Vigils Reading – St Charles Lwanga & Companions

THE MARTYRS OF UGANDA

From a homily by St Pope Paul VI2

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The African martyrs add another page to the martyrology – the Church’s

roll of honor – an occasion both of mourning and of joy. This is a page worthy

in every way of being added to the annals of that Africa of earlier times, which

we, living in this era and being people of little faith, never expected to be

repeated.

In earlier times there occurred those famous deeds, so moving to the

spirit, of the martyrs of Scilli, of Carthage, and of that “white robed army” of

Utica commemorated by Saint Augustine and Prudentius; of the martyrs of

Egypt so highly praised by Saint John Chrysostom, and of the martyrs of the

Vandal persecution. Who would have thought that in our days we should have

witnessed events as heroic and glorious?

Who would have predicted to the famous African confessors and martyrs

such as Cyprian, Felicity, Perpetua and – the greatest of all – Augustine, that

we would one day add names so dear to us as Charles Lwanga and Matthias

Mulumba Kalemba and their twenty companions? Nor must we forget those

members of the Anglican Church who also died in the name of Christ.

These African martyrs herald the dawn of a new age. If only the human

mind might be directed not toward persecutions and religious conflicts but

toward a rebirth of Christianity and civilization! Africa has been washed by the

blood of these latest martyrs, the first of this new age (and God willing, let them

be the last, although such a holocaust is precious indeed). Africa is reborn free

and independent.

2 The Liturgy of the Hours – vol II – Catholic Book Publishing Co. – New York – 1976 – p 1860.5