My Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster contemplates the example of the Buta seminarians during a violent attack on their seminary in 1997.
You can listen here, or read the text below.
‘We have Won’
More than two decades ago, St Paul’s Catholic Seminary for secondary school students in Buta, Burundi, was an oasis of peace amid brutal ethnic conflict. Students from the region’s warring ethnic groups lived, learned, and loved together.
But one dark morning in 1997, the quiet hours before dawn were shattered by gunfire as a militia surged down from the hills surrounding the seminary. They shook the students from their slumber, lined them up, and demanded that they separate themselves according to their ethnicity.
The Buta seminarians understood what that command meant: those perceived to be from the ‘wrong’ tribe would be slaughtered. Three times the militia repeated its order. Three times the students said ‘No, we are all sons of God’.
Then the militia opened fire, intending to spare no one.
Trapped in his rectory, Fr Zachary Bukuru heard a student cry out at his door. As he opened it, the boy stumbled in, wounded. ‘Father, we have won,’ he declared. ‘They told us to separate and we refused. We have won’. Those were his last words.
More than 40 young men perished in the attack. Survivors testified that some students nursed their wounded classmates, putting themselves at further risk. One even echoed the words of Christ as he contemplated his killers: ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’
On our own shores, there also have been those who resisted division and violence, risking their reputations and in some cases, even their lives. Their examples and the Buta seminarians’ martyrdom inspire me and make me wonder if I would have their courage and conviction should my faith be so tested.
Thankfully, I have never been in such a situation. My faith has not been tried so intensely and with such grave consequences. But I am still challenged by the last words of Buta’s young seminarian: ‘We have won’.
There is also a short (28 minute) film about the Buta seminarians, ‘Martyrs of Fraternity Buta, Burundi’