'Catholic Church Had Excommunicated Kibwetere'

Africa News Online, March 21, 2000
By Patrick Mugumya

Kampala - Bishop Emeritus John Baptist Kakubi has said he excommunicated Joseph Kibwetere from the Roman Catholic Church because he claimed he was talking to God.

Kibwetere, the self-styled prophet and founder of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God is believed to have died with over 500 members in an inferno in Kanungu.

Kakubi, the former Bishop of Mbarara Diocese told The New Vision yesterday that Kibwetere's teaching was unacceptable to Catholics. "Kibwetere claimed that he could talk to God which was unacceptable in the Roman Catholic Church.

"Even I, a Bishop, cannot speak to God. As Catholics, we believe that someone cannot talk to God," he said in an interview at his home in Ibanda. Kakubi said he never suspended the two priests, Fr. Dominic Kataribabo, and Joseph Kasapuraru who were Kibwetere's colleagues in the cult. He said he only suspended them for being disobedient to him when he was Bishop.

"I did not excommunicate the two priests but only suspended them because they were disobedient and refused to recognise me as the Bishop of their diocese," he said in Runyankole.

"I was grossly disappointed to hear that Dominic Kataribabo, a man with a Doctorate in Theology, had decided to follow Kibwetere's teachings," he said.