Immaculée Ilibagiza speaks at the Youth Festival in Medjugorje, 5 August 2015

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Hi everyone. It is such a joy to be here in Medjugorje. Especially to be here in the name of Our Lord and Our Lady, Our Mother. Like many of you who love Medjugorje. I grew up in Rwanda, actually in a place where Our Lady appeared too, a place called Kibeho. It was exactly the same time as here, 1981. November 28 it has started. You are very blessed to have the Blessed Mother visiting today. Now the apparitions have ended in Rwanda, we miss Her very much. But She promised us She will always be there. So we still go to Kibeho to pray in the shrine. She is very special. She tried to protect us from the genocide, but we were too distracted. She even cried. She told the visionaries: ‘Tell My children all over the world, especially here: LISTEN, LOVE ONE ANOTHER, FORGIVE ONE ANOTHER, PRAY YOUR ROSARIES, GO TO CONFESSION, RESPECT THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD’. And we did not listen. Until it was too late in 1994. Now we wish we had listened.

Any time I come here in Medjugorje, and I have come here many times, I feel at home. I feel the embrace of Our Mother. If we didn’t listen in Rwanda, at least we can listen today. I want to share with you the story of how I survived the genocide, by the grace of God. The strength I had it is what I got from prayer. I am so grateful that Our Lady had prepared us.

Rwanda is a small country in the Central East Africa. The genocide started in 1994. I was a student in a college. And I was home for Easter Holiday. It was Wednesday the 7th of April. When I woke up my brother was in my room. He told me the president of the country died that night.

In Rwanda we have two main tribes. And the tribe I belong to was not well loved. We knew already, Our Lady had prepared us, warned us, and I knew politically my tribe was not loved, so when I got the news that the president died I knew something terrible was about to happen. I went outside, I met my parents, we heard the news that actually they have started to kill the people of my tribe. The government have blocked the borders of the country, no one could go outside. And they were killing family by family. ‘Ten children, and mom and dad, eight children and mom and dad’, they were reporting on the radio, [naming those] who have been killed. My parents asked me to go to hide. I had three brothers, I was one girl among three brothers. My parents were teachers. And everyone wanted to see me safe because I was the one girl they had. They sent me away alone. And this was just the second day after the genocide had started. So they sent me to a neighbor who was from the other tribe. The man who was a good guy.

I remember when I was leaving my father gave me a rosary. And in that moment I felt like he was telling me, ‘Take this, because you will not see me again’. When he gave me the rosary, I felt like he was telling me, ‘When you can’t have me to give you what you want, you pick up this and you pray to God’.

I left but in my mind I thought I was coming back in two or three days. But I remember when I was leaving, something inside my heart was telling me, ‘Look at them, you will never see them again’. And I fought that idea. I did not want to accept it.

So I went to the neighbour and I told him my parents asked me to come there. So he showed me a tiny bathroom in his house. [It was a] small house, four bedrooms. The bathroom was three by four feet, one meter by one meter and a half. I remember thinking, ‘This is too small for me!’ But as I was complaining, he went back and brought in five more women. And later he brought two more women. That whole genocide taught me a lot of lessons. And one of them I have learned there, is that complaining does not help. When things are bad, take a deep breath and calm [down] and try to find a solution.

He told us not to speak to one another, not to make any noise. Not even to flush the water in the bathroom until somebody else was flushing water in the next bathroom. He was able to bring us food, but the food he could afford to give us was the leftovers of [the food of] his children. At the end of the week I was tired. I thought I couldn’t take it anymore. We were sitting on top of each other. I remember the youngest was seven years old. I am so happy to see so many young people here who are praying, because when tragedies come, they don’t come only to adults. And I am so grateful that you are learning to pray, you are praying. Because you need to know where to run.

At the end of that week I had so much anger. I was so impatient. I had all sorts of emotions that could kill me. Anger. I was sweating out of anger. I would think of what was going on with us, with our tribe, and I would say, I would avenge my family. I would be a soldier one day, and I would throw bombs all over the country. My bad thoughts would make my heart beat quicker.

