National Gathering

Small Beginnings, a Specific Call

A sharing by Joseph Nzabonikuza & Judith Nyirarukundo

What the Emmanuel Community in Rwanda can teach the Emmanuel Community in the USA

A sharing by Joseph Nzabonikuza & Judith Nyirarukundo

For about three decades, as a married couple, we belonged to the Emmanuel Community in Rwanda before moving recently to the United States, and we are grateful to have continued our journey in the Emmanuel Community here. Our testimony shows how God can turn one simple “yes” into something far greater than we imagine.

We offer the story of the Rwandan community in the hope that it will help the Community in the U.S. discern its own specific call. Here, the Community is still young; in Rwanda, it is older, larger, and more established. Our purpose is not to compare the two, but to ask together a simple question: what is God asking of us here, in this country, in this Church?

One thought guides the whole story: the Church understands herself as the People of God, called to share in the mission of Christ. Prayer groups, movements, and communities exist to serve that mission, not themselves.

A beginning nobody planned

The Emmanuel Community arrived in Rwanda in 1990, as the Charismatic Renewal was spreading across the world, including many African countries, and from the first day Church authorities welcomed and supported it. The way it began is instructive: nobody planned it, and it was received as a gift.

Cyprien and Daphrose

It started with a couple, Cyprien Rugamba and his wife, Daphrose Mukansanga. To understand how, one has to go back to Cyprien’s own story. A former seminarian preparing for the priesthood, he had lost his faith, and he became a proud and successful man: a high-ranking civil servant and a gifted artist and composer, admired in Rwanda and beyond. At home, however, his selfishness had pushed the marriage into crisis for years.

Daphrose was his opposite: humble and compassionate, she never stopped praying for her husband’s conversion, and she raised their ten children in the Catholic faith.

The turning point came in 1982, when Cyprien fell gravely ill and lost everything he had been proud of: his strength, his confidence, his control. Then, miraculously, he recovered, and he was truly converted, a changed man. Together, he and Daphrose joined the charismatic movement and led a prayer group.

An encounter that founded a Community

In 1989, during an evangelization trip to France, they met Pierre Goursat through friends who had volunteered with FIDESCO in Rwanda, a providential meeting in which the couple discovered the graces of Emmanuel. After meeting Emmanuel, they started in Kigali a weekly sharing group, and on September 22–23, 1990, the first Community weekend took place, marking the foundation of the Community in Rwanda.

Behind it was no strategy, only a wife’s patient prayer, a conversion, a friendship, and an encounter.

Three pillars

From that small root, among about thirty brothers and sisters, the three pillars of Emmanuel took shape:

• Adoration was the root of everything. The Archbishop of Kigali granted Cyprien and Daphrose the rare privilege of keeping the Eucharist in the chapel of their home.

• Compassion took shape in 1992, when the couple opened a center in Kigali to feed and educate street children. Today it is CECYDAR, the Centre Cyprien et Daphrose Rugamba, still operating in partnership with Fidesco.

• Evangelization was visible from the start. The small group became known for unusual initiatives, including street evangelization and forums for families and young people. Brothers and sisters carried the Community from Kigali across Rwanda, and beyond, to Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to Burundi.

A voice he did not ignore

“Today, if only you would hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” (Psalm 95:7–8)

Before Cyprien ever met the Community, he was praying one day when he heard a clear voice in his heart: “Cyprien, I will accomplish with you an act of salvation.” He did not understand what it meant, but it became clear later: he was called to fight for unity in Rwanda during its darkest years, a time of deep division, civil war, and propaganda calling for violence along tribal lines, which ended in the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994.

Cyprien urged the young members of Emmanuel to stay united and to remain outside any political affiliation, wanting them to belong to one side only: Christ’s, who alone welcomes everyone, whatever their tribe or political party. This was not a passive position. At a time when party supporters were marching in the streets by the thousands, often with violence, Cyprien led the Community into the streets too, to evangelize and to call for peace, unity, and tolerance in the name of Jesus Christ.

In the Rwanda of the early 1990s, a well-known, influential man who refused to take sides and condemned political violence was not tolerated by extremists. On April 7, 1994, the first day of the genocide, Cyprien and Daphrose were killed in their home, together with six of their ten children, after a night of adoration. The Church has since opened the cause for their beatification as martyrs, and they are now called Servants of God.

A mission that outlived its founders

Nobody expected the Community to survive. Besides Cyprien and Daphrose, several other brothers and sisters were killed, and others fled the country. Yet it did survive: a few members who lived through the genocide stayed faithful and kept praying, wherever they were, in the country and in refugee camps in neighboring countries. They found the extraordinary courage to meet again and start over, and the Community grew back in a country that had been torn apart.

Today, thirty-two years after the deaths of Cyprien and Daphrose, the Community in Rwanda has about 1,805 members, including 26 consecrated lay people (25 women and one man), 15 priests, and 7 seminarians. After France, it is the largest Emmanuel Community in the world.

The takeaway: the call came from God, the mission was specific, and it outlived its founders because it belonged to a community.

