Confession
by Tom Flannery copyright 2004
song notes here
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Bless me father they say I've sinned
but it seems we've been touched from above
given powers by your hand
with the strength enough to bury love

some must die so others can live
so if our land must be purged clean
after all we've done in your name
surely you can forget the things you've seen

today we stand accused by those
whom we know you've forsaken long ago
your judgment is merciful and true
but tell me does it have to be so slow?

Bless me father they say I've sinned
but I'm still here and they're all gone
your will be done and all that stuff
so you tell me now what we've done wrong?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Notes
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Rwanda is about 95% Christian, and the fact that those charged with Genocide include multiple Catholic and Protestant clergy (the bishop of Kigali was also charged with crimes against humanity, although he was acquitted, thanks to pressure put on the government by Rome)  is shocking, or at least it should be. 

Recently convicted of war crimes in a court in Belgium were 2 Rwandan Catholic nuns, who allegedly not only led the militia to their convent, where thousands of people were hiding in terror, but also helpfully fetched the gasoline that the killers used to burn the building down. 5000 people died. Despite being convicted, the nuns were not excommunicated by the catholic church. 

Pictured is Father Athanase Seromba, charged with "genocide or, in the alternative, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity." At the time of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Father Seromba was priest of the Catholic parish of Nyange (Kibuye province in western Rwanda). The prosecution charges him with responsibility for the deaths of thousands of Tutsis who took refuge in his parish. According to his indictment, he ordered the church to be bulldozed, crushing to death some 2,000 Tutsis.

Father Jean Francois Kayiranga and Father Edouard Nkurikiye have already been convicted to death in Rwanda for genocidal crimes.