Saint Charles Lwanga and his companions


Many Christians, Catholic and Protestant, were killed by the Ugandan king Mwanga. Some of them were servants in the king’s palace or even his personal attendants. Charles Lwanga and his twenty-one companions (the youngest, Kitizo, was only 13) were executed for being Christians, for rebuking the king for his debauchery and for murdering an Anglican missionary, for “praying from a book”, and for refusing to allow themselves to be ritually sodomised by the king. They died between 1885 and 1887. Most of them were burned alive in a group after being tortured.Within a year of their deaths, the number of catechumens in the country quadrupled.

St Charles Lwanga is the patron of African Catholic Youth Action, Catholic youth, converts, and torture victims.
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