CW: Violence, Sexual abuse (I'm not kidding, this one is a little rough)

I admittedly have a really hard time with the way a lot of American Catholics deal with martyrs from foreign locales, particularly in East Asia and in Africa. One of my biggest pet peeves involves a saint I have a pretty strong devotion to. Blessed Isidore Bakanja was a Congolese catechist, celebrated as a martyr by the Carmelites because of his profound devotion to the rosary and the scapular. However, popular recollections of his faith and his death tend to leave out the context of his death: the abject brutality of the Belgian colonial regime against the Congolese natives. Bakanja lived in a condition of virtual slavery on a rubber plantation, and was violently beaten to death by a plantation manager for refusing directions not to proselytize to other workers. Emphasis is placed on the agent's displays of violent hatred against the symbols of Bakanja's faith -- tearing his scapular and throwing away his rosary -- without explaining why. Plantation agents hated the Christian missionaries for preaching against the plantation system; the same Trappist monks who baptized Bakanja were engaged in public advocacy for the rights of the natives. Notably, Bakanja's biography in Butler's Lives of the Saints doesn't even mention the colonial context, barely alluding to it by mentioning the fears of "Catholicism as destroying European authority over the natives". The erasure of this context virtually destroys the significance of a native African being murdered by a European colonist and declared a martyr, a pattern that repeats itself frequently in the treatment of martyrs of this nature. They are often not treated as siblings in faith or even really as people, merely pieces of a geopolitical narrative. The pattern is so common that I've been left with virtually no confidence in adequate treatment of such saints.

That being the case, I almost reflexively rolled my eyes when I saw the Ugandan Martyrs in the table of contents of Fr. Martin's book. Fr. Martin is a great spiritual writer, but he is still a white guy who grew up in Middle America in the Cold War era. The Ugandan Martyrs already have a pretty nasty association with promoting English colonialism, so their inclusion struck me as a bit distasteful. As I got through the book, I began to have a greater appreciation for Fr. Martin's experience as a priest, his formation as a Jesuit having done quite a bit to disabuse him of the reflexive thinking of his era. Sure enough, his chapter on the Ugandan Martyrs opens with him discussing his work with the Jesuit Refugee Service in East Africa. He was there for two years, working with African refugees in Kenya. Nairobi is a large, cosmopolitan city, one of the biggest on the continent, and is home to immigrants from all over. His work involved assisting in economic development for the refugees here, many of whom were from places like Rwanda and Uganda who had been forcibly displaced due to dangerous political developments back home. Fr. Martin's business background was helpful here, as was his background in French, as many of the nations where refugees came from were Francophone. It's was an astonishingly good fit. Indeed, the program grew significantly during Fr. Martin's tenure. Tailoring cooperatives run by refugee women were among the most common projects. These enterprises were so successful that Fr. Martin developed a sort of market to sell refugee-made goods, catering to tourists and wealthy visitors. This too was wildly successful, the proceeds for which funded new enterprises for the refugees. Fr. Martin, drawing on his marketing background, decided the time had come to name the store. After much discussion, the refugees proposed that they use the name of an African saint. Fr. Martin suggested Kizito, the youngest of the Ugandan Martyrs. The Ugandans liked this. A Sudanese woman suggested Bakhita, after Josephine Bakhita, which drew the ire of her Ugandan companions. Fr. Martin realized that a saint name would be perceived as honoring that saint's country of origin over the others, so disposed of the idea. They ultimately settled on The Mikono Center, Mikono being the Swahili word for "hands". Swahili is a lingua franca in that part of Africa, so there was no danger of divisiveness. The Ugandans were still a bit sore about the loss of the Ugandan Martyrs as a namesake, feeling that they had lost out on the intercession of the saints. This was Fr. Martin's first encounter with the importance of the martyrs in the faith life of the Christians of the region.

"Ugandan Martyrs" is a collective name for a group of 45 African Christians executed between 1885 and 1887 in the Kingdom of Bugunda in modern-day Uganda. Bugunda was one of the most powerful and well-developed polities in the region, drawing particular interest from the Christian missionaries that started working there in the late 1800s. During the time, Bugunda was being ruled by a fairly tyrannical dynasty, and thus developed a reputation for brutality among their neighbors. This initially didn't bother the missionaries so much, since the ruler at the time was Muteesa I, who pursued a policy of religious toleration. While still adhering to the traditional local religion, he permitted his subjects to convert to Christianity or Islam if they liked. This changed when Muteesa died and he was succeeded by his son, Mwanga II. Mwanga began to resent the deference given to the missionaries by his Christian subjects, feeling that it undermined his authority. Muteesa also had his suspicions of the Christian and Muslim missionaries, but his approach was to simply allow the missionaries to balance power by competing amongst each other. Mwanga decided to take a more aggressive approach by eliminating Christianity from the region. The first of the Ugandan martyrs came from Mwanga's own court, as several senior advisors and important courtiers had converted to Catholicism and refused to renounce their faith when prompted. In total, 22 Catholics and 23 Anglicans were purged on Mwanga's orders, with the consent of his chieftains.

Despite its seeming simplicity, this is an extremely fraught history. As previously stated, the Anglican Church did not hesitate to promote the martyrs to justify English annexation of Uganda into the British Empire. This was a prelude to the Ugandan Protectorate, a brutal and corrupt regime rife with ethnic and religious tension. The struggle for independence exacerbated this problem, and today's Uganda still bears the scars of nearly a century of plunder and misrule. Mwanga II is sometimes adopted as a anti-colonial icon for this reason, but he's not really fit for that purpose. For one thing, he was very much an oppressor of his own people first and foremost. In addition to his unofficial policy of Bugandan supremacy, he was antagonized by Christianity in part because it represented the emergence of a literate class independent from the chieftain structure. There was also the fact that he was a notorious sexual predator who regularly abused his royal prerogative for this purpose. Several of the younger martyrs were killed due to Mwanga's belief that their adherence to Christianity prevented his sexual access to them. Many were sexually mutilated before their deaths. For another, he had no problem whatsoever collaborating with the English imperialists when it benefited him, only really becoming a staunch anti-colonialist when he was directly antagonized by the British. Mwanga's conduct provoked rebellion that the English capitalized on to dominate the region, forcing Mwanga into a position of subordination that ultimately his people suffered for. But it's far too common to over-emphasize Mwanga's conduct in contextualizing the death of the martyrs, leaving the colonial element of this history out entirely. Fr. Martin himself makes this mistake, which is not surprising given that he had not heard of the martyrs prior to reading about them in Catholic publications produced in the States.  But over-emphasizing the colