Book review: Our Lady of Kibeho

Our Lady of Kibeho: Messages from the Mother of God in the Heart of Africa by Immaculee Ilibagiza


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Immaculée Ilibagiza has done it again. She has captured hearts and minds with her truly amazing book. I was so entranced by its story and the author's deep and trusting love for the Blessed Mother that I still find myself thinking about it several days since I've finished reading it. And I pray that I will take its lessons to heart.

Our Lady of Kibeho is an approved Marian apparition site in a tiny, obscure village on the edge of Rwanda. The Virgin Mary appeared to 3 school girls in Kibeho, one by one. Later, Mary and her son, Jesus, would appear to at least 4 others, including an illiterate pagan to whom Jesus himself taught scripture, prayers and basic doctrine. The nuns at the school, the village priest, and all their classmates were at first unbelieving and taunted the visionaries, calling them liars and devils. When the girls would fall into a trance-like state of ecstasy when being visited by the Blessed Mother, their classmates would pinch, poke and burn the visionaries to try to illicit some response but they only kept their blissful smiles and radiant faces turned toward the sky and were totally unaware of any harm being done to them.

As a natural skeptic myself, I appreciated the thorough tests and interviews the Vatican put the visionaries through. After 20 years of investigations, the Vatican approved Kibeho as an authentic Marian apparition site in 2001. This means it is worthy of belief, yet the Church never requires belief in any Marian apparition.

Our Lady came to Kibeho in 1981, it would seem, with a message of urgency for Rwanda and all the world: to repent from our sins and believe. She revealed to the visionaries the terrible violence that would befall Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. The prophecies were horrifically accurate. One million Tutsis were mercilessly slaughtered to death. They were pulled from their homes and chopped to pieces by machete by their own friends and neighbors. How could this evil have happened? Our Lady's message to her children was that we are all capable of such evil if we hide it in our hearts.


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Hope and Inspiration from the Rwandan Genocide

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've had this book sitting on my nightstand for several weeks, after checking it out from the library thanks to many recommendations from friends and acquaintances. I'm so glad I finally made the time to read it. It really is a page turner and doesn't take long to get through it. Once you begin you can't put it down, in part because you want the suffering to end.

Left to Tell is the true and horribly detailed account of a tremendous evil that left over one million dead--most of them chopped to death with machetes by their own friends and neighbors at the urging of the government, while the United States and the rest of the civilized world did nothing. The Rwandan genocide lasted only about one hundred days, but in that brief span of time, the ruling Hutus brutally murdered over their Tutsi countrymen. Any Hutu who resisted or sheltered Tutsis was also brutally murdered. Husbands were made to watch their wives being gang raped before they were slaughtered. Mothers watched their babies being slashed to death, or had their babies left motherless on the road while they were killed. The atrocities that were committed are mind-boggling and left me feeling bitter and angry at the perpetrators and our own government for doing nothing.

But the message of this book isn't about violence or atrocities or retribution or blame. It is about forgiveness, love, hope, prayer and God's loving kindness.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I know I needed a shot in the arm to remind me of the bounteous blessings I have living in this country. Despite my concern about the Obama presidency and their blatant anti-life agenda, their smug arrogance regarding global warming and their socialistic ideas of big government, I have it pretty darned good. For starters, I can walk down the street without fear that my neighbors could chop me to pieces.

Another thing I loved about this book is how the author, Immaculée, immersed herself in prayer during her 91 day stay in a tiny bathroom with six other women. She learned to connect herself to God and He gave her the strength she needed to endure the tremendous hardships of her bathroom imprisonment as well as facing the heart-wrenching horrors of apocalyptic proportions during and after the genocide.

Don't let the forward by Dr. Wayne Dyer distract you from the amazing book. I was a little put-off by his description of Immaculée as "Divine" and his comparison of her to an Indian woman "who some believe is the Divine Mother."

Immaculée, (as her name suggests), is a devout Catholic, whose inspiring story speaks to all Christians, but especially to Catholics who can see in her story some glimpse of the lives of the saints. Surely there are a host of Rwandan martyrs looking down on us from heaven. After reading this story, I'm convinced among them must be the family of Immaculee and that she may be a living saint.

To read more about Immaculée, or to order the book, visit the website for her book here or her personal website here.

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