On the miracle trail of Uganda Martyrs

The Uganda Martyrs’ Shrine in Namugongo carries a haunting aura about it.
It is not so much its historical significance as the point where 12 of the 22 Catholics that gave their lives for their beliefs that captures one’s fascination.
Or even that they were sainted thereafter and the place designated as a holy site, it is rather the people that flock the place that bring alive the atrocities that happened there and the significance those events have more than a century later.
You will find them, persons from all walks of life, a mother, a father, a son, daughter and grandparent, the rich and the poor cooped up anywhere on the shrines expansive acreage, silent in prayer.
Prayers that carry hope, dreams, seek miracles and implore for past transgressions to be forgiven.
Thousands travel and sometimes millions travel from all over the country and world over to Namugongo each year to honour the martyrs. Some even trek hundreds of kilometres from neighbouring countries in an astounding show of faith.
And they engage in prayer for hours, weeks and some even months with a hope that their spiritual lives will be enriched. It is that unflinching faith, and undying devotion that calls one to retrospect when standing on those holy grounds.

Mystery lake
Many prefer praying at the man-made shrine lake which was dug out to commemorate Charles Lwanga, one of the martyrs credited for excavating the Kabaka’s lake in Mengo.
At the centre of it is a large conical grass-thatched hut whose roof is hoisted on poles and has no walls. In it is a tombstone-like structure with inscriptions – a memoriam.
Some pilgrims dip their feet in the green-shaded water and mutter their supplications, while others take scoops from it to carry home or even sprinkle on their bodies. They hold the belief that the lake’s waters are holy and carry healing abilities and miraculous qualities. Remarkably, these notions are not without foundation.
By definition, a miracle is a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency. However, people define them at a personal level.
Some consider better health, long life and others success in personal ventures. The list is endless. There are several listed and unlisted martyrs’ miracles.
Boniface Mubiru, 32, who is already camping at Namugongo for this year’s Martyrs Day celebrations says ever since he was a child he has never doubted the power of the martyrs.
“I used to listen to Radio Maria and prayed along. One day, I made the pilgrimage and prayed for a very sick relative and found they had recovered soon after a fortnight,” explains the laboratory technician who hails from Busunju on Hoima road.
“Since then I have never missed coming here and this time I brought along my family to pray for good fortune. I hope to build my house next year and right now the resources are limited and to make it worse, we are renting, ” says Mubiru who is in company of his wife and two-year-old son.
Gloria Namulanda, a 45-year- old widow and mother of five, says her martyrs’ miracle has been her endurance after her husband’s passing on and ability to raise her children single-handedly without support.
“I never thought I would make it when my husband and father of my children died. I was farming then and did not have much income to raise and educate them. I kept on praying and made several pilgrimages each year,” she recounts.
“Slowly God multiplied my productivity and my income increased and also some of my friends and relatives came in to support us. I am really grateful. That is my martyrs’ miracle.”
There are countless testimonies of such a kind over the years, however there were two miracles pertaining to the Uganda Martyrs that caught the attention of the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican.

Two miracles that changed history
The story of martyrs and miracles would not be complete without mention of the two miracles out of the many that not only prompted but also hastened their canonisation.
During World War II, there was an acute shortage of drugs and equipment and it was during this time that there was an outbreak of the pneumonic plague.
On Rubaga hill where a dispensary had been set up for the sick, two sisters from the Missionary sisters of Our Lady, Sr Aloyse and Sr Richildis, contracted the disease as they cared for a plague- stricken Munnabikira sister.
Monsignor Edward Michaud along with other colleagues such as Pere Joseph Cabana, who was the parish priest of Rubaga, started a novena through the intercession of the Uganda Martyrs for the mortality of the ill sisters.
They prayed each day and within three days the sisters recovered and the plague disappeared. There was no explanation for their recovery as pneumonic plague is an extremely fatal disease. Rome sent specialists to analyse the diagnosis, their findings showed that there was no chance that the nuns could have recovered that fast and the medicine they had taken had no bearing on their recovery.
The other event was one that involved a lame young boy that was born in the 1950s with curved legs that rendered him lame and unable to stand up straight or even walk.
His name is Salongo Revocato Kalema from Bigada- Kyotera. Now an adult who can walk and stand up straight, Kalema prides of how his condition was cured through the martyrs’ intercession.
This occurred upon the altar at the Bwanda Convent where some of martyrs’ relics are and people prayed for his miracle through the martyrs’ intercession.
Fr. Joseph Mukasa Muwonge, a priest at Namugongo Catholic shrine, says the changes people experience as a result of the intercession and the novena are not miracles but rather favours.
That miracles are those favours that have been scrutinised and proven to have been caused by unworldly forces.
“Favours may be miracles but that’s according to human perception. The church on the other hand has to prove that they are so. So for now those are favours. The only two we recognise are those of the sisters and Kalema from the early 1900s.”
Muwonge explains that it is the relics mostly that attract the pilgrims to certain places.
“Here in Namugongo there is the back bone of Charles Lwanga a remainder from the fire a century ago buried beneath the altar. People come to pray close to it. However most of the other relics are in Rubaga.”

To be a martyr
Catholic catechism denotes that the Vatican’s detailed process for making a saint usually starts in the diocese where the candidate lived or died. A postulator — essentially the cheerleader spearheading the project — gathers testimony and documentation to build the case and presents the report to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
If the congregation’s experts agree the candidate lived a virtuous life, the case is forwarded to the pope who signs a decree attesting to the candidate’s “heroic virtues.”
Over time, the postulator may come across information that someone was miraculously healed by praying to the candidate. If, upon further investigation, the cure cannot be medically explained, the case is presented to the congregation as the possible miracle needed for beatification.
Panels of doctors, theologians, bishops and cardinals must certify that the cure was instantaneous, complete and lasting — and was due to the intercession of the sainthood candidate. If convinced, the congregation sends the case to the pope who signs a decree saying the candidate can be beatified. A second miracle is needed for canonisation.
Beatification allows for veneration of the candidate locally, say in a particular diocese or country. Canonization allows for veneration throughout the universal church.
However, martyrs do not require miracles to qualify for inclusion in the public worship of the Catholic Church. Andrew Hamilton, an Australian theologian, points out that they need only evidence that they died for their Christian faith as defined in Catholic catechism.
“But other candidates for sainthood do need miracles, as well as evidence that they have lived lives consistent with deep faith. Miracles are broadly understood as events that are associated with prayer and are not susceptible of a natural explanation,” he says.
“This intriguing difference between martyrs and other saints illuminates the place of miracles in the Catholic tradition. In it the martyr’s death is equivalent to miracles worked through the saint. Both point to a rent in a world that is declared to be self-enclosed.”
For the Uganda martyrs, it was those two events that etched their names in the history books, where they will remain for all time.