What God did with it

Several key evangelization activities explain the rapid growth of the Community in Rwanda. They illustrate the importance of letting adoration, compassion, and evangelization bear the fruit God needs to build His Church. Today, Emmanuel is present in all dioceses of Rwanda.

Families and young people

Reaching families. The Community offers several programs to strengthen marriages and prepare couples:

• Love & Truth weekends for families, with teaching on prayer, communication, raising children, managing money, and even life with in-laws.

• School for Couples, which has about 151 graduates so far.

• School for Engaged Couples, a six-month course created to address a real wound: couples marrying unprepared, a source of divorce. Church authorities welcomed the initiative, and after ten years, 2,409 couples have graduated.

Reaching young people. Three initiatives stand out:

• Youth Forum, which gathered about 5,000 young people from all the dioceses for a weekend of teaching, worship, adoration, Mass, and conversation with the Bishops. After about ten years, the Community handed it over to the Episcopal Conference.

• Youth Spaces, held monthly in five dioceses.

• Mission and Charity Schools (three in all), which help young people grow spiritually and discover the joy of serving God in the Church.

Prayer and worship

Prayer groups. These are a priority for the Community. Every sector must have one, and today about 2,000 people attend 59 prayer groups across the country. Many Community members first heard the call to Emmanuel through a prayer group.

A large prayer gathering. In Ruhango, in Rwanda’s southern province, the Church has entrusted the Emmanuel Community with the spiritual animation of the Jesus Misericordia Sanctuary. About 100,000 faithful from Rwanda and neighboring countries come on the first Sunday of every month to pray for healing and to implore Divine Mercy. The Sanctuary also offers perpetual Eucharistic adoration, spiritual counselling, and intercession prayer.

Jericho Novena. For the past five years, the Community has organized the Jericho Novena twice a year: a week of worship, Mass, teaching, and adoration meant to bring down the walls that keep people from living in harmony with God and neighbor. The Episcopal Conference has since adopted it in all the nine dioceses of Rwanda.

Pentecost celebration. Every Pentecost, the Community gathers thousands of people to celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The event is now organized by province, together with the dioceses.

Compassion and a place of welcome

CECYDAR. Begun by Daphrose and carried on by survivors, it was the first Community activity to resume right after the genocide, helping homeless orphans on the streets of Kigali. Authorities now regard it as a national reference for rehabilitating street children, because it gives them what they lack most: the love of God.

Emmanuel Community Center. Shortly before the genocide, Cyprien had asked for a piece of land in Kigali. He dreamed of a place where anyone who is tired could find peace and be heard. After the genocide, that dream came true. On that land now stands a spiritual center consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is the Community’s home in Rwanda, with space for retreats, intercession, and perpetual adoration of the Eucharist. Anyone is welcome to meet God and find peace again, just as Cyprien wished.

Audacity inspired by the Spirit

Some of what the Community did was considered unusual in the Church, yet it bore fruit beyond expectations.

Healing and reconciliation. Early after the genocide, when nobody believed reconciliation was possible, the Community organized healing prayers for forgiveness and reconciliation, the beginning of a path that even political authorities later had to take in order to overcome division and rebuild the nation.

Parish missions. These missions go deep into places where people are rarely reached in Parishes. Picture the scene: a parish priest, with a few Emmanuel musicians, steps onto the stage of a live band in a bar. They sing popular worship songs, tell everyone present that God loves them, invite them to Mass the following Sunday, and ask God’s blessing on them. In the open-air markets of rural areas, an evangelization team led by the parish priest pauses for a few minutes in the middle of the crowd, without disturbing business, to announce God’s love to buyers and sellers and to bless them and their trade.

This kind of boldness, inspired by the Holy Spirit, built deep trust between Church authorities and the Community. They have always encouraged and supported its evangelization, and that support has helped the graces of Emmanuel spread in the Church.

And now, for us

We do not suggest that the Emmanuel Community in the U.S. should copy Rwanda: it is a different country, a different culture, and a different moment in the life of the Church. What we can take from the story is the pattern: God gives a call, He gives it for a specific mission, and He wants it carried by the Emmanuel Community.

History suggests that God loves small beginnings. Saint Benedict wanted only a school for the Lord’s service, a modest school of prayer and work, yet it helped lay the foundations of medieval European culture, from libraries and universities to models of community life. Mother Teresa began with just a few sisters. In each case, what mattered was to hear the voice of God and to answer with concrete acts of evangelization.

Questions for prayer and discernment

Let each of us carry a few questions in prayer and discernment:

1. Where do we stand as the Emmanuel Community in the USA?

2. What is our specific mission? What is the purpose of our existence in the local Church?

3. Who are the people around us who are tired, divided, or far from God, and what small, concrete step of evangelization can we take toward them?

The Rwandan story began with thirty people, a patient wife, and a man who did not harden his heart, and its message for us is simple: let us not fear small beginnings. If we listen to the Holy Spirit and answer with concrete acts of evangelization, the Lord will do the rest.