Our Lady of Kibeho

Our Lady of Kibeho refers to a series of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to several young students at a school in the village of Kibeho in Rwanda, beginning in November 1981. The Virgin, who called herself "Mother of the Word," appeared over some years to the visionaries, calling for prayer, especially the Rosary and a devotion known as the Rosary of the Seven Sorrows, for conversion, and for repentance and reconciliation.

Some of the messages included sorrowful and even frightening visions of rivers of blood and of people killing one another, which many later understood as a foreshadowing of the horrific Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which some of the visionaries themselves perished. After long and careful investigation, the local bishop of Gikongoro declared the apparitions of three of the seers worthy of belief in 2001, making Kibeho the first Marian apparition formally approved by the Church in Africa. The shrine has become a place of pilgrimage and reconciliation, and the feast is kept on 28 November.