The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

A Ugandan Marian movement that kept the commandments by keeping silent.

The movement formed in south-western Uganda around 1989 among Catholics who believed the Virgin Mary had told them the Ten Commandments were being broken wholesale and had to be restored. Its answer was practical and severe: if the tongue breaks commandments, stop using it. Members communicated largely in sign language and in writing, spoke aloud only on Mondays and Fridays, gave up sex including within marriage, fasted on Mondays and Fridays, and worked the movement's farms at Kanungu. They wore coloured robes by rank — black for novices, green for those keeping the commandments, green and white for the professed. They kept the Latin rite, received communion kneeling, and expected the end of the present age. On 17 March 2000 the church at Kanungu burned.

On the record

On 17 March 2000 the church building at the movement's Kanungu compound burned with members inside; at least 330 died there, and police said more bodies were probably reduced to ash. Ugandan police then exhumed 444 further bodies from mass graves at the movement's other properties and at leaders' houses, many showing signs of strangulation, poisoning or stabbing, bringing the recorded total to 778. Police reclassified the case from mass suicide to murder. Credonia Mwerinde, Joseph Kibwetere and Dominic Kataribaabo were placed on the wanted list; none has been found and no one has been prosecuted.

Why it is filed this way

Best described as a post-Catholic movement: it never repudiated Catholic doctrine and considered itself the faithful remnant of it, while operating outside the diocese and led by laypeople and by priests the church had removed. Ugandan scholarship and the Ugandan press have pressed a question the international coverage mostly skipped — how a movement this large operated for a decade in registered premises without official notice.

The movement ended in March 2000. Nothing survived it and no successor exists.

DeitiesWholly Catholic in structure — the Trinity, the Mass, the saints — with the Virgin Mary as the movement's actual channel of instruction. The apparition tradition it drew on was mainstream Catholic: Fatima, La Salette, Kibeho in neighbouring Rwanda. What set it apart was that the instructions were current, specific, and treated as binding.

Founded1989 CE · Kanungu district, south-western Uganda

FounderCredonia Mwerinde and Joseph Kibwetere

AfterlifeJudgment at the end of the present age, with the members gathered and taken. The date was expected at the end of 1999 and then moved.

TextsA Timely Message from Heaven: The End of the Present Time · The Catholic Bible and the Roman Missal · The Rosary

The map

The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1989 CE The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

The commandments have been abandoned, and must be restored. The movement's founding complaint was that Ugandan Catholic practice had gone lax and that the ten commandments were being broken casually and constantly. Everything else in the rule follows from taking that complaint literally. Go deeper — context →

The Virgin speaks, and the end has a date. Mwerinde, Kibwetere and Kashaku each reported apparitions, and the movement treated the instructions as current and binding. The end was expected at the close of 1999; when it did not come the date moved, and members were told to sell what remained and gather. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

T The Virgin Mary. Not a distant intercessor but the movement's working authority, giving specific and current instructions through three named visionaries. The apparition tradition behind it is entirely mainstream Catholic — Fatima, La Salette, and Kibeho across the border in Rwanda, which Ugandan Catholics knew well. Domain Instruction — she was understood to be giving current, specific ordersStanding The movement's working authority, above the diocese and above the leaders who relayed her Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

Silence, and the sign language. Members communicated in signs and written notes and spoke aloud only on Mondays and Fridays, which were also the fast days. Visitors to Kanungu in the 1990s described a working farm of several hundred people that made almost no sound. When daily, with speech permitted on Mondays and FridaysWho all members, including children Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Hinduism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Buddhism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Christianity — 7 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

2 cited texts

World Religions and Spirituality Project, Virginia Commonwealth University, entry on the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God where it is cited →
CESNUR, Tragedy in Uganda: the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a Post-Catholic Movement, 2000 where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.