Sts. Charles Lwanga and Companions

Sts. Charles Lwanga and his Companions, the Martyrs of Uganda, were a band of young men and boys of the royal court of Buganda who were put to death for their faith between 1885 and 1887, during a savage persecution unleashed by King Mwanga against the newly planted Christian community. Both Catholics and Anglicans among the king's pages died together, and their common witness became the seed of an extraordinary flowering of the faith in Africa.

Charles Lwanga, the master of the royal pages, protected the boys in his charge from the king's corruption and, when the storm broke, encouraged them to remain faithful even to death; on 3 June 1886 he and many of his companions were burned alive at Namugongo, praying and professing Christ to the last, some of them mere youths who went to their deaths with astonishing joy and courage. The first martyrs of sub-Saharan Africa to be raised to the altars, they were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1964, and their memory is kept on 3 June.