Heritage from Father: Healing Genocide Wounds Through Gratitude and Faith - Tapa blanda

Heritage from Father is a poignant testimony on the suffering from discrimination and the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It is also a testimony of love, compassion and healing after the author's parents, six brothers and sisters were killed in the genocide. In this testimony, the author highlights his awareness of God's blessings upon him through people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. It is evidence that the awareness reminds him of the values of gratitude and faith instilled by his father from early age. The very values that had healed his father during the persecutions of the Tutsi in the years that preceded the horror of the 1994 genocide. Heritage from Father is also an account of how the saving hand of remembrance kept away from him the pressing need for hatred that had started to overrun him, and how it urged him to life in peace instead, with himself and with the world. This is particularly true in his personal style of forgiving the executioners of his family and relatives, in spite of their refusal to own responsibility.

Hormisdas Ndayishimiye was born in Rwanda and became member of the Rogationist Religious Community for four years. He studied Philosophy at Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, Italy; Theology at St.Thomas Institute of Theology in Messina, Italy and Social Sciences at Pontifical University of St.Thomas Aquinas in Roma, Italy. He lost most of his family during the 1994 genocide when he was in Italy. Six years later he returned to Rwanda and began work for University Teaching Hospital in Butare as Liaison Officer and Social Service Manager. Today, he is an independent researcher, member of Global Ethics Network and member of Peace and Collaborative Development Network. Hormisdas lives in Butare, with his wife Marie-Claire and two children, Davina and Anaïs.