Carl Lwanga

Carl Lwanga (also known as Charles Lwanga or Karoli Lwanga) (1860Charles Lwanga's profile from UgandaMartyrsShrine.org Retrieved on 2008-08-17.Charles Lwanga's profile from Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Retrieved on 2008-08-29. or 1865–June 3, 1886) was a Ugandan Catholic catechist martyred for his faith and revered as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in the kingdom of Buganda in the southern part of modern Uganda, and served as a page in the court of King Mwanga II.
King Mwanga began to insist Christian converts abandon their new faith, and executed many Anglicans and Roman Catholics between 1885 and 1887; many of them were officials in the court of the king or otherwise very close to him, including Lwanga. After a massacre of Anglicans in 1885 the court's resident Catholic priest, Joseph Mukasa, reproached the king for the deed. Mwanga had Mukasa beheaded and arrested all of his followers. Lwanga took up Mukasa's duties, and secretly baptized those of his pupils who had only been catechumens on May 26, 1886. Carl Lwanga and 11 other Catholics were burnt alive on June 3 (another Catholic, Mbaga Tuzinde, was clubbed to death for refusing to renounce Christianity, and his body was thrown into the furnace to be burned along with Lwanga and 11 othersMbaga Tuzinde's profile from UgandaMartyrsShrine.org Retrieved on 2008-08-17.). One of the reported reasons the ire of the king was particularly inflamed against the Christians was because they refused to accede to demands to participate in homosexual acts with him.Breviarium Romanum, Office of Ss. Matthias Murumba, Charles Lwanga and Companions, Lesson v. Carl Lwanga, in particular, protected the pages from King Mwanga's sexual advances.Dictionary of African Christian Biography: Charles Lwanga
Carl Lwanga and his companions in death were canonized in 1964 by Pope Paul VI. Although the Anglicans were not canonized, they were called "worthy of mention" for enduring "death for the name of Christ"Vatican Archive.
==References==
==External links==
* Charles Lwanga and Companions
*The Uganda Martyrs from the August 2008 issue of The Word Among Us magazine
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Category:1860s births
Category:1886 deaths
Category:19th-century Christian saints
Category:19th-century executions
Category:19th-century Roman Catholic martyrs
Category:Converts to Catholicism from Pagan religions
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism
Category:Executed Ugandan people
Category:People executed by Buganda
Category:People executed by burning
Category:Ugandan clergy
Category:Ugandan Roman Catholic saints
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