Laureline Bocken's research paper on the ‘Common Martyrology’ of the St. Paul Seminary in Buta, Burundi has been published as a book. The Institute for Ecumenical Studies and the author invite you to the book launch on 23 November 2024 at the Salesianum.

During the civil war in Burundi, armed rebels invaded the St. Paul Minor Seminary in Buta on 30 April 1997 and ordered the young people to line up separately: Bahutu on one side and Batutsi on the other. The young people resisted, risking their lives: forty were murdered and forty more wounded.

In Buta, the presence of Father Zacharias Bukuru and his team had promoted a life of reconciled community. His education is based on the Ubuntu-philosophy, transformed by Christian faith. In this way, the students had learned to recognise the presence of God in everyone and thus to go to the highest testimony of love: the giving of one's own life.

Laureline Bocken, a Belgian sister in the Chemin Neuf community and expert in special education, lived in Burundi for two years. She was touched by the message of the forty martyrs of Buta. With this documentation, which she wrote as a master's thesis as part of her theology studies at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), she opens up numerous research possibilities and shares with us a legacy of universal fraternity.

Invitation to the book presentation on 23 November 2024 at the Salesianum