Malawi Catholics off to Namugongo Martyrs shrine in Uganda

The Uganda Martyrs are a group of 23 Anglican and 22 Catholic converts to Christianity in the historical kingdom of Buganda, now part of Uganda, who were executed between 31 January 1885 and 27 January 1887

A total of 103 Catholics from 8 Dioceses of Malawi are off to Namugongo in Uganda Martyrs Shrine for the 2019’s pilgrimage.
Speaking during their departure in Lilongwe, Secretary for the Namugongo pilgrimage Mrs Dora Banda said this is every important trip to all Catholics as they will have time to reflect on their spiritual life at Namugongo.

Every June 03rd people from all over the world join Ugandan Christians in prayer and celebration of the great African saints who sacrificed their lives for Christianity.
The Uganda Martyrs were beatified on June 6, 1920 by Pope Benedict xv.
They were canonised by Pope Paul vi on mission Sunday, on October 8th 1969, the first ever by a Pope to the African Continent.

In 1886 Mwanga ordered the executions of a number of his pages. Heike Behrend says they were both Christian and Muslim converts; other sources speak only of Anglican and Catholic victims, and mention the killing of Muslims as having occurred ten years earlier at the hands of Mwanga’s father Muteesa.Joseph Mukasa, a convert to Christianity who had deplored the assassination of Hannington, and had tried to protect the court pages, was the first to be executed on 15 November 1885: this was at the instigation of the Katikkiro (prime minister) Mukasa, whose successor Joseph Mukasa was tipped to become king. Then, between 25 May and 3 June 1886, a wider series of executions were carried out.Mwanga instructed the killing of all the young men who disobeyed him – partly to satisfy the demands of the older chiefs. Twenty-two of the men, who had converted to Catholicism, were burned alive at Namugongo in 1886.

“The reasons behind the persecution are still heavily debated”, Behrend states.Political factors certainly played a part. Those killed included minor chiefs, some of whom, such as Joseph Mukasa, were “the victims of particular grudges by their seniors … jealous that these up and coming young men would soon be ousting them from power”.Ward has argued that the motivation was the perception that “these Christians were rebels against the Kabaka, unwitting tools of foreign imperialism”.

A witness to the event, the French missionary priest Lourdel, considered that the principal cause was Mwanga’s feeling of being despised by the literate Christians who claimed a superior knowledge of religion. Lourdel gave as a secondary cause of Mwanga’s action “the impossibility of satisfying his shameful passions”.Ward certainly notes that “the immediate cause of the killings was the refusal of the pages to engage in homosexual practices”. The king, who by tradition had the power of life and death over his subjects, was angered by this refusal to obey his wishes to have sex with him.

List of the martyrs

REPORTER: Martin Mlelemba