this is the luuuuuuuv that the USCIRF wants to bring to india.
From: sri venkat
come to an end"
Ancient Pagans
*As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples
were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
*Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
*Examples of destroyed Temples the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea,
the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the
Heliopolis.
*Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis
were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468] *Pagan services became
punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
*Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed,
because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all
Christian teachings..."
*In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
*In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on
demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
*The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to
pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a
Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
Mission
*Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to
convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
*Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church
taxes between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain
5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
*Battle of Belgrad 1456 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
*15th century Poland 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by
Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
*16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and
civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable
beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common
of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of
the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother
of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what
sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte
off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche
side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused
"greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde
fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99,
225]
Crusades (1095-1291)
*First Crusade 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
*Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96
thousands. [WW23] *9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish),
thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
*Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered
(number of slain unknown) [WW30]
*After 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and
60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed.
[WW32-35]
Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the
enemy's] tents - save that they ran their lances through their
bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres.
[EC60]
*Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the
subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were
eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
*Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish,
muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness "there [in front of Solomon's temple]
was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood
of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people
marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of
gratitude")
*The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote "It was impossible to
look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay
fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the
blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies
and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of
all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the
victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous
sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that
within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels
perished." [TG79]
*Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following
summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of
decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
*Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in the
name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
*Fourth crusade 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims
unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
*Rest of Crusades in less detail until the fall of Akkon 1291
probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas
alone). [WW224]
Note All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.
Heretics
*Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus
and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
*Manichaean heresy a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice
birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics)
was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between
372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
*Albigensians the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians.
[DO29]
The Albigensians (cathars = Christians allegedly that have all rarely
sucked) viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept
roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
Begin of violence on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single
pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Beziérs (today France) 7/22/1209
destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including
Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends)
20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
*Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed.
[WW181]
*subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half
the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were
exterminated. [WW183]
*After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search
and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the
stake 1324. [WW183] *Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy
alone), [WW183]
*Other heresies Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and
many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some
Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of
persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including
the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
*Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220
burnings. [DO28]
*John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was
burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
*University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna.
[DO59]
*Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for
seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori
(Rome) on 2/17/1600.
Witches
*from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several
thousand.
*in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars
several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or
hanged. [WV]
*incomplete list of documented cases
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times
Religious Wars
*15th century Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
*1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all
English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into
action). [DO31]
*1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million
rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain.
[DO31]
*1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope
Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
*17th century Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader.
After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off
his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the
river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for
the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ...
to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and
crows'." [SH191]
*17th century Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany roughly
30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were
found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still
sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers." [SH191]
*17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant) at least 40% of
population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]
Jews
*Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by
Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
*In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed
on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The
first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river
Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388.
[DA450]
*17. Council of Toledo 694 Jews were enslaved, their property
confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
*The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities' Jews, who
would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
*First Crusade Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000
total. Places Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons),
Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund,
Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations
Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
*Second Crusade 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully,
Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
*Third Crusade English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
*Fulda/Germany 1235 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
*1257, 1267 Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton,
Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
*1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
*1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51
towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
*1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two
thousand) burned. [DO41]
*1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly
burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians
in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
*1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
*1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were
slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made
easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all jews above the
age of ten had been forced to wear.
*1492 In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than
150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way
6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
*1648 Chmielnitzki massacres In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain.
[DO43]
(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right
into the kilns of Auschwitz.
Native Peoples
*Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy
Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as
a means to propagate Christianity.
*Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered
in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people
who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be
made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no
religion." [SH200]
While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as
many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian
nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they eat when
they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they feel like it."
[SH204-205]
*On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the
declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the
ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If
the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding),
the requerimiento continued
"I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully
enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall
subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do
you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse
to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]
*Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of
Massachusetts Bay Colony "justifieinge the undertakeres of the
intended Plantation in New England ... to carry the Gospell into those
parts of the world, ... and to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome
of the Ante-Christ." [SH235]
*In average two thirds of the native population were killed by
colonist-imported smallpox before violence began. This was a great
sign of "the marvelous goodness and providence of God" to the
Christians of course, e.g. the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony wrote in 1634, as "for the natives, they are near all dead of
the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we
possess." [SH109,238]
*On Hispaniola alone, on Columbus visits, the native population
(Arawak), a rather harmless and happy people living on an island of
abundant natural resources, a literal paradise, soon mourned 50,000
dead. [SH204]
*The surviving Indians fell victim to rape, murder, enslavement and
spanish raids.
