By the grace of God the first four years were completed in the vineyard of the Lord in western Tanzania, which His right hand planted. Four years have passed since His Beatitude Patriarch Theodore entrusted to our Minority the Diocese of Bukoba and Western Tanzania, and six months ago also the long-suffering Diocese of Ruanda….
Blessed brothers, CHRIST IS RISEN! The story of Rwanda is a painful one; perhaps the most painful story in the world with the largest genocide in history in 1994. What was the cause? Racial discrimination, with the colonialists encouraging the divisions and conflicts between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes. For 100 days the country…
Ten out of the eighteen parish communities that we had have been closed due to the fact that we did not have the plots required and, in general, we did not meet the new standards. Naturally, we are very concerned about the souls we have baptized, since we cannot have them gathered…
All of you who are here I want to congratulate you because you continue to sacrifice, despite the crisis, to help in your own way.
Healing, love: words that are easy to say, sound good, but translating them into action is very difficult. Close to the wounds, poverty, destitution, the difficult conditions in which they live without basic medical care, without organised education, make them unable to cope on their own and they look to us as their support and spiritual refuge. They thirst to know Orthodoxy, to be baptised, to be reborn. And we do not deny them…
Our mission and vision is to spread the light of Orthodoxy in Burundi and Rwanda, which seem to have a bright future. The love, the hospitality, the education I received from you, the Greek people, while I was a student, these are what I try to offer. Our main activity is the spreading of the Orthodox faith, which is the only true…
Excerpts from the speech of the Bishop of Burundi & Innocentius on the Orthodox Mission in the lecture hall of the Brotherhood.
Both in Burundi and in Rwanda – in Rwanda more so – they embraced Orthodoxy with great love. They are simple-minded people, and for all their simplicity, their questions about the teachings of our Church are anything but simple-minded…
Excerpts from the speech of Bishop Innocentios at the Assembly of our Fraternity in February 2015
Sunday 8 February at 10.30 a.m.
