06/03/2026
St Charles Lwanga and his companions, martyrs in Uganda, chose death rather give in to the King’s advances. May their witness inspire Christians today to stand firm amid persecution.
By Sam Linley, June 2, 2026 – EWTN Great Britain News
Today the Church keeps the memory of St Charles Lwanga and his Companions, a group of twenty-two Catholic men and boys put to death in the kingdom of Buganda, in what is now Uganda, between 1885 and 1887. A wider company of around forty-five Christians was also killed in the same persecution, and roughly half of them were Anglicans, young men of the rival mission who also refused to renounce their faith. Their shared witness is honoured by both Churches, and the Anglican Communion keeps its own commemoration of the Martyrs of Uganda. They were among the first Africans of the modern missionary era to be raised to the altars, and the twenty-two Catholic martyrs were canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1964.
The martyrdoms took place during the reign of Kabaka Mwanga II, who had grown hostile to the Christian presence at his court. The faith had taken root quickly among his pages, and many of them refused the king’s demands, abandoning their old loyalties for Christ. St Charles Lwanga, a convert himself, was the master of the pages, and he took responsibility for the younger boys in his charge, instructing them in the faith.
On 3 June 1886, the principal group was marched to Namugongo and burned alive. St Charles Lwanga himself was set apart and killed separately, bound to a pyre and given to the flames. The youngest of the martyrs, Kizito, was barely fourteen. Witnesses recorded that the men went to their deaths praying and without resistance. Their courage did not extinguish the faith in Buganda but spread it; the place of their ex*****on is now a great shrine, and Uganda counts among the most Catholic nations in Africa.
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” (Tertullian, 3rd C.)
But such persecution is not just a thing of the past. The most recent World Watch List, published in January by the charity Open Doors, found that around 388 million Christians worldwide face high levels of persecution and discrimination – more than one in seven believers, and an increase of some eight million on the previous year. During the reporting period, the organisation counted 4,849 deaths linked to the Christian faith.
Of those recorded killings, around 93 per cent took place in sub-Saharan Africa, with Nigeria alone accounting for the greater part. The centre of gravity of the worldwide Church has moved towards the continent on which St Charles Lwanga and his companions died, and it is there that the Church is now most violently opposed. Fragile governments, insurgencies and extremist movements leave Christians exposed, whether directly targeted or caught in wider conflict.
The faith and courage of the Ugandan martyrs can feel remote to us in the West, but it is played out again and again in our modern world. Their witness should inspire us, wherever we live and whether we face open persecution or more subtle pressures, to stand firm in our faith and trust that the same grace that carried them is offered to us.
St Charles Lwanga and his Companions kept faith to the end, trusting that what they surrendered would be returned to them a hundredfold. May their example strengthen all who suffer for the name of Christ today, and may their prayers sustain the persecuted Church across Africa and the world. St Charles Lwanga and Companions, pray for us.
