Burundi shared with Rwanda a single creator, Imana, whose favour was courted through ancestors and through Kiranga, the spirit lord served by possessed mediums in the kubandwa cult. Religion and monarchy were fused: the mwami was a sacral king, his enthronement and the yearly sorghum festival of umuganuro were religious events, and the royal drum called karyenda stood for the kingdom's covenant with heaven.
German and then Belgian rule brought the White Fathers, and by independence in 1962 Burundi held one of the largest Catholic majorities in Africa, with mission schools educating the elite of both Hutu and Tutsi. The church's entanglement with power cut both ways. Catholic and Protestant institutions were caught up in the mass killings of 1972 and 1993, sometimes as refuges and sometimes as targets, and the 1993 assassination of the first democratically elected president opened a civil war in which clergy repeatedly acted as mediators.
Under Pierre Nkurunziza, a born again evangelical who led prayer crusades while in office, politics took on a strongly Pentecostal colouring, and the government sparred with the Catholic bishops over disputed elections. Today the country remains among the most observant in the region, its hills dense with parishes, revival churches and the older obligations owed to ancestors.