*As one of the culprits wrote "So many Indians died that they could
not be counted, all through the land the Indians lay dead everywhere.
The stench was very great and pestiferous." [SH69]
*The indian chief Hatuey fled with his people but was captured and
burned alive. As "they were tying him to the stake a Franciscan friar
urged him to take Jesus to his heart so that his soul might go to
heaven, rather than descend into hell. Hatuey replied that if heaven
was where the Christians went, he would rather go to hell." [SH70]
*What happened to his people was described by an eyewitness
"The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties
... They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the
ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time
in honor of Christ Our Saviour and the twelve Apostles... then, straw
was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive."
[SH72]
Or, on another occasion
"The Spaniards cut off the arm of one, the leg or hip of another, and
from some their heads at one stroke, like butchers cutting up beef and
mutton for market. Six hundred, including the cacique, were thus slain
like brute beasts...Vasco [de Balboa] ordered forty of them to be torn
to pieces by dogs." [SH83]
*The "island's population of about eight million people at the time of
Columbus's arrival in 1492 already had declined by a third to a half
before the year 1496 was out." Eventually all the island's natives
were exterminated, so the Spaniards were "forced" to import slaves
from other caribbean islands, who soon suffered the same fate. Thus
"the Caribbean's millions of native people [were] thereby effectively
liquidated in barely a quarter of a century". [SH72-73] "In less than
the normal lifetime of a single human being, an entire culture of
millions of people, thousands of years resident in their homeland, had
been exterminated." [SH75]
*"And then the Spanish turned their attention to the mainland of
Mexico and Central America. The slaughter had barely begun. The
exquisite city of Tenochtitlán [Mexico city] was next." [SH75]
*Cortez, Pizarro, De Soto and hundreds of other spanish conquistadors
likewise sacked southern and mesoamerican civilizations in the name of
Christ (De Soto also sacked Florida). *"When the 16th century ended,
some 200,000 Spaniards had moved to the Americas. By that time
probably more than 60,000,000 natives were dead." [SH95]
Of course no different were the founders of what today is the US of
America.
*Although none of the settlers would have survived winter without
native help, they soon set out to expel and exterminate the Indians.
Warfare among (north American) Indians was rather harmless, in
comparison to European standards, and was meant to avenge insults
rather than conquer land. In the words of some of the pilgrim fathers
"Their Warres are farre less bloudy...", so that there usually was "no
great slawter of nether side". Indeed, "they might fight seven yeares
and not kill seven men." What is more, the Indians usually spared
women and children. [SH111]
*In the spring of 1612 some English colonists found life among the
(generally friendly and generous) natives attractive enough to leave
Jamestown - "being idell ... did runne away unto the Indyans," - to
live among them (that probably solved a sex problem).
"Governor Thomas Dale had them hunted down and executed 'Some he
apointed (sic) to be hanged Some burned Some to be broken upon wheles,
others to be staked and some shott to deathe'." [SH105] Of course
these elegant measures were restricted for fellow englishmen "This
was the treatment for those who wished to act like Indians. For those
who had no choice in the matter, because they were the native people
of Virginia" methods were different "when an Indian was accused by an
Englishman of stealing a cup and failing to return it, the English
response was to attack the natives in force, burning the entire
community" down. [SH105]
*On the territory that is now Massachusetts the founding fathers of
the colonies were committing genocide, in what has become known as the
"Peqout War". The killers were New England Puritan Christians,
refugees from persecution in their own home country England.
*When however, a dead colonist was found, apparently killed by
Narragansett Indians, the Puritan colonists wanted revenge. Despite
the Indian chief's pledge they attacked.
Somehow they seem to have lost the idea of what they were after,
because when they were greeted by Pequot Indians (long-time foes of
the Narragansetts) the troops nevertheless made war on the Pequots and
burned their villages.
The puritan commander-in-charge John Mason after one massacre wrote
"And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon
their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very
Flames, where many of them perished ... God was above them, who
laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making
them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen,
filling the Place with dead Bodies" men, women, children. [SH113-114]
*So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts,
and to give us their land for an inheritance". [SH111].
*Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was
no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow
"Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly
destroy them..." (Deut 20)
*Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was the
bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured his
readers that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children
must perish with their parents". [SH114]
*Other Indians were killed in successful plots of poisoning. The
colonists even had dogs especially trained to kill Indians and to
devour children from their mothers breasts, in the colonists' own
words "blood Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives to seaze them."
(This was inspired by spanish methods of the time)
In this way they continued until the extermination of the Pequots was
near. [SH107-119]
*The surviving handful of Indians "were parceled out to live in
servitude. John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the governor asking
for 'a share' of the captives, specifically 'a young woman or girle
and a boy if you thinke good'." [SH115]
*Other tribes were to follow the same path.
*Comment the Christian exterminators "God's Will, which will at last
give us cause to say How Great is His Goodness! and How Great is his
Beauty!"
"Thus doth the Lord Jesus make them to bow before him, and to lick the
Dust!" [TA]
*Like today, lying was OK to Christians then. "Peace treaties were
signed with every intention to violate them when the Indians 'grow
secure uppon (sic) the treatie', advised the Council of State in
Virginia, 'we shall have the better Advantage both to surprise them, &
cutt downe theire Corne'." [SH106]
*In 1624 sixty heavily armed Englishmen cut down 800 defenseless
Indian men, women and children. [SH107]
*In a single massacre in "King Philip's War" of 1675 and 1676 some
"600 Indians were destroyed. A delighted Cotton Mather, revered pastor
of the Second Church in Boston, later referred to the slaughter as a
'barbeque'." [SH115]
*To summarize Before the arrival of the English, the western Abenaki
people in New Hampshire and Vermont had numbered 12,000. Less than
half a century later about 250 remained alive - a destruction rate of
98%. The Pocumtuck people had numbered more than 18,000, fifty years
later they were down to 920 - 95% destroyed. The Quiripi-Unquachog
people had numbered about 30,000, fifty years later they were down to
1500 - 95% destroyed. The Massachusetts people had numbered at least
44,000, fifty years later barely 6000 were alive - 81% destroyed.
[SH118] These are only a few examples of the multitude of tribes
living before Christian colonists set their foot on the New World. All
this was before the smallpox epidemics of 1677 and 1678 had occurred.
And the carnage was not over then.
*All the above was only the beginning of the European colonization, it
was before the frontier age actually had begun.
*A total of maybe more than 150 million Indians (of both Americas)
were destroyed in the period of 1500 to 1900, as an average two thirds
by smallpox and other epidemics, that leaves some 50 million killed
directly by violence, bad treatment and slavery.
*In many countries, such as Brazil, and Guatemala, this continues even
today.
More Notable Events in US history
*Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England's most esteemed
religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts
Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to
purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do
bears'." [SH241]
*Massacre of Sand Creek, Colorado 11/29/1864. Colonel John Chivington,
a former Methodist minister and still elder in the church ("I long to
be wading in gore") had a Cheyenne village of about 600, mostly women
and children, gunned down despite the chiefs' waving with a white
flag 400-500 killed.
From an eye-witness account "There were some thirty or forty squaws
collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about
six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but
a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole
were afterwards killed ..." [SH131]
*By the 1860s, "in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson surveyed the
carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native population by
90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected
total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this
missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased
members of the body'." [SH244]
20th Century Church Atrocities
*Catholic extermination camps
Surpisingly few know that Nazi extermination camps in World War II
were by no means the only ones in Europe at the time. In the years
1942-1943 also in Croatia existed numerous extermination camps, run by
Catholic Ustasha under their dictator Ante Paveliç, a practising
Catholic and regular visitor to the then pope. There were even
concentration camps exclusively for children!
In these camps - the most notorious was Jasenovac, headed by a
Franciscan friar - orthodox-Christian serbians (and a substantial
number of Jews) were murdered. Like the Nazis the Catholic Ustasha
burned their victims in kilns, alive (the Nazis were decent enough to
have their victims gassed first). But most of the victims were simply
stabbed, slain or shot to death, the number of them being estimated
between 300,000 and 600,000, in a rather tiny country. Many of the
killers were Franciscan friars. The atrocities were appalling enough
to induce bystanders of the Nazi "Sicherheitsdient der SS", watching,
to complain about them to Hitler (who did not listen). The pope knew
about these events and did nothing to prevent them. [MV]
*Catholic terror in Vietnam
In 1954 Vietnamese freedom fighters - the Viet Minh - had finally
defeated the French colonial government in North Vietnam, which by
then had been supported by U.S. funds amounting to more than $2
billion. Although the victorious assured religious freedom to all
(most non-buddhist Vietnamese were Catholics), due to huge
anticommunist propaganda campaigns many Catholics fled to the South.
With the help of Catholic lobbies in Washington and Cardinal Spellman,
the Vatican's spokesman in U.S. politics, who later on would call the
U.S. forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ", a scheme was concocted to
prevent democratic elections which could have brought the communist
Viet Minh to power in the South as well, and the fanatic Catholic Ngo
Dinh Diem was made president of South Vietnam. [MW16ff]
Diem saw to it that U.S. aid, food, technical and general assistance
was given to Catholics alone, Buddhist individuals and villages were
ignored or had to pay for the food aids which were given to Catholics
for free. The only religious denomination to be supported was Roman
Catholicism.
The Vietnamese McCarthyism turned even more vicious than its American
counterpart. By 1956 Diem promulgated a presidential order which read
"Individuals considered dangerous to the national defense and common
security may be confined by executive order, to a concentration camp."
Supposedly to fight communism, thousands of buddhist protesters and
monks were imprisoned in "detention camps." Out of protest dozens of
buddhist teachers - male and female - and monks poured gasoline over
themselves and burned themselves. (Note that Buddhists burned
themselves in comparison Christians tend to burn others). Meanwhile
some of the prison camps, which in the meantime were filled with
Protestant and even Catholic protesters as well, had turned into
no-nonsense death camps. It is estimated that during this period of
terror (1955-1960) at least 24,000 were wounded - mostly in street
riots - 80,000 people were executed, 275,000 had been detained or
tortured, and about 500,000 were sent to concentration or detention
camps. [MW76-89].
To support this kind of government in the next decade thousands of
American GI's lost their life.
*Christianity kills the cat
On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student of a teachers
college in Germany, died she starved herself to death. For months she
had been haunted by demonic visions and apparitions, and for months
two Catholic priests - with explicit approval of the Catholic bishop
of Würzburg - additionally pestered and tormented the wretched girl
with their exorcist rituals. After her death in Klingenberg hospital -
her body was littered with wounds - her parents, both of them
fanatical Catholics, were sentenced to six months for not having
called for medical help. None of the priests was punished on the
contrary, Miss Michel's grave today is a place of pilgrimage and
worship for a number of similarly faithful Catholics (in the
seventeenth century Würzburg was notorious for it's extensive witch
burnings).
This case is only the tip of an iceberg of such evil superstition and
has become known only because of its lethal outcome. [SP80]
*Rwanda Massacres
In 1994 in the small african country of Rwanda in just a few months
several hundred thousand civilians were butchered, apparently a
conflict of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.
For quite some time I heard only rumours about Catholic clergy
actively involved in the 1994 Rwanda massacres. Odd denials of
involvement were printed in Catholic church journals, before even
anybody had openly accused members of the church.
Then, 10/10/96, in the newscast of S2 Aktuell, Germany - a station not
at all critical to Christianity - the following was stated
"Anglican as well as Catholic priests and nuns are suspect of having
actively participated in murders. Especially the conduct of a certain
Catholic priest has been occupying the public mind in Rwanda's capital
Kigali for months. He was minister of the church of the Holy Family
and allegedly murdered Tutsis in the most brutal manner. He is
reported to have accompanied marauding Hutu militia with a gun in his
cowl. In fact there has been a bloody slaughter of Tutsis seeking
shelter in his parish. Even two years after the massacres many
Catholics refuse to set foot on the threshold of their church, because
to them the participation of a certain part of the clergy in the
slaughter is well established. There is almost no church in Rwanda
that has not seen refugees - women, children, old - being brutally
butchered facing the crucifix.
According to eyewitnesses clergymen gave away hiding Tutsis and turned
them over to the machetes of the Hutu militia.
In connection with these events again and again two Benedictine nuns
are mentioned, both of whom have fled into a Belgian monastery in the
meantime to avoid prosecution. According to survivors one of them
called the Hutu killers and led them to several thousand people who
had sought shelter in her monastery. By force the doomed were driven
out of the churchyard and were murdered in the presence of the nun
right in front of the gate. The other one is also reported to have
directly cooperated with the murderers of the Hutu militia. In her
case again witnesses report that she watched the slaughtering of
people in cold blood and without showing response. She is even accused
of having procured some petrol used by the killers to set on fire and
burn their victims alive..." [S2]
*As can be seen from these events, to Christianity the Dark Ages never
come to an end.
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