Rwanda's Catholic Church has issued a statement apologizing for its role in the country's 1994 genocide which killed up to 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

"We apologies for all the wrongs the church committed. We apologise on behalf of all Christians for all forms of wrongs we committed," read a Sunday statement.

Al Jazeera reported that the statement also expressed regret over church members violating their oath of allegiance to God's commandments. "Forgive us for the crime of hate in the country to the extent of also hating our colleagues because of their ethnicity. We didn't show that we are one family, but instead killed each other," the statement said.

The statement, which was was read out in parishes across the country, was timed to coincide with the formal end on Sunday of the Holy Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis to encourage greater reconciliation and forgiveness in his church and in the world, Bishop Phillipe Rukamba, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Rwanda, explained.

A significant number of the victims were killed by members of the Catholic Church, including priests, clergymen and nuns as they sought refuge in churches throughout the country.

The Church's admission is a significant development, as in the years following the genocide the church repeatedly denied accusations by Kigali, and groups of survivors that it had been complicit in the mass murder, claiming that it was only individual church members who had committed crimes.

The spate of mass murder killed up to 70 percent of Rwanda's Tutsi community and up to 20 percent of the country's total population. The genocide was planned by members of the core political elite, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of the national government. Perpetrators came from the ranks of the Rwandan army, the Gendarmerie, government-backed militias including the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, as well as ordinary civilians.

Some militias called themselves the "Army of Jesus" and believed their mission was to destroy God's enemies.

The genocide took place in the context of the Rwandan Civil War, an ongoing conflict beginning in 1990 between the Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which largely comprised Tutsi refugees whose families had fled to Uganda after the 1959 Hutu revolt against colonial rule.

Waves of Hutu violence against the RPF and Tutsi followed Rwandan independence in 1962.

(IOL)