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Saint Léon Minor Seminary Of Kabgayi
St Léon Minor Seminary of Kabgayi is a Catholic church minor seminary located in Kabgayi, Southern province of Rwanda. The school is owned by Kabgayi Diocese of Catholic Church of Rwanda. Established in 1913, the seminary is the oldest formal school in Rwanda. The minor seminary of Kabgayi had educated a number of notable people both in the church and the politics. The seminary's alumni include two former Presidents of Republic of Rwanda, several catholic church bishops, two former Presidents of Rwanda's senate, tens of ministers, several members of the parliament and hundreds of Catholic priests. Foundation After the creation of Apostolic Vicariate of Kivu in 1912, its first Vicar Bishop John Joseph Hirth founded Saint Léon Minor Seminary in Nyaruhengeri near Save. The seminary opened in January 1913 with 16 students from Rwaza, Nyundo, Kabgayi and Save. On 4 October 1913, the new established seminary of Nyaruhengeri was transferred to Kabgayi where it has been operating up ...
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Kabgayi
Kabgayi is just south of Gitarama in Muhanga District, Southern Province, Rwanda, southwest of Kigali. It was established as a Catholic Church mission in 1905. It became the center for the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda and is the site of the oldest cathedral in the country and of Catholic seminaries, schools and a hospital. The church at first supported the Tutsi ruling elite, but later backed the Hutu majority. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide thousands of Tutsis who had taken refuge here were killed. Some survivors admire the courage of many priests who helped them during those difficult days, like Father Evergiste RUKEBESHA and many others. Later, some Hutus including three bishops and many priests were killed by the rebels RPF soldiers. A mass grave beside the hospital is marked by a memorial. Inside the Basilica are kept the bodies of the three bishops killed by FPR rebels. Two of them (Vincent Nsengiyumva, the Archbishop of Kigali and Joseph Ruzindana, Bishop of Byumba) ...
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Apostolic Vicariate Of Kivu
The Apostolic Vicariate of Kivu is the name that was given to two vicariates of the White Fathers, a Catholic missionary society in the Latin Roman Rite Catholic Church. Both vicariates served lands around Lake Kivu during the colonial era. The first vicariate, from 1912 to 1922, served what are now Rwanda and Burundi. The second vicariate, from 1929 to 1952, served territory in the east of the Belgian Congo. Rwanda and Burundi The missions in Burundi had been under the Apostolic Vicariate of Unyanyembe, while those of Rwanda were under the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Victoria Nyanza. In 1912 these missions were joined to form the new Apostolic Vicariate of Kivu. On 12 December 1912, John Joseph Hirth was appointed the first Vicar Apostolic of Kivu. Hirth established his headquarters at Kabgayi, and worked there until his retirement in 1921. By then there were thirty thousand Christians in the Vicariate. The name was changed to the Apostolic Vicariate of Urundi and Kivu ...
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John Joseph Hirth
John Joseph Hirth (french: Jean-Joseph Hirth; 26 March 1854 – 6 January 1931) was a Catholic Bishop in German East Africa, known as the founder of the church in Rwanda. Early years John Joseph Hirth was born on 26 March 1854 at Spechbach-le-Bas (Niederspechbach), near Altkirch in Alsace. His parents were Jean Hirth, a teacher, and Catherine Sauner. Hirth was fluent in both French and German. After primary school he entered the secondary school at Altkirch, studied at the minor seminaries of Lachapelle-sous-Rougemont and Zillisheim, and then attended the college at Luxeuil-les-Bains. After the German acquisition of Alsace he chose French citizenship in 1872, since he was refused dual citizenship. He studied theology at the Major Seminary in Nancy from 1873 to 1875, and was then admitted to the White Fathers (Society of the Missionaries of Africa) as a novice. He studied under Léon Livinhac. Hirth completed his religious and sacerdotal education at Maison Carrée, near Al ...
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Aloys Bigirumwami
Aloys Bigirumwami (December 22, 1904 – June 3, 1986) was a Rwandan prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Nyundo from 1959 to 1973, having previously served as its apostolic vicar. Birth and education Aloys Bigirumwami was born into a Tutsi family on 22 December 1904 in Zaza, Rwanda, and baptized on Christmas Day. He came from the Bagesera-Bazirankende clan, which had ruled Gisaka, a state that around 1850 had been conquered and annexed to Rwanda. His father, Joseph Rukamba, was one of the first Christians of the Catholic mission that had been founded at Zaza in 1900, baptized on Christmas 1903. Aloys was the eldest of a family of six boys and six girls. At the age of ten Aloys entered Saint Léon Minor Seminary of Kabgayi. He entered the Major Seminary of Kabgayi in 1921, where he studied under Bishop John Joseph Hirth, founder of the church of Rwanda. He was ordained a priest on 26 May 1929. Career Bigirumwami taught at the Saint Léon Minor Seminary ...
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Grégoire Kayibanda
Grégoire Kayibanda (1 May 192415 December 1976) was a Rwandan politician and revolutionary who was the first elected List of Presidents of Rwanda, President of Rwanda from 1962 to 1973. An ethnic Hutu, he was a pioneer of the Rwandan Revolution and led Rwanda's struggle for independence from Belgium, replacing the Tutsi monarchy with a republican form of government. Rwanda became independent from Belgium in 1962, with Kayibanda serving as the country's first president, establishing a pro-Hutu policy and a ''de facto'' one-party system governed by his party, Parmehutu. He was overthrown in a 1973 Rwandan coup d'état, coup d'état in 1973 by his defense minister, Juvénal Habyarimana, and died three years later. Early life and education Kayibanda was born on 1 May 1924 in Tare, Rwanda. He studied his primary school at Tare then at Kabgayi. Kayibanda was admitted in Saint Léon Minor Seminary of Kabgayi in 1937. After the completion of minor seminary in 1943, he continued to Majo ...
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Juvénal Habyarimana
Juvénal Habyarimana (, ; 8 March 19376 April 1994) was a Rwandan politician and military officer who served as the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until 1994. He was nicknamed ''Kinani'', a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible". An ethnic Hutu, Habyarimana served in several security positions including minister of defense under Rwanda's first president, Grégoire Kayibanda. After overthrowing Kayibanda in a coup in 1973, he became the country's new president and eventually continued his predecessor's pro-Hutu policies. He was a dictator, and electoral fraud was suspected for his unopposed re-elections: 98.99% of the vote on 24 December 1978, 99.97% of the vote on 19 December 1983, and 99.98% of the vote on 19 December 1988. During his rule, Rwanda became a totalitarian, one-party order in which his MRND-party enforcers required people to chant and dance in adulation of the President at mass pageants of political "animation". While the country as a whole had become slig ...
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Gaspard Cyimana
Gaspard Cyimana (May 30, 1930 – February 6, 1982) was a Rwandan statesman, industrialist, economist, and leader of independence who served as the 1st Minister of Finance of Rwanda. Cyimana was one of the Founding Fathers of the Republic of Rwanda, signing the original 1961 Constitution of Rwanda and the subsequent 1962 Constitution of Rwanda. He was a top leader of Rwandan independence from Belgium. Cyimana was a leader of Hutu-Tutsi reconciliation, arguing for the necessity of a multi-ethnic society for Rwanda to be prosperous and economically feasible, and was a signer of the 1960 Entente Between the Tutsi-Hutu Youth of Rwanda. He served as the 1st Minister of Finance, Economic Affairs and Planning of Rwanda from 1960–1968. Cyimana was considered one of the primary leaders and most important political figures of the new nation. Cyimana was the most outspoken critic of nepotism and the lack of qualifications among certain officials within the 1st Republic. He campai ...
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Alexis Kagame
Alexis Kagame (15 May 1912 – 2 December 1981) was a Rwandan philosopher, linguist, historian, poet and Catholic priest. His main contributions were in the fields of ethnohistory and "ethnophilosophy" (the study of indigenous philosophical systems). As a professor of theology, he carried out wide research into the oral history, traditions and literature of Rwanda, and wrote several books on the subject, both in French and Kinyarwanda. He also wrote poetry, which was also published. Kagame was also active in the political field, and was seen by some European scholars as the intellectual leader of Tutsi culture and rights under the colonial system starting in the 1940s. Life Kagame was born in Kiyanza - Buliza Rwanda, in actual Murambi Sector, Rulindo District, Northern Province, to a long line of court historians. His family had high status in the kingdom of Rwanda, being of the ruling Tutsi class, and also belonging to a group called Abiru, the traditional ministers in the c ...
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Rwandan Patriotic Front
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF–Inkotanyi, french: Front patriotique rwandais, FPR) is the ruling political party in Rwanda. Led by President Paul Kagame, the party has governed the country since its armed wing defeated government forces, winning the Rwandan Civil War in 1994. Since 1994, the party has ruled Rwanda using tactics which have been characterised as authoritarian. Elections are manipulated in various ways, which include banning opposition parties, arresting or assassinating critics, and electoral fraud. History Rwandese Alliance for National Unity Following the overthrow of Idi Amin in 1979, the Tutsi refugee intelligentsia in Uganda set up the region's first political refugee organization, the Rwandese Alliance for National Unity (RANU), to discuss a possible return to Rwanda. Though primarily a forum for intellectual discussion, it became militant after Milton Obote's election of 1980 resulted in many Tutsi refugees joining Yoweri Museveni in fighting the Ugan ...
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Cyprien And Daphrose Rugamba
Cyprien (ca. 1935–1994) and Daphrose Rugamba (ca. 1944–1994) were a married couple from Rwanda, who introduced the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Emmanuel Community to their country in 1990, and were assassinated in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The cause for their canonization in the Catholic Church was opened in 2015. Biography Cyprien ipiriyaniRugamba attended primary in Nyamagabe. In September 1948, he was admitted to Saint Leon Minor Seminary of Kabgayi where he finished in 1954 and moved to Nyakibanda Major Seminary. He also studied history in Burundi and in Belgium. He had a talent for poetry, music, and choreography, with a particular interest for ancestral art forms in Rwanda. He served as director of the Rwandan National Institute for Scientific Studies in Butare. Daphrose aforozaMukasanga was a school teacher, born in the same village of Cyanika in the south of Rwanda as Cyprien. They married in 1965, but the relationship was not easy; Cyprien neglected ...
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Bernard Makuza
Bernard Makuza (born 30 September 1962) is a Rwandan politician who was Prime Minister of Rwanda from 8 March 2000 to 6 October 2011. He also served as President of the Senate of Rwanda from 14 October 2014 to 17 October 2019. Background Makuza's father was Anastase Makuza, who served as a minister during Grégoire Kayibanda's presidency. Like his father, Bernard Makuza attended Saint Léon Minor Seminary of Kabgayi. Career Makuza was a member of the Republican Democratic Movement (MDR) before the party was dissolved on 14 April 2003 because of its history of promoting genocide ideology. Makuza resigned his membership in the MDR before being appointed Prime Minister. In 2006, during his term as Prime Minister, Makuza identified as belonging to no party. Prime Minister Makuza was the Rwandan Ambassador to Burundi and then Ambassador to Germany before being appointed as Prime Minister in March 2000. His appointment to the latter post by President Pasteur Bizimungu followed the ...
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Augustin Banyaga
Augustin Banyaga (born March 31, 1947) is a Rwandan-born American mathematician whose research fields include symplectic topology and contact geometry. He is currently a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University. Biography He earned his Ph.D. degree in 1976 at the University of Geneva under the supervision of André Haefliger. (Banyaga was the first person from Rwanda to obtain a Ph.D. in mathematics.) He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (1977–1978), Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor at Harvard University (1978–1982), and assistant professor at Boston University (1982–1984), before joining the faculty at Pennsylvania State University in 1984 as associate professor. He was promoted to full professor in 1992. In 2009 Banyaga was elected a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, and in 2015 he was named a Distinguished Senior Scholar by Pennsylvania State University. He has made significant contributions in sy ...
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