“Many people ask me why on earth should a survivor of the genocide in Rwanda forgive someone who murdered either their mother or husband or brother or sister. When you consider that a million people got destroyed by the cruelest means ever known, hacking people to death with machetes and banging children on the walls. Somebody has to tell them this painful message of forgiveness. If we let them be consumed by that ongoing bitterness and anger, it’s like an acidic content in a metal container. It will eventually eat the container up. When they forgive, they get released. Those perpetrators, after they get forgiven, come to us and say, ‘Can you help us to do something to show our remorse?’ And now they are building houses for their victims.” — Bishop John Rucyahana