start and will be our first Children’s Rosary group in Rwanda! They will meet daily to pray in their group.
It was a brief pilgrimage to Kibeho but one I am not likely to forget. I am confident we received many graces from this visit to Our Blessed Mother."
To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE
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