Burundi: Forgiveness puts a stop to hatred

“I’ve finished my studies in Civil Engineering in the Department of Applied Sciences, but for the moment am unemployed.

On May 12, 2015 after I had just returned from a funeral, we were informed that an uncle, my father’s brother, had just been murdered in his home. Nine days later my father was accused of the crime and arrested. It caused much pain to me and to my whole family, also because we were quite certain that our father was innocent. Thinking of him in jail and being accused of such a thing was just awful for us.

I shared my pain with the Focolare community, and it truly helped me not to feel alone in the midst of such an absurd situation. The community also helped me to find a good lawyer who took our problem to heart in dealing with the competent authorities. Justice played out and a month later my father was released from jail. We were all overjoyed and things returned to normal.

But on the afternoon of Christmas Day while they were returning home, a young man smashed my father’s head repeatedly with a stone until my father was nearly dead. Meanwhile, two other guys took my mother and tied her up, but thanks be to God they allowed her to live. A boy who was pasturing his goats in those parts ran to give us the news. It was hard for us to believe it, but just the same my siblings and I went to see what was happening. We found our father on the verge of death, and took him to the Red Cross where he died shortly afterwards.

The morning after my mother went to the police to report those guys whom she had recognised. They were arrested. But from that day forward their mother began to threaten us. If my mother didn’t have them released, my siblings and I would be killed. My mother immediately filed a complaint with the residential court, but the young men were released two weeks later! As if that wasn’t enough, their parents began to spread the news that they had bribed my mother to drop the charges. That was simply a lie.

Distraught with grief because of the loss of our father and oppressed by what was happening now, my mother and siblings were gripped with fear and filled with questions. We didn’t know what we should do.

One day, I went to the Focolare where they were viewing a talk by Chiara Lubich: ‘Love is the key to unity and the solution to all problems’. I returned home more relieved. That same night I felt that God was asking me to forgive my father’s murderers and to help my family do the same. I shared this idea with my mother and with time she also managed to forgive them . . . my brothers and sisters as well.

Now peace reigns in our souls. We pray with one another for the people who directly or indirectly murdered my father: that God might be the one to convert them. We couldn’t have done it alone. We were helped by the prayers of the community that continue even now to enable us to look at those people every day with new eyes.”

A.M.N.