The life and times of the Uganda Martyrs: the pioneer African Martyrs from South of the Sahara

Abstract

The Catholic Faith was brought to Buganda when the people in the region were still glued on tribal beliefs and any shift from the traditional worship was an abomination, the king (Kabaka) was an absolute ruler and a law unto himself and all his subjects had to give unquestionable royalty irrespective of what would be his demand. When the Catholic missionaries arrived, they found the Moslems and Anglicans already in the field and the local community had already been introduced to the worship of a Christian God and at this point several of the king's servants had been enrolled in all the two faiths, one after another. Those who had enrolled in Islam, which came first with the Arabs merchants, considered it superior to their ancestral pagan beliefs. When the Anglican missionaries arrived, they quickly embraced their teaching given the fact that the Arabs had soiled their mission with trading the locals as slaves. Pere Lourdel quoted Paul Nalubandwa, the first Catholic to be baptized in 1880, as having told him that in the Islamic faith they had taught them that when you sin you wash and get clean, and later the Anglicans taught them that Jesus died for our sins, our task is to believe in him as our saviour and we are saved. Pere Lourdel later collaborated this narrative with that of Mathias Mulumba ...