Vigils Reading – St Charles Lwanga & Companions
June 3
THE MARTYRS OF UGANDA
From a homily by Pope St Paul VI
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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.