In just 100 days in 1994, approximately 800,000 people were
slaughtered in Rwanda. The genocide counts as one of the greatest
human tragedies in African history. Fr. Stanislaw Filipek SAC, a Polish
missionary in Rwanda for over 30 years, has devoted his service to spreading
awareness of God’s Mercy, building a Divine Mercy Sanctuary in Kigali and most
recently coordinating the first continental Congress on God’s Mercy in Africa
to be held in September 2016.
During
his visit to the international charity Aid to the Church in Need he spoke of
his work in introducing Divine Mercy as experienced by Saint Sister Faustina Kowalska, the
world-renowned apostle of Divine Mercy, in Rwanda today.
Hope
in the midst of hopelessness
“Christ revealed Himself to Sister Faustina
between the two World Wars” reflects Fr. Stanislaw. “At a moment of deep
hopelessness, when people were afflicted with tragedy after an evil that was
done, exactly in this very moment, out of the deepest hopelessness when
everything was lost, ruined, God revealed Himself as merciful. God can fix it
all. He can transform evil into good. We are being constantly invited to learn
this, and this is the leitmotif of our pastoral work in Rwanda.”
The
purifying experience of the Cross
Fr. Stanislaw draws a parallel to the
Rwandan experience through a story. “A young woman, some 20 years ago when she
was a young girl, gave false testimony against a man who lived in a house that
somebody else wanted to take. This false testimony was enough to put the man in
jail for eight years. He suffered from being in jail while innocent and from
the growing need for revenge.”
“While in jail he had a personal encounter
with Jesus. He converted and began a process of inner forgiveness. Meanwhile,
the woman who accused him realized that when she prayed, the name of this man
kept ringing in her head. Her conscience awoke and she started sharing with a
priest and soon they concluded that she needed to find this man and beg for his
forgiveness.”
“So began a long process of searching. She
searched the prisons for years. One day, she learned the man had been released
and she finally found his house. Scared and not knowing how he would react, she
asked for his forgiveness. ‘I forgave you long ago’ was the reply. ‘I wanted to
wreak a vengeance on you, but I have converted and now I am aware that God led
me through a Way of the Cross - a very difficult one - but one that released
me. And so I forgive you.’ He hugged and kissed her. These people are now
friends.”
Good
out of experienced evil
The devotion to God’s Mercy in Rwanda “was
sown into fertile ground,” says the missionary “because in this post-war
context a great question arose: How to talk about forgiveness? In Rwanda I
often hear this question: ‘who should forgive first’? There is no easy answer,
but I keep repeating: he, who is wiser, he, who is closer to God, he should
learn to forgive. One never loses forgiving. On the contrary, you can only win.”
“I think that John Paul’s II words from Dives in Misericordiae are helpful here.
He said that the art of God’s Mercy consists in bringing good out of
experienced evil. This means that we should not focus on evil - one that we
have caused or one that we have experienced - but on the good that we can do. I
think that this is the most effective, and probably the only way to
reconciliation.”
The
Sowing
“The idea of God’s Mercy spread all over
Rwanda in a quite simple way,” explains the missionary. “The Pallottines in
France published a small brochure on the Devotion to God’s Mercy including the
Rosary of Mercy, Sunday of Mercy, the Hour of Mercy, etc. We translated it into
Kinyarwanda, one of the official languages and it spread quickly.”
“At some point the bishops started asking,
‘What is this all about, this God’s Mercy’. They didn’t know and they were
afraid it was some kind of sect.” To answer the growing interest in the topic,
the Pallottines in 2008 proposed to Rwanda’s Episcopal Conference to take
responsibility for the movement and it has since grown rapidly with national
chaplains, a national committee of Divine Mercy Groups and from September 9 to 15, 2016 in Kigali, Rwanda a first
African Continental Congress on God’s Mercy will be held.
Supported by Aid to the
Church in Need (ACN), the theme of the meeting is ‘God’s Mercy as a source of
hope for the New Evangelization of the African Continent.’
“After the tearing of a
society apart by genocide, war and mourning the victims, we see clearly that
God’s Mercy might be the answer, an antidote to all this evil, by which people
are afflicted” rejoices Fr. Stanislaw.
With picture of baptism
in Kabuga, Rwanda (© ACN)
Editor’s Notes:
Directly under the
Holy Father, 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 Father Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul
II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity,” the organization is now at work
in over 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, 43 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed
worldwide.
For more information contact Michael Varenne at michael@churchinneed.org or call
718-609-0939 or fax718-609-0938. Aid to the Church in Need, 725 Leonard Street,
PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384. www.churchinneed.org
