Uganda Martyrs Basilica, Munyonyo

Why Go

Where the road begins

Come here because this is where the final testing began: judgment, baptism, fidelity, and the road toward Namugongo. Francis stood on this ground on November 27 2015 and named it the place where King Mwanga determined to wipe out the followers of Christ. St. Andrew Kaggwa was killed here. St. Denis Ssebuggwawo was killed here. Charles Lwanga baptized catechumens here as death approached. Come to pray at the beginning of a martyr journey whose end is eleven kilometers northeast, at Namugongo.

The court, the baptisms, the road

In May 1886 Kabaka Mwanga II's court was at Munyonyo. The Christian pages' fidelity to Christ had placed them in conflict with demands of the royal court they believed a Christian could not obey. Paul VI's 1964 letter is the Church's own account of that conflict, including the pages' resistance to sexual coercion, amid court politics, missionary presence, and anxiety about royal authority.

The condemned were separated here. Charles Lwanga, as the 1964 letter states, baptized four catechumens as death became imminent. The letter names St. Kizito, St. Mbaga Tuzinde, and St. Mugagga among those he baptized. From this geography the group began its movement toward Namugongo. They did not all arrive. St. Pontian Ngondwe was killed on the road, at Ttakajjunge. St. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, the first of the twenty-two, had already been killed in November 1885. He does not belong in this procession.

St. Andrew Kaggwa, the kabaka's chief drummer and a catechist, was killed at Munyonyo on May 26 1886. St. Denis Ssebuggwawo was struck by the kabaka and killed here. The shrine keeps Andrew's tomb and a relics chapel on that ground. The present church is new: the parish was created in 2016 after Francis's visit; Cardinal Fernando Filoni dedicated the church on October 28 2017; Pope Francis granted it the title of minor basilica, publicly marked by Cardinal Robert Sarah in July 2019. Conventual Franciscan friars have had pastoral care since October 2013.

The present basilica is a modern shrine church with a broad conical roof and a high cross, built on the martyrdom ground rather than as a reconstruction of the 1886 court. A bronze of St. Andrew Kaggwa stands on the forecourt. Inside, a timber geometric ceiling gathers the nave toward the altar. The shrine also keeps the tomb chapel of St. Andrew Kaggwa, a Relics Chapel for smaller groups, a Divine Mercy chapel of perpetual adoration, and a marked martyrdom place of St. Denis Ssebuggwawo. Distinguish tomb, relic, chapel, and historical marker. Not every feature is a relic.