RWANDA: Byumba Bishop Onesphore Rwaje elected as new primate
Episcopal News Service. September 21, 2010 [092110-07]
Matthew Davies
The Rt. Rev. Onesphore Rwaje of the Diocese of Byumba has been elected by his fellow bishops to serve as archbishop and primate of the Province of the Anglican Church of Rwanda for the next five years.
Rwaje, who currently serves as provincial dean for the Anglican Church of Rwanda, was elected Sept. 17 during the Anglican Church of Rwanda's House of Bishops meeting.
Rwaje will succeed the Most Rev. Emmanuel Kolini, who has served as archbishop and primate since 1998 and is expected to retire in January 2011.
"I will put emphasis on what I have been doing, which is spreading the gospel, promoting community development initiatives, and fighting poverty in general," Rwaje told the New Times, a Rwandan daily newspaper, following his election.
Rwaje's Diocese of Byumba shares a three-way companion relationship with the Diocese of Kentucky in the U.S.-based Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Glasgow and Galloway in the Scottish Episcopal Church.
Kentucky Bishop Ted Gulick, who has known Rwaje and his wife Josephine for more than 15 years, told ENS that the bishops in Rwanda have "made a wise choice."
Rwaje "is passionate about the gospel of God's love revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that gospel defines all aspects of his ministry," said Gulick. "A trusted ecumenical leader, he is frequently called upon to consult and do conflict resolution with other denominations and pastors."
Rwaje was elected bishop of Byumba while studying at the University of Edinburgh in the mid-1990s.
When Gulick visited the Diocese of Rwaje in 2001, he said he "was overwhelmed with the bishop's courageous leadership ... in agricultural reform, support for refugees, and particularly effective work with the Bantu populations in the area."
Gulick also acknowledged a program -- run by Rwaje's wife -- that supports girls who have found themselves the head of their families after losing parents to HIV/AIDS or the genocide of 1994 that claimed almost 1 million lives.
Rwaje was the only Anglican bishop who stayed in Rwanda during the genocide, which began only a few months into his episcopacy, Gulick noted. "During that awful time, he and his children were separated from his wife who was in Kenya attending a Mother's Union meeting. For months Josephine did not know if Onesphore or their children had survived. A friend in England saw a BBC broadcast from a refugee camp where Onesphore was being interviewed and let Josephine know that he and the children had survived."
The former Ruanda Mission established its first station at Gahini in 1925 and grew through the revival of the 1930s and 1940s, with the first Rwandan bishop appointed in 1965, according to information posted on the Anglican Communion website. The Anglican Church of Rwanda became an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion in 1992.
Today, the Anglican Church of Rwanda is one of 12 Anglican provinces in Africa and includes approximately 200,000 people throughout nine dioceses, according to the Anglican Communion Office.
Like most areas of Rwandan society, the church suffered through the genocide and has since been focused on "healing ministry to the many traumatized people in Rwanda and to reconciliation, restoration, and rehabilitation," the Anglican Communion website notes. The church also has been involved in rural development, medical work, vocational training, and education.
The Anglican Church of Rwanda established the Anglican Mission in the Americas in 2000 as what it calls a "missionary outreach."
The AMiA is now part of the Anglican Church in North America, an entity made up of individuals and groups that have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada over theological differences, as well as those that have never been members of those two provinces. Neither the AMiA nor ACNA are officially recognized as being a part of the Anglican Communion.