Homily at the Canonization of the Martyrs of Uganda
The homily Paul VI preached in St Peter’s when he canonized Charles Lwanga, Matthias Mulumba Kalemba and twenty companions. He says that Anglicans also died for the name of Christ in the same persecution.
Read the text at vatican.va ↗Spanish translation (Vatican) ↗
The homily was given during the Second Vatican Council. Paul VI recalls that Benedict XV had beatified the twenty-two on 6 June 1920, says that Anglican missionaries reached Buganda first and the White Fathers two years after them, and sets the new saints beside the martyrs of ancient Africa. In two places he speaks of the Anglicans who were killed: they too, he says, deserve mention as having met death for the name of Christ, and a long list could be drawn up of them.
It is the Catholic Church’s act of canonization, eighty years after the events, and it is cited for the canonization and for what the pope said of the Anglican dead.
Cited in
- 1885 to 1886, firm date