Reimagining Violence in Contemporary Africa: Catholic Martyrdom and the Ethics of Sacrificial Solidarity in Burundi

Abstract

This article discusses the enculturated Catholic ethics of martyrdom embodied by the Martyrs of Fraternity of Burundi, a group of students whose cause is now before the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints for refusing to separate into Hutus and Tutsis during Burundi’s 1993–2005 civil war. Engaging Fratelli Tutti from a local African perspective, it considers how the conviction that all human beings are brothers and sisters is to find concrete embodiment. Its argument develops Emmanuel Katongole’s assertion that the African church provides a living witness of what hope looks like in contexts of violence and war, drawing on Burundian scholarship and more than sixty interviews conducted in Burundi from 2018 to 2024 to develop a thick narrative of fraternal martyrdom and the ethics of Ubuntu. By placing sacrificial solidarity rather than violence at the center of the story of the Martyrs of Fraternity, Burundian Catholics reimagine their civil war in ethical terms. This Burundian embodiment of an ethics of sacrificial solidarity, solidly grounded in its original cultural substratum, stands as a resource for a world increasingly engulfed by war, refusing to let violence have the last word in a story of fraternal love hallowed by sacrifice.

Keywords

• Burundi
• martyrdom
• fraternity
• Ubuntu
• <i>Fratelli Tutti</i>
• African ethics