If the parish of Kibeho is being spoken of as a place of pilgrimage and apparitions, it is due to the fact that, on November 28th, 1981, a young student of the College of Kibeho, called Alphonsine Mumureke, claimed to see a Lady of incomparable beauty who presented herself as “Nyina wa Jambo”, i.e. the “Mother of the Word”, immediately recognized by the supposed visionary as the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus our Saviour. The phenomenon subsequently repeated itself spaced at longer or shorter intervals. The Apparitions was approved in June 29, 2001.
Among the aspects which support the credibility of the apparitions of Kibeho, one of the most important is undoubtedly the “dialogues” of the visionaries with Our Lady, the quality of the message itself.
Certainly, the apparitions of Kibeho were many, and the time span in which they occurred was very long; the constitutive elements of the message, however, were delivered during the first two years of the apparitions, i.e. before the end of the year 1983. The Virgin Mary communicated to her visionaries miscellaneous messages, which, however, never opposed each other; we can easily discern various common points in them. In the context of this declaration, they shall be limited to a brief overview. In general, this message could be summarized in the following themes:
1. An urgent appeal to the repentance and conversion of hearts:
“Repent, repent, repent!”
“Convert while there is still time.”
2. An assessment of the moral state of the world:
“The world conducts itself very badly.”
“The world hastens to its ruin, it will fall into the abyss”, in other words, “it is plunged into innumerable and unrelenting disasters.”
“The world is rebellious against God, it commits too many sins, it has neither love nor peace.”
“If you do not repent and do not convert your hearts, you will fall into the abyss.”
3. The deep sorrow of the Mother of God:
The visionaries said to have seen the Virgin Mary crying on August 15th, 1982. The Mother of God was very saddened because of people’s unbelief and lack of repentance. She complained of our bad way of life, which is characterized by the slackness of customs, the likeness of evil, and continuous disobedience to God’s Commandments.