Eulade Rudahunga was a Rwandan priest for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Butare in the Republic of

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

from August 2, 1953, to 2019. He served as a chaplain for different parishes until he received the title of

Monsignor Monsignor (; it, monsignore ) is an honorific form of address or title for certain male clergy members, usually members of the Roman Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" ca ...

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

. Rudahunga attended Kabgayi and Nyakibanda seminaries before receiving the ecclesiastical title of Padre. He worked as a teacher and taught well-known Rwandan figures such as the late

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 ethn ...

, the former

president of Rwanda This article lists the presidents of Rwanda since the creation of the office in 1961 (during the Rwandan Revolution), to the present day. The president of Rwanda is the head of state and head of executive of the Republic of Rwanda. The presid ...

. Rudahunga was a survivor of the 1994

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...

against the Tutsi. He survived by pleading with the killers and giving them some of the church savings to free himself and other refugees they hid with in the church.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rudahunga, Eulade 20th-century Rwandan Roman Catholic priests People from Butare 1918 births 2019 deaths 21st-century Rwandan Roman Catholic priests