A Rwandan court on 30 October 2025 acquitted the former bishop of Shyira, the Rt. Rev. Samuel Mugiraneza Mugisha, of graft‑related charges that had kept him behind bars for nine months, ordering his immediate release, the Living Text website reports. His wife wrote that the judgment “acquitted him of all allegations, including claims of nepotism and embezzlement of diocesan funds,” stressing that a forensic audit had never confirmed any financial wrongdoing and that suggestions he remained “charged with embezzlement” after the ruling were “completely false”, the website said.
The verdict brought to a close a criminal process that began when the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) announced on 21 January 2025 that Bishop Mugisha was under investigation for alleged embezzlement and misuse of church funds, including using his own company to supply building materials to a diocesan project, granting his wife’s firm a monopoly on egg supplies to church schools, and grazing his cattle on diocesan land.
The road to trial began in Shyira Diocese in 2024, when clergy who had been dismissed or reassigned raised complaints about Bishop Mugisha’s leadership and disciplinary actions. Those internal disputes prompted the provincial leadership of the Anglican Church of Rwanda to open an investigation into the bishop’s governance, culminating in his suspension and the installation of the Rt. Rev. Augustin Ahimana in his place, followed by Bishop Mugisha’s resignation as diocesan bishop on 29 November 2024.
What had started as a conflict over staffing and administration soon shifted into a matter for the state. RIB’s January 2025 statement framed the affair in criminal terms, citing suspected embezzlement and abuse of office for personal gain. In February 2025 Mugisha appeared at Muhoza Primary Court in Musanze for a bail hearing, but he remained in detention while the case unfolded, and by October retired bishops were publicly lamenting that a fellow bishop had spent nine months in prison “for performing duties that you all carry out.”
The Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda and chair of GAFCON, has consistently presented the case as a test of episcopal accountability, dismissing claims this was a personal vendetta. In an April 2025 intervention reported by Rwandan media, Mbanda told clergy that “a bishop is not above the law, because he is a human being like everyone else,” adding that “people make mistakes, people fall into sin, people do wrong things,” and insisting that ordination does not exempt a church leader from scrutiny by civil courts.
In an October 2025 interview on church governance and the Mugisha affair, Archbishop Mbanda reiterated that it is “natural for people to be held accountable,” arguing that pastors and bishops alike must accept oversight and be willing to admit fault and “make things right” where harm has been done. He linked the Shyira controversy to a wider concern that some senior clergy wish to act without checks or transparency, warning that if a bishop insists on functioning without accountability, “it simply shows their time in office has expired.
A different reading of events has come from four retired Rwandan bishops, led by former Gahini bishop the Rt. Rev. Alexis Bilindabagabo. In a series of open letters, Bishop Bilindabagabo argued that what Bishop Mugisha had done—using companies linked to himself or his wife in church projects, managing diocesan land, and making personnel changes—were “ordinary responsibilities that bishops carry out daily” and that similar practices could be found in other dioceses without attracting police action.
By October 2025, after attending several of Mugisha’s court sessions, Bishop Bilindabagabo wrote that seeing a bishop in handcuffs for such matters left him “shocked and deeply saddened,” asking why only one bishop had been singled out if these actions were truly crimes. On 26 October 2025, four retired bishops addressed a joint letter to Mbanda and the active House of Bishops complaining that their colleague had been “mistreated,” questioning the decision to involve the Rwanda Governance Board when the bishops themselves had admitted they were “so divided on the issue,” and asking whether church law and state law were being applied selectively.
Archbishop Mbanda issued a “Statement from the National Leadership” on 14 October 2025 responding directly to the retired bishops’ accusations. The statement catalogued previous attempts by the active bishops to resolve the Shyira dispute—seven meetings by Mbanda’s count—and turned the charge of division back on the retired prelates, reminding them of provincial canons they themselves were alleged to have violated.
In that letter Archbishop Mbanda raised pointed questions: if, as the retired bishops claimed, Mugisha had “no issue with the Church,” why was he imprisoned, who referred his case to the Rwanda Governance Board and state prosecutors, and why was he being charged for actions “that others among you have not [been] charged for?”
Legally, the 30 October 2025 ruling cleared Mugisha’s name, with his family underscoring that “the court ruling clearly cleared him of all financial accusations.” Yet the ecclesial and relational consequences remain unresolved.