The Rev. Ubald<\/span> Rugirangoga<\/span> was counseling inmates in a Rwandan prison in the wake of the country\u2019s 1994 genocide when he was forced to truly practice what he was preaching. Speaking mostly through an interpreter Tuesday to the Worcester County Bar Association, the priest said the man who killed his mother happened to be in the prison, but he didn\u2019t know who he was. He said the man sought him out and explained what he had done. He asked Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span> for forgiveness. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was difficult,\u201d he said. \u201cI had preached to forgive, and I had to practice what I was preaching, so I had to search deep down in my heart. And I went up to him and I told him, I forgive you.\u201d<\/span> <\/p>\n Even though he forgave him, the man who killed his mother still had his doubts. To further prove his forgiveness, Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span> reached out to the man\u2019s children, who were left without parents after the man\u2019s wife died. Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span> said that after forgiving the man, all the pain and anger just left. <\/p>\n \u201cI was free,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Speaking in the jury pool room at the Trial Court building on Main Street, Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span> told another story of forgiveness, in which a Tutsi woman took in the daughter of a girl, even though the girl\u2019s Hutu<\/span> father murdered most of her family. The two families had been neighbors, Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span> said. The woman\u2019s surviving son at first didn\u2019t understand why the woman would take in the daughter of the man who made her a widow, but later he came around. And in a surprising twist, he ended up marrying the girl years later. <\/p>\n Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span> has been running schools in Rwanda where he mixes children of victims of the genocide and children of perpetrators of the genocide. <\/p>\n He said it\u2019s important to start early with children. He said the government has used his schools as a model. <\/p>\n \u201cI try to bring them together,\u201d he said. \u201cHopefully in the future, with the history in our country, this will not happen again because I have to stand with these children.\u201d<\/span> <\/p>\n He said it is a burden to carry anger around, and said if you can\u2019t forgive, you are slowly dying inside. <\/p>\n \u201cIf you carry anger around, you can even get sick, not knowing why,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can lead to depression.\u201d<\/span> <\/p>\n Asked a question about developed countries\u2019 inaction during the genocide, Rev. Rugirangoga<\/span>, who fled Rwanda by foot during the genocide but later returned, said he was not angry. <\/p>\n \u201cAt the time of the genocide we were in survival mode, we couldn\u2019t hear what was going on, who was helping or not,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cBut you have also, the U.S<\/span>. and other countries that have shown support with the help they\u2019ve offered us. If we\u2019re forgiving the killers, then we need to forgive the grudge that nobody helped us.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cleric\u2019s mother, brother, and 70 family members had been killed by extremists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[277],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-com-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":277,"name":"IGIHE.com Reporter","slug":"igihe-com-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":277,"name":"IGIHE.com Reporter","slug":"igihe-com-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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His mother, brother, and around 70 members of his extended family had been killed in the slaughter that claimed more than 800,000 lives, mostly minority Tutsis<\/span>, over 100 days, at the hands of Hutu<\/span> extremists.<\/p>\n