Seventy-nine years after King Mutara III Rudahigwa dedicated Rwanda to Christ the King, the event is remembered as a pivotal moment of faith and a flashpoint in the nation’s complex history.
This week, Rwanda marked the 79th anniversary of one of its most profound spiritual and political events: the dedication of the entire nation to Christ the King by King Mutara III Rudahigwa. The anniversary, now officially commemorated by the Catholic Church on October 27, revisits a moment that forever entwined the Rwandan monarchy, the Catholic faith, and the long shadows of colonial rule.
The original ceremony, held over three days in Nyanza from October 26 to 28, 1946, was a spectacle of immense symbolism. At the site that would later house the Collège du Christ-Roi, King Rudahigwa—who had embraced the faith his father resisted—publicly removed his royal crown and placed it at the foot of an altar.
In a prayer for peace and moral renewal, he offered his kingdom to Christ and the Virgin Mary. During a recent commemorative Mass, Bishop Jean Bosco Ntagungira of the Butare Diocese emphasized that this was “not a political act, but a testimony of faith and leadership.”
For the King, it was the culmination of a personal and political journey. For Rwanda, it became a defining chapter in a story shaped by faith and colonial power.
The Catholic Church’s roots in Rwanda trace back to 1900, when the White Fathers, a missionary society, arrived from Uganda and established their first parish in Save. The missionaries encountered a sophisticated monarchy led by King Yuhi V Musinga, Rudahigwa’s father. Musinga, wary of the European influence that accompanied the missionaries, resisted conversion.
This resistance put him at odds with both the Church and the Belgian colonial administration, which viewed him as an obstacle to their ambitions. In 1931, the Belgians deposed Musinga and exiled him, replacing him with his more compliant son, Rudahigwa.
Rudahigwa had been secretly instructed in Christianity by Bishop Léon Classe and was formally baptized in 1943, taking the Christian names Charles Léon Pierre. His conversion, followed by the 1946 dedication, opened the floodgates for Catholic influence. Christianity spread rapidly, integrating into the very fabric of governance and everyday life.
By placing his crown on the altar, Rudahigwa was not only expressing personal devotion but symbolically placing royal authority under divine Christian rule. The gesture effectively elevated Catholicism to the status of a state religion.
Today, the legacy of that era is the subject of deep national reflection. While the Church’s contributions to education and health are widely acknowledged, its partnership with the colonial administration remains a painful historical issue. Historians and government officials, including Minister of National Unity and Civic Engagement Jean-Damascène Bizimana, point to this period as the genesis of divisive identity politics.
Dr. Bizimana has argued that missionaries and colonizers collaborated to introduce and formalize ethnic segregation, eroding traditional systems and reinforcing discriminatory hierarchies.
Missionaries, intent on evangelization, often dismissed traditional beliefs as pagan. Meanwhile, colonial authorities codified ethnic categories in 1935 identity cards, entrenching divisions between Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. This “divide and rule” system, reinforced by missionary teachings that tended to favor the Tutsi elite, laid ideological foundations for decades of social tension, ultimately culminating in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Nearly eight decades later, Rwanda continues to navigate this dual legacy. The 2023 decision by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Rwanda to designate October 27 as an official day of commemoration in all parishes signals an effort to honor the event’s spiritual significance while acknowledging its historical weight.
For many Rwandans, the dedication remains a cherished expression of faith. For the nation as a whole, it serves as an annual moment of reflection on the complex forces that have shaped modern Rwanda—a history in which faith, power, colonization, and identity are deeply intertwined.
