Rwanda ? A Catholic priest was convicted Wednesday of participating in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide by ordering militiamen to set fire to a church and then bulldoze it while 2,000 people were huddled inside seeking safety.

The Rev. Athanase Seromba was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to 15 years in prison, although he will get credit for four years already served. The tribunal is based in Arusha, Tanzania.

Seromba was charged with directing a militia that “attacked with traditional arms and poured fuel through the roof of the church, while gendarmes and communal police launched grenades and killed the refugees.”

After failing to kill all the people inside, Seromba ordered the demolition of the church, the document said.

Thousands of Rwandans have turned away from Catholicism, angered and saddened by the complicity of church officials in the 100-day genocide, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists.

Priests, nuns and followers were implicated in the killings, and some churches became sites of notorious massacres.