Uganda Martyrs

The Uganda Martyrs were forty-five Christian converts from the Kingdom of Buganda—twenty-two Catholics and twenty-three Anglicans—who were put to death between 1885 and 1887 under Kabaka Mwanga II. They were for the most part young men serving as pages and officials at the royal court. Christian missions had reached Buganda in the late 1870s: Anglican missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in 1877 and Catholic Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers) in 1879. Kabaka Muteesa I had allowed the missions a foothold while balancing them against Islam and indigenous religion. After Muteesa's death in 1884, his son Mwanga II, still in his teens, came to regard the new faith as a challenge to royal authority, to traditional court customs, and to Buganda's independence from growing European influence.

Open persecution began in 1885. On 31 January 1885 three Anglican converts, Yusufu Lugalama, Makko Kakumba, and Nuwa Serwanga, were killed at Busega. In October 1885 Mwanga ordered the killing of the Anglican bishop James Hannington, who was approaching Buganda from the east. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, the Catholic majordomo of the royal household and a leader of the Christian pages, reproached the king for that murder and was himself beheaded on 15 November 1885, becoming the first Catholic martyr. Charles Lwanga then took Mukasa's place as head of the pages and continued to teach and protect the Christian youths, baptizing several in secret. A further cause of the king's rage was the Christians' refusal of his sexual advances; Mwanga was accustomed to demand sexual submission from the court pages, which the baptized youths rejected on grounds of Christian morality.

In late May 1886 Mwanga ordered a general round-up of the Christian pages at Munyonyo. Denis Ssebuggwawo was killed on 25 May and Andrew Kaggwa on 26 May. As the condemned were marched toward the traditional execution ground at Namugongo, Pontian Ngondwe, Athanasius Bazzekuketta, Gonzaga Gonza, and others were killed along the route. Matthias Mulumba Kalemba, an older chief and convert, was mutilated and left to die; Noe Mawaggali was killed at Mityana. On 3 June 1886 Charles Lwanga was burned alive at Namugongo; the same day Catholic and Anglican pages were bound in reed mats and burned together on a pyre. Among the Catholics who died that day was Kizito, a boy of about fourteen whom Lwanga had baptized only days earlier. The last of the Catholic group, Jean-Marie Muzeeyi, was beheaded on 27 January 1887. The remaining Catholic martyrs included Luke Banabakintu, James Buuzabalyawo, Gyavira Musuke, Ambrose Kibuuka, Anatole Kiriggwajjo, Achilles Kiwanuka, Mbaga Tuzinde, Mugagga Lubowa, Mukasa Kiriwawanvu, Adolphus Ludigo-Mukasa, and Bruno Sserunkuuma. Their composure under torture and the publicity of the executions deeply affected Buganda; far from destroying the Church, the deaths were followed by a rapid increase in conversions.

The twenty-two Catholic martyrs were beatified by Pope Benedict XV on 6 June 1920 and canonized by Pope Paul VI on 18 October 1964, during the Second Vatican Council. Paul VI visited Uganda in 1969—the first reigning pope to travel to sub-Saharan Africa—and prayed at Namugongo. The Catholic Church keeps their feast on 3 June. The Anglican Communion likewise commemorates the martyrs of Uganda. Namugongo is today the site of the Basilica of the Uganda Martyrs and of a major Anglican shrine; the annual 3 June pilgrimage is one of the largest in Africa. The martyrs are venerated as patrons of Uganda and as models of lay fidelity. Their story is among the best-documented episodes of nineteenth-century African Christianity, attested in missionary correspondence, Ganda court tradition, and the testimony of survivors.