Forgiveness News

Rwandan Bishop Calls for Forgiveness Regarding Tutsi Genocide

AllAfrica.com. Bishop Rukamba of the Butare Catholic Diocese on May 20 encouraged people to forgive as they came together to commemorate the 1994 genocide against Tutsi victims.

“Forgiving is to let go of the grudge….forgiving makes our hearts relax and eases the pain we feel,” he said.

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days, more than 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate. Estimates of the death toll have ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000, or as much as 20% of the country’s total population. It was the culmination of longstanding ethnic competition and tensions between the minority Tutsi, who had controlled power for centuries, and the majority Hutu peoples, who had come to power in the rebellion of 1959-62 and overthrown the Tutsi monarchy.

Read more about the recent calls for forgiveness in Rwanda.

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Victim Forgives War Criminal, Charles Taylor

Washington Post. In April, the Hague convicted former president of Liberia, Charles Taylor, of war crimes. Samuel Konkofa Koroma, who was directly impacted by a 10-year war in Sierra Leone fueled by Taylor, tells his story of suffering, his rescue from certain death by a former student, and his ultimate decision to forgive.

Finding forgiveness after Charles Taylor
By Samuel Konkofa Koroma,

Samuel Konkofa Koroma has led peace-building projects in Africa for the global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps.

Last month a court in The Hague found former Liberian president Charles Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in fueling a 10-year, bloody conflict in Sierra Leone. The verdict capped a trial that itself had dragged on for years and had been punctuated by moments of sensationalism, such as Wikileaks revelations and the testimonies of supermodel Naomi Campbell and actress Mia Farrow.

With all of this spectacle, it can be easy to forget what the trial was really about: thousands of people like me, and the forgiveness that makes life bearable.

I’m from Sierra Leone, the country whose conflict Taylor was convicted of helping to finance. My life has taken me to Europe and to Uganda, but I’ve never forgotten my home: an impoverished, remote village.

Read the full story here.

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Why Older People Are More Apt to Forgive

Mental Health News Organization – People become happier as they get older, according to recent research. Happiness significantly rises for the over 50-crowd, and while physical health may decrease as people get older, mental well-being increases, something researchers attribute to the lowered personal and professional expectations older people place on themselves.

Something else that comes with old age: an increased capacity to forgive others. It’s easier for older adults to forgive than it is for younger adults.

A recent study set out to examine the reason behind this positive relationship between age and forgiveness. Researchers hypothesized that the two personality traits of agreeableness and neuroticism (the degree of negativity in a person’s response to life situations) explain age differences in tendencies to forgive.

The study looked at individuals who ranged in age from 19-84 years and found that older adults showed higher levels of agreeableness and lower levels of neuroticism than younger adults. How does this relate to forgiveness? More agreeable people are more forgiving than less agreeable ones, and more neurotic individuals are less forgiving than less neurotic ones. Consequently, older people are more apt to forgive. Read the full story.

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Episcopal Leaders Follow Amish Lead in Forgiving

ABCNews.com – The Episcopal Diocese of Maryland has made a generous offer of forgiveness toward and the payment of the funeral service for a homeless man who killed himself after fatally shooting a priest and the church secretary last week. The community based its gesture of forgiveness and generosity on what the Amish did when a man attacked and killed school girls in Pennsylvania in 2006. Full report here.

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Leaving a Legacy of Goodness

The Missoulian, Missoula, MT – On the 20th anniversary of her family’s deadly standoff with federal law enforcement officers at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, Sara Weaver is an advocate of forgiveness.

“Three years ago I Googled my name,” Weaver said, “and I thought “That’s not the legacy I want to leave for my son.'”

Weaver says she has made a distinction between forgiving someone and condoning what that person did. Forgiving simply meant she gave up holding onto the negative feelings and emotions of the incidents.

“It’s not like saying, ‘It’s sunny today, there’s a rainbow. I feel like forgiving someone today,'” she said. “It’s that in my heart and life, I’ve never got freedom from hanging onto toxic grudges.”

Sara Weaver was 16 when her father, Randy Weaver, got in a shootout with federal marshals at his cabin in northern Idaho. Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan and Weaver’s 14-year-old son Sammy Weaver were both killed on the first day after officers tried to serve a warrant for weapons charges.

Sara Weaver’s mother, Vicki Weaver, was shot dead by an FBI sniper the next day, and her father and another man were wounded. The standoff lasted 11 days.

Read the full story.

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