Cardinal Antoine Kambanda, on Friday Evening December 30 , prayed for parents who have divorced. The message was delivered as part of the feast of the Holy Family. The Feast of the Holy Family is a liturgical celebration in the Catholic Church, in honour of Jesus, His mother, and his legal father, Saint Joseph, as a family. The primary purpose of this feast is to present the Holy Family as a model for Christian families. It is held on the Sunday between Christmas Day and January 1 but if both are Sundays, the Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated on December 30. “Happy feast of the Holy Family and happy feast to all families. Families who are happy praise the Lord, those who are suffering, the widows, those separated, the divorced and the widows pray with hope,” Cardinal said on his twitter account. The mass for praying to the divorced was also aired on Catholic Church Pacis TV where testimonies about a good family were also shared. In 2019, at least 8, 941 families in Rwanda were allowed by the courts to divorce as reported by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). The number increased by 6.8 times since 2018. Over 2,400 divorces were recorded in the City of Kigali, 1,989 in Southern province, 1,820 in Western province, and 1,482 in Eastern province and 1,250 in Northern Province. However, statistics also show that in the same year (2019), about 48526 marriages were legally pronounced. Nationwide divorce cases filed to court increased by 1, 900 percent from 69 in 2017 to 1, 311 in 2018.
