Most of the closed churches are small Pentecostal churches and mosques, many of which do not have addresses and proper facilities for the congregation. Several of these have been operating at riverbanks and in caves. 

According to Anglican Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda the laws that had been introduced in 2018 served the congregation, because they promoted a safe environment: “I think what was introduced — not today but five years ago — is good for the church. The government gave us five years to comply and kept giving us reminders. That ended last year in September. I think this was enough time to comply. We need to look at this from a positive side. We are talking about aeration, sound control … toilets for men and women. I think there is nothing out of the ordinary about these. Rwanda has freedom of worship. I think we are starting churches where they should not be. Sometimes we are having church structures that a god cannot live in, let alone a person.”

Reverend Innocent Halerimana Maganya, a Congolese Catholic priest at Tangaza University in Nairobi, stated: “I think most people agree with this. There has to be training of clergy, order and sanity in the churches’ operation, so that religion serves its purpose. In the current state of affairs, it is the poor who are suffering exploitation.”

Rwanda’s population of 12 million people has a large Christian denomination. Based on figures from the 2022 census, around 48% of people are Protestant and 40% are Roman Catholic. There had been 15,000 established churches in 2019, but only 700 of them were legally registered. Following the genocide in 1994, when approximately 800,000 people were killed – most of whom belonged to the Tutsi ethnic group and some moderate Hutus -, authorities accused churches of conniving and helping the murders. Many people sought refuge at churches, where they were struck down and killed, therefore the government kept harassing priests and pastors. Some of them were detained and charged with crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. 

Paul Kagame, the current president of Rwanda, who ended the genocide at the time, recently criticised Catholic pilgrims who are idolising poverty. He sees them as threat against young people who should spend their time working and making their lives better instead of sitting and praying at pilgrim sites: “No one must worship poverty. Do not ever do that again. … If I ever hear about this again, that people travelled to go and worship poverty, I will bring trucks and round them up and imprison them, and only release them when the poverty mentality has left them”.