In 2003, the Vatican formally recognized a series of Marian apparitions that occurred between 1981 and 1983 in the town of Kibeho in the southwest of Rwanda. It was here that three young women, Nathalie, Alphonsine and Claire, received messages about their spiritual life but darker visions of an impending violence that was to visit Rwanda. A civil war between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes broke out in April 1994. The genocide that followed, consumed 800.000 lives, above all women and children. Today Kibeho is under the care of the Pallottine Fathers, and they are striving to make it a center of pilgrimage for reconciliation, conversion and peace. November 2011 is the 30th anniversary of the first apparition and the 10th anniversary of the Church's official recognition of this Marian shrine.
