Namugongo
Place in the kingdom of Buganda, north-east of present Kampala, where Christian converts were burned in June 1886. A Catholic shrine of the martyrs of Uganda stands there.
The Catholic bishops of Uganda record that Charles Lwanga was burned at Namugongo on 3 June 1886, at the spot where the altar of the Catholic basilica now stands (Uganda Episcopal Conference, The Uganda Martyrs St Charles Lwanga). John Paul II, preaching at the shrine in 1993, called Namugongo the place of the great fire that consumed Lwanga and his companions, and spoke of the crowds that come there on pilgrimage year after year (John Paul II, Homily at Namugongo 2). The Anglican missionary Robert Ashe, who was in Buganda at the time, tells of a great pyre on which the blacksmith Walukaga and some thirty other Christians were burned together; he does not name the place (Ashe, Two Kings of Uganda p. 225). Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the Catholic shrine in 2015 and remembered there the Anglican martyrs as well (Francis, Homily at Namugongo heading and par. 2). See the Martyrs of Uganda.
What happened here
- 1885 to 1886, firm dateThe Martyrs of Uganda
In 1885 and 1886 King Mwanga of Buganda has Christian converts killed, Anglicans and Catholics alike, many of them burned together in 1886, and an Anglican bishop put to death. Both churches honour them as martyrs.