Kerry Weber
The hills of Kigali, Rwanda. Rwanda is approximately the size of Maryland. Its population is 11.6 million, and approximately 57 percent are Catholic.
Kigali, Rwanda. 9 percent off Rwandans use agriculture as their main source of income.
Outside the Episcopal Conference of Rwanda (Rwanda's equivalent of the U.S.C.C.B.).
Rwanda is divided into 9 dioceses.
Catholic Relief Services has worked with the Rwandan bishops to provide strategic support, restructuring, and management tools.
Abbe Celestin Hakizimana, Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference. "We tried to create a road map together," he said of the Conference collaboration with CRS.
Advertising the Year of Faith in Rwanda.
These concrete slabs mark the mass graves of more than 250,000 of the estimated one million people killed during Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The Kigali Memorial Centre, where the graves are located, works to preserve the memory of those who died in the 1994 genocide. It also serves as a research and teaching center working to prevent such atrocities in the future.
A reminder atop a mass grave at the Kigali Memorial Center.
An opening in the grave site through which new bodies may be added. Bodies of people killed in the genocide still are being discovered and identified and brought to this location or other memorial locations around the country.
Only a few of the names of the estimated 1 million people who died in the genocide.
The memorial features several images of elephants, an animal traditionally known for its impressive memory. This image, of an elephant using a mobile phone, is meant to symbolize the need to both remember the atrocities of the genocide and to continue to tell the story to rest of the world, so that the events of 1994 will never be repeated.