I remember when the man came to give us food, I […] asked him to put a radio outside so we can hear what’s going on. That one week was too long. He put three radios outside, different channels. I couldn’t believe what was going on in the country. The leaders were giving people permission to go out and kill everybody of my tribe. I remember one government minister, he went on radio and he said, ‘Do not forget the children. A child of a snake is a snake. A child of a cockroach is a cockroach. You have to kill everybody’.

They reported people they killed who ran to churches. They killed people who ran to stadiums. They would go round the stadium and through hundreds of grenades inside. And they were happy. They said, ‘We are going to live in a paradise without the bad people’. And then they gave order [for soldiers] to go from home to home to see if anyone is hiding. And I have to insist not everyone in that tribe was killing, but it was the government who was pushing that tribe to kill. They had many great people who were hiding people.

So they started to search in every house now. Every day. I would never forget the day they came to search where I was hiding. I saw them through the tiny window of the bathroom. And they were dressed in banana leaves, they had all kind of weapons, long spears, machetes, and they came inside and they started to search everywhere. The only thing that was going through my mind was, ‘It’s over. They are going to kill me. And I have done nothing. I am innocent. Just because they hate me. For some reason I don’t understand’.

They searched everywhere, and as they were searching I felt like there were two voices over my shoulders. One voice was telling me, ‘Nothing strange, you are just facing a challenge’. The other voice was telling me, ‘Open the door, end the torture, it’s too painful!’ And that felt like me being reasonable. But another voice was telling me, ‘Do not open the door! Ask God to help you!’ I felt like the voice was saying, ‘Do you know Who God is? God is Almighty! Do you remember what ‘Almighty’ means? It means He can do anything. Do you know what ‘anything’ means? It means, even if they see you, they may not be able to touch you’.

So I started to feel hope. I wanted to listen to the nicer voice. But the voice that was bad all of a sudden convinced me there is no God. I forgot how I ever believed in God before. And I wondered where He is. Can He hear me, is He in Heaven? Is it too late? They are here already. Does He know that innocent people are dying?

I felt lost. But the nicer voice inside told me, ‘Before you lose your faith, at least ask God to give you a sign that He is there or not’. And I remember turning to the nicer voice and asking God with all my might, ‘If You exist, if You are there, if You are someone Who created me, someone Who created all this, please give me a sign’. I remember asking for a specific sign, because I didn’t want to get confused. And I said, ‘If You can hear me, don’t let the killers find the door of the bathroom today’. In my human imagination it was impossible. They were 400 people looking [for us] in a four bedroom house. There is no way they would not find the door. Only if God could hear me and only if God could do it. After that I fainted. I did not hear nothing. Until about five hours later the man who was hiding us came to the bathroom. We all jumped. We thought it was the killers. We were in so much pain, almost in a coma. And he told us what happened.

He told us that they left a long time ago. There were from 300 to 400 people. They came inside the house. And a big number made a circle around the house so that no one jumps [out of the house]. Another number went to the attic of the house with flashlights. Another number went to the roof of the house. They searched under the beds, in the closets. They even opened suitcases to see if there were babies hiding. At last they came to the door of the bathroom. One of the killers touched the door. Before he opened, he told the man. ‘You know what? There’s no one here. You are one of us. You are a good citizen’. And they left.

When he told us that, I was in a shock, but [I did not feel] ‘Wow, we are saved!’ I was in a shock because I felt, ‘Oh my God! God is real!’ God heard me! In a bathroom! And not even in a church! And then all of a sudden I realized, I didn’t talk, I only prayed from inside. Then I realized what our priests have been telling us, that God is everywhere, even inside us. That all is true. And He is even inside our hearts and our thoughts. It means we don’t have any privacy. He sees everything. So from that time I started to talk to Him like I’m talking to you.

Every anger I had, I knew God does not like it. But I started to tell Him, ‘I don’t know how not to hate them. You know what they’re doing to me. They are kililng my Mom, my Dad, what do You want me to do?’

Then I asked the man who was hiding us to give me the Bible. Because I realized I almost lost my faith, so I needed to read it and understand my faith now. The only thing I left my house with, was the rosary that my Dad gave me. So I started to pray the Rosary and read the Bible to understand truly my faith. Everything I took for granted, all the times I didn’t listen when our priest was preaching, now I wanted to understand. I didn’t have them anymore.

So I remember when I said the first Rosary it took me about 25 minutes. I could feel in my body, it was like moving from hell to a place of air. I could feel peace. My fear, my anger, all was nulled. And when I stopped, it was like hell was back in my mind. ‘They will kill you. Even if you live you will be nothing. And when they find you they will rape you, they will cut you in pieces!’ And then I said, ‘Ok let me pray the Rosary again’. I ended up praying the Rosary from morning until night. It was like hiding away from the devil. I counted how many Rosaries I said every day. I said 27 Rosaries every single day. And when I couldn’t sleep I decided to add 40 Divine Mercy chaplets every single day. It took me from six in the morning, from the time I woke up when I would grab the rosary quick before the devil comes in my head, until ten o’clock at night when I could just close my eyes. I felt like I came from work.

So the Rosary started to change little things in my heart. Because I felt like hating bad people was ok. They were evil. But when I remember saying especially one part of the Rosary – it changed me in many ways, but this part especially - any time I went through ‘Our Father’ which I said about 200 times a day, when I would say the words ‘forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us’, I felt like a red flag. And something told me, ‘Really? Do you mean that? Forgive me as I forgive?’ I hated millions of people! The whole other tribe, I wanted them to go to hell! But I did not know how to forgive them. Any time I went through that part, ‘Forgive us as we forgive’, it was again red flag. And I remembered God looks in my heart. He knows I am not saying the truth. And what happens when we lie over and over to our friends? We lose them. The least we can do in a friendship is to be truthful. Then I said, ‘Let me be truthful to God now He is my friend’. But because I could not forgive, I had an idea how to do this. I thought if I skip a part of Our Lord’s prayer, if I don’t say ‘forgive us as we forgive’, then I’m not going to lie to God. So I skipped that part and I felt much better.

So I kept praying ‘Forgive us but not them’, and I kept praying like that. And so funny, any time I didn’t pray having my heart there (as Our Lady tells us especially in Medjugorje, ‘pray with the heart’), any time I didn’t pray with my whole heart, the bad voice would find a way in my heart. I would be saying, ‘Hail Mary full of grace’, and then I’m [feeling] ‘I will kill them, I will be a soldier’. I’m praying and I’m having bad thoughts. How? Something in my heart was saying, ‘Pray with your whole heart. Mean every word you say. Be present. You will not hear that bad voice’. And that’s when I started to realize, I am lying to God!

So I kept praying, skipping the part until one day I was about to skip that part of the prayer, I felt like someone was touching my shoulder and telling me, ‘Hey, you know Our Lord’s prayer is not man made. It’s Jesus Himself Who gave those words. If I were you I would not try to edit His prayer’. What do you tell Jesus? He is God. He knows everything. If He said pray this way - He’s the One Who created me, He knows my capacity more than I know my capacity. If He said ‘pray this way’, He knows, maybe I’m capable. Even if I didn’t know how I can do that. I felt something was pushing me. ‘Just ask Him to help you! Don’t say ‘I can’t’, say ‘Help me!’

Between us, I didn’t think there is a way God can make me forgive somebody who is killing my father, my mother, me. How? I thought, ‘He’s God, I’m human, let me ask Him to help me. He will figure that out’.

We were sitting in that bathroom. A man haven’t gone by. All I had was the Rosasy, and the thoughts and my conversations with God inside, with Our Lady, with Jesus. We were not allowed to speak. All that time we were silent. There was a lot of suffering. They did not stop coming to search for us. Every hour we were waiting to die. But as my heart was changing, everything was changing, even the way I was suffering.

So I remember I put back the prayer. Any time I reached to the part ‘forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us’, I just asked God, ‘help me’.

I remember one day I was meditating on the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery, when Our Lord is dying on the Cross. I love to meditate on the Mysteries, I love to feel like I visit what was going on. That’s how I keep the love of the Rosary, because every time I think about the Mysteries, it’s new. So I remember when I was thinking about that one time in the bathroom, I was near the Cross holding the foot of the Cross in my meditation, and I started to feel: ‘Wait a minute, Jesus is on the Cross, He has nails, His Mother is there. How painful. He’s about to die. But me, I’m still hiding. At least my Mom is not watching me going through this rejection. So as I’m watching the whole part I remember when He said, among the last words He said, ‘Forgive them Father, they don’t know what they do’. It wasn’t the first part that broke my heart open. I wanted to forgive, but how? It was the second part that changed everything. ‘They don’t know what they do’. It was almost like Our Lord was telling me, ‘People who are trying to kill you, they don’t get it. They don’t understand the consequences that would come to them. They are blinded by hatred. And you trying to hate them do not change one thing. You are adding to the number of madness. But maybe if you pray for them there is a chance they can change’.

I remember trying to argue, ‘But they can’t change! They are evil!’ And I felt like Our Lord was asking me, a question I want to ask you, especially those who can think about this. Who among us, not necesserily adults, who among us has not done one thing, has said one thing, and when you do whatever you are doing, you feel like you are right. And a week later or a year later all of a sudden you realize what you said or what you did was wrong. And you go like, ‘Ah, I should not have said that!’

When I realized that… I go to Confession every two weeks, every week, many times, and no matter how much I try to be good, I always find something I should have done better. The moment I realized that people do change, that you can do wrong today and tomorrow you can change, when Our Lord showed me that in my thoughts and my thinking, that’s when I realized, even the killers can change. Even if they are doing terrible terrible things. There is a chance they can see what they are doing and regret it. Maybe, since I know the power of prayer, if I pray for them, then they might change quicker.

When I started to pray for them and believing there is a chance they can change, I could not hate them anymore. It was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. All of a sudden it was like the world was divided in two parts, the part of Love, and the part of hatred. And I felt like Our Lord Jesus was asking me, ‘Where do you want to be? The side of Love, or the side of hate?’ The side of Love had people like Mandela, Mother Teresa, St Francis, people like Ghandi. On the side of hate were people like Hitler, people who were killing, me, who was trying to revenge if I come out, in my thoughts. And guess what, people who were on the side of Love are the people who have suffered, like Mandela, Mother Teresa, St Francis, our Saints. But no matter what hurt them, no matter how much they suffered, they stood up for Love. They stand up and defend the Truth. They stand up for kindness. And all of a sudden I wanted to be there. These are my heroes. And these people, they believe that even bad people can come here, if there are more people who can help them to see the Truth.

It was then I realized that the peace I felt, you can call it forgiveness. [I realized,] this peace I felt, this must be what they call forgiveness. I felt like the world was free, I could walk anywhere. I felt like I can be anywhere in the world, as long as there is love of God within the hearts, we are all brothers and sisters. I felt like the people I hated, I saw them as not human, all of a sudden they were human again in my eyes.

For those who read my first book, “Left To Tell”, I started to learn English when I was sittig in the bathroom. Because it was clear to me, after I was able to let go of the anger, my mind was free, I could see I would need it. And between my prayers, I asked the man to give me a book in English, a dictionary, English-French, so that I would read word per word and memorize it.

I felt so much peace. And yet, the situation in the country was getting worse. I remember feeling, ‘I wish I could tell people how powerful the Rosary is! I wish I could tell people how real Jesus is! Even when you are going through the worst thing’.

So we ended up staying in the bathroom for three months. The very first night we came out of the bathroom, we came to a refugee camp. The bad guys who were killing, they ran away from the country. And those who were trying to save the country, from my tribe and the other one, they captured the capital. The first hour I was in the refugee camp, I wanted to know where my parents were. I asked somebody who knew them. And I found out, everyone I left behind was killed. My Mom was killed, my Dad was killed, my two brothers, my grandma, my grandpa, my aunt and my uncles, my best friends, neighbours, schoolmates, everybody was killed. A million people was killed in a period of three months. Everything we owned was burned out and destroyed. And sometimes I wanted to die. What do you do when you lose everybody? The only thing I had was the rosary my Dad gave me with the clothes I have worn for the past three months.

And I would cry and cry for like five minutes, and I remember feeling like there was a giant Hand of God on my heart. And as if God was telling me, from inside, ‘Do not be crushed. Do not die. I am with you. Pick up your rosary. Pray. Find a church. Go to pray’. And I felt like God was telling me, ‘The journey of your loved ones is over here on earth, but not in Heaven. But your journey is not over here on earth yet. And you don’t know how long it will be’. The truth is, none of us here have an idea how long we will live. I felt like God was telling me, ‘You might have one more day. You might have one more week. Or one year. Maybe eight years. But whatever that is, it is your gift. Life is your gift no matter how long that is. It is up to you to use it either to love or to hate. To be kind or to be mean. To do bad or to do good. But if you choose to love, remember I am with you. Whatever you need, I will give it to you. So get up from your tears, look around, find someone who is suffering more than you, who needs help. Wipe your tears and go, look for a mother who just lost ten children, who forgot what day it was, who lost her mind. And just ask her, how you can help. Or find a child who just lost the arm, who is bleeding, and ask him, ‘Let me see what I can do’, maybe give him food, cover his wound’. At the end of the day I would say my Rosary and I would look up to Heaven and say, ‘God, I just hope I tried to do Your will today’.

And to me that was the biggest message of the whole genocide, LIFE IS ABOUT LOVE. We are in a battle field here on Earth. And in every moment, either we have to choose love or to choose hatred. But when you choose anger, when you choose hatred, things like the genocide happen.

I used to work for the United Nations, and sometimes we talked about big ideas, how to stop genocides and wars happening. And I’m thinking, we need to change our hearts. People need to love. It’s not that we need more money, or more guns, it’s here [in the heart]. And I think that’s the decision I have to make every day.

After a few months in the refugee camp I met somebody who gave me a home to live. It was a woman in a wheelchair. Three weeks later… I still do this, I write letters to God and ask Him what I want. And this lady showed up and told me she knew my Mom. My Mom had given her less than a dollar 25 years before. And this woman said, ‘For the sake of your Mom I will not leave you here in the refugee camp’. She took ten of us out of the refugee camp and she gave us a home. That also showed me, no matter how small the act of kindness is, you just don’t know how far it will follow you. You keep sowing little seeds, they will grow.

In 1998, four years after the genocide, I moved to the United States. And then I went back to my village and I met the person who killed my parents. This man was in prison. And many people used to tell me, ‘You can’t forgive this quickly. You seem happy, and yet you just lost everything’. But the truth is, I still cry today, I miss my parents. And tears are a sign of love. But I went to that prison to see what I would feel if I saw that man. And I remember when he came towards me. He was a man like many of you who used to dress nice, very respectable. Now he was in prison. And his feet I remember were swelling. His hair was upside down. He was living in terrible conditions. And I remember the head of the jail who was the friend of my father allowed me to go there. When I looked at him it was almost like Our Lord was saying, ‘You see what I told you? They didn’t know what they were doing. He would not have done that if he knew about the consequences that would follow. Pray for him. Don’t hate him’. I wished him [good] and I told him I forgave him.

But what I meant there it wasn’t the words. What I wanted to tell him was, ‘Go through your journey, don’t think I hate you. Just go on your own journey. I hope you find the truth with you’. He has not asked for forgiveness, but I just wanted to free him from me, so he can learn. And when I told that to him, he covered his face, he could not look at me. I could feel something come out of his heart, he was shamed. But you could feel something changed in his heart for the good. I just cried for him. The head of the jail was angry with me. But later he told me he was happy that happened, it also touched his heart.

And what I want to leave with you. Please no matter what happens to you, no matter how bad things can be, remember there is always hope with God. Hold on to prayer. Hold on to the Rosary. If in Rwanda we had listened to Our Lady, we would not have gone through that tragedy. Our Lady had told us to be careful long before the Church approved the Kibeho [apparitions]. And today Our Lady is here. She is a Mother. Whatever She says, just do it. It is always for our own good. And She’s always right. Just do it.

And I want to tell you, if I can forgive, if I can go through that and get there, anyone can forgive. And there is so much peace there.

Thank you so much for having me in the Youth Festival. I encourage you, especially the young, you are the hope of our world tomorrow. A few people that make evil decisions can cause things like what happened in Rwanda. But few people who make good decisions like St John Paul II can turn the world around too.

And Our Lady is calling us. Go and help Her. Evangelize with your life, evangelize to your friends.

And before I end I would like to say Our Lord’s prayer. Please let’s say it from our hearts together. And when you reach to that part let’s truly mean it. And if you can’t mean it, at least ask God, ‘Help me’.