Visit to the National Shrine of the Ugandan Martyrs

Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He spent the months of July, August and the first two weeks in September in France. He arrived in Uganda on September 15. From Uganda he traveled by car to Rwanda on September 28. Asher grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. He is also discerning a vocation to the priesthood and has applied to the seminary through the Archdiocese of Hartford. Please keep both his trip and his vocation in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip.  

"On Monday, October 6, was our last day in Mutukula. We spent most of the day visiting churches and schools in a neighboring parish to that of Fr. Alex Musoke. Our first stop was St. James School in Manyama. There was a small group of children waiting for us when we arrived, and we spoke to them and prayed in the chapel. Often we do not get a chance to pray an entire rosary with the children we visit because of time constraints though we would greatly like to do so. However, this group practically insisted we at least pray a decade with them which I was glad for.

We then visited St. Francis School in Kamaggwa (shown below) and St. Mary’s School in Kisunku(shown above). In both places, we were greeted by the head teacher who directed us to address the students gathered in a large hall. I am always appreciative of when a teacher is willing to interrupt school programming in order to accommodate our visits.

After this, we stopped by to visit a friend of Fr. Alex’s, Fr. Steven Lutwama. This was another priest of the diocese who was interested in the Children’s Rosary, and I was glad we had the opportunity to meet him.

That evening, we said goodbye to Fr. Alex Musoke, who had accompanied us all the way through Rwanda. We were and are very grateful that he took the time off from his parish duties to be with us, and his presence certainly made a difference, whether in meetings with diocesan officials and bishops or simply relaxing in the car on our multi-hour drives each day.

We then visited one last school, Kapere Parents Primary School, which we had stopped by twice before but never had a change to really address the students. We felt bad having had to bag out twice due to being short on time, so this time we were able to address the students before driving back to Kampala. On our way to the city, we stopped at the equator, and Henry took my picture there. It is one of those rather calm tourist destinations with no crowds or anything but nonetheless rather nifty.

The next day, Tuesday, October 7, the Feast of the Holy Rosary, was our only whole day in Kampala for the rest of the trip. I started out by going to Mass at 6:30 am, thanks to Henry’s uncle, Felix, who drove me there.  

Subsequent to the Mass, Henry and I set off for a meeting with the pastor of the local church where the liturgy was celebrated. This was a very nice man named Fr. Paul Ssemboga. He was interested in the Children’s Rosary, and gave the necessary contact for us to collaborate moving forward.

Our next stop was to one of our oldest groups in Uganda, at St. Johnson’s school.

 We had visited this school in 2019, and it was good to see them again. The children, despite having exams later that day, gathered in an auditorium and had entertainment and remarks prepared. It was a very warm welcome. I remember saying to the children in my short speech that often we are visiting schools where the Children’s Rosary has yet to be implemented and I am in the position of trying to explain why they should move ahead with it. It would be wonderful, I said, if I could just bring them here and show them this group that they might see how well it is run and the positive impacts it has had.

After St. Johnson’s school, we went to the National Shrine of the Ugandan Martyrs (shown directly above). 

Most of you are probably familiar with the story of the Ugandan Martyrs, but I will go into it a bit again since it is so important to the history of the Church in this region.

Beginning in the 1870s, there began what is sometimes termed as the “scramble for Africa.” This refers to an effort by European powers to acquire as much territory on the African continent as quickly as they could. It is rather remarkable when one considers it how brief the period of colonization of Africa really was. From 1870 to 1914, nearly the whole continent was enveloped in the control of various different European countries, among them Germany, Portugal, France, and Great Britain.

This colonization offered a chance for Britain to try to improve its trade deficit, grown painfully obvious in the “Long Depression” of 1873-1896, and for the other countries, it was a chance to restore the balance of power and try to take some of the trade for themselves.

With this influx of European control came the influx of Christian missionaries as had happened in other colonies before, such as in the Americas or China. In addition to traditional African religions, Islam had also established itself particularly near coastal areas, such as on the coast of modern day Zanzibar in Tanzania. This is because the Arab traders who frequented the coasts were Muslim. To this day, Tanzania has one of the largest Muslim minorities in East Africa, and that population is most populous next to the coast.

Beginning in the 1870s, British missionaries began arriving in Uganda at the invitation of the local King Muteesa. They were mostly Anglican, and they managed to win some notable converts, particularly among the nobles. Concurrently to them, some of the White Fathers, a French congregation founded in Rome in 1868 and tasked with serving as Missionaries to Africa, arrived in Uganda as well. These, of course, were Catholic and also had notable converts among the nobles.  

All was well until King Muteesa died and his son, King Mukasa, came to the throne. Feeling a bit threatened by these new converts cropping up, King Mukasa decided to send a message to the British by killing the newly appointed Anglican bishop of the region who had just arrived in Uganda, Bishop Hannington. In response, the leader of the Catholics in the king’s court and a longtime friend of the king, Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, confronted the monarch over this assassination. Balikuddembe, notwithstanding his friendship with the king, was sentenced to death and had his head cut off and burned. He said to his executioners before dying that, “A Christian that has surrendered his life to God is not afraid to die.” That was in 1885.

Six months later, in 1886, a young man named Charles Lwanga(shown above baptizing St Kizito before their martyrdom) had become the leader of the remaining Christians in the king’s court. In one way or another, the king found out that a significant number of his pages were Christians; in punishment he sent them on a long walk to Namugongo where they were martyred for their faith. The youngest of them was fourteen years old, a saint named Kizito. The execution Charles Lwanga was particularly brutal; he was slowly burned at the stake in a process that took several hours and gradually moved up his body.

In all, there is a record of 22 Catholics and 23 Anglicans being executed by King Mukasa, and it is certain that many others who were not of the royal court were killed in the persecutions that followed, but no record exists of those.

The martyrs were canonized in 1964 by Pope Saint Paul VI. The Basilica of the Ugandan Martyrs was built shortly thereafter in Namugongo, where they were executed.

We visited the grounds, prayed at the grotto, and then stopped by to visit a friend of Henry’s at Ugandan Martyrs University next door, one of the most prestigious universities in Uganda.

That evening, we stopped by the parish of Fr. Emmanuel (shown above) in the Lugazi diocese, Bukelere parish. He is another friend of Br. Henry’s who was only recently ordained and even more recently assigned to the parish. He is in charge of schools, and we will be working with him further to roll out the Children’s Rosary there. They were doing significant work to expand the church and prayer space, so we hope for only the best with that important work.

That evening, we returned to Br. Henry’s home before the next day’s trip to Gulu in the north of Uganda."

To see all of Asher's dispatches from his journey click HERE