Thousands of pilgrims yesterday flocked to both the Catholic and Anglican shrines at Namugongo, near Kampala, to mark the Martyrs day.
Every June 3, Christians of the two denominations in the region and the rest of Africa pay homage to the 45 Martyrs, who were killed by Buganda King Muwanga II in 1884, for converting to Christianity.
The report is inaccurate in one respect. The young men were not killed for conversion but because the refused the sexual advances of the king.
http://www.buganda.com/martyrs.htm
I thought I would try to find the facts as above-mentioned, before posting. The Wikipedia article doesn’t seem to mention it, hmmm. In the 4th or so paragraph of this linked article, this fact finally gets mentioned. It could be the king’s advances were a feature in a larger framework of anti-Christian hostility and thus don’t always get mentioned. But it seems to me the homosexual advances should always be included in the story since they illustrate one way that Islam differs from Christianity, that was critical to this persecution.
I remember an exiled Ugandan bishop coming to Asheboro, NC, where I was serving in the late 1970’s. He said that the young men were sons of local chiefs sent to the royal court as hostages for the good behavior of their fathers and that the king’s sexual abuse was a sign of his power over them. Their rejection of the king’s abuse was seen as rebellion. But it also helped me understand the Ugandan rejection of the American church’s support of homosexuality.
That wouldn’t have been Bp. Festo Kivengere, would it?
I think his name was Okoth. He and his family escaped by floating across a river to Kenya though none of them could swim. He learned to swim in Alexandria, VA.