Charles Lwanga and companions,Ungandan martyrs

Saints

Holiday: June 3

19th century

St. Charles Lwanga and his twelve companions, whose memory we celebrate on June 3, are among the Ugandan martyrs who gave their lives for the faith at the end of the 19th century. At that time, Uganda was part of the Buganda kingdom, ruled by the young King Mwanga. The first Catholic missionaries arrived in this kingdom. from France in June 1879. Two years earlier, at the invitation of Mwanga’s father, King Mtesa, English Protestant missionaries had arrived in the country. However, rifts began to emerge between the two Christian churches, and in 1882, the Catholic missionaries decided to leave the kingdom temporarily. However, the Catholic faith continued to spread through the newly baptized. In July 1885, King Mwanga called the missionaries back. He even called on his pagan subjects to accept the Catholic faith. He gave some of the high offices and ranks of his court to the best of the Catholics. Two of these high-ranking believers uncovered a plot against the king by the katikiro, a chancellor who hated Catholics. However, the king forgave the katikiro and kept him in office. The katikiro began to rail against the Catholics. He constantly incited the king against them and falsely accused them. The young, inexperienced king was impressed. He began to persecute them. Among other things, he was annoyed that his pages, who were Christians, rejected the homosexuality he was trying to impose on them. First, he issued an absolute ban on accepting and professing the faith, and later, he began to persecute them openly. He even killed several with his own hand. The exact number of those killed is unknown. There were probably over a hundred of them. Twenty-two of them are venerated as saints today. Among them is Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, one of the king’s best advisers, who was beheaded at the age of twenty-five on November 15, 1885, in Nakivubo. The following year, Dionysius Ssebieggwawa (a sixteen-year-old page), Ponzián Ngondwe (a royal guard, forty years old), Andrei Kaggwa (a thirty-year-old commander of the king’s personal guard), Athanasius Bazzekuketta (a twenty-year-old page), Matthew Kalemba (a fifty-year-old chief of several villages and a judge), and Noah Mwaggali (thirty-five years old) were martyred. Most of them were beheaded and cut into pieces. Matthew was mutilated and killed. Noah was torn to pieces by dogs.

On May 25, 1886, the king declared that he would have anyone who “prayed” killed. Charles Lwanga was the representative of the pages. When he noticed the danger, he immediately gathered the catechumens and his faithful for a night of prayer. He tested and baptized the catechumens. In the morning, the king called a large court meeting. He gathered all the pages and the royal guards. He called on those who were praying to come out. Charles Lwanga came out first, followed by fifteen pages. The king had everyone shackled and led away. They then waited in the dungeon until they were taken to the execution ground in Namugongo, which was sixty kilometers away. The condemned walked there for two days. Some of them were killed on the way. Among them was the son of the chief executioner. The executioner tried his best to persuade him to renounce his faith, but in vain. On the morning of June 3, the prisoners were taken out of the huts in Namugongo and placed on a large pyre to be burned. Karol Lwanga was burned first. They hoped to intimidate the others in this way. Three of them – as was customary – were pardoned. They remained sad. But their task was later to bear witness to their comrades’ martyrdom. After Karol, twelve more pages were burned. They were: Lukáš Banabakinta, Jakub Buzabaliawo, Ambroz Kibuka, Anatol Kriggwajjo, Achilles Kiwanuka, Mbaga Tuzinde, Mukasa Kiriwawanva, Adolf Mukasa Ludigo, Bruno Serankuma, Gyavira, Mugagga, and Kizito, who was the youngest, only thirteen years old.

The last of the twenty-two to be killed was John Mary Muzeyi. He was beheaded and thrown into a pond on January 27, 1887. All the martyrs were beatified by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 and canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 18, 1964. Charles Lwanga was declared the patron saint of black youth. A magnificent shrine was built in their honor in Namugonga, near the capital, Kampala, and its altar was consecrated during Pope Paul VI’s visit to Uganda in July 1969. In 1979, during the celebration of the Church’s centenary in Uganda, there were already 4.5 million Catholics, more than a third of the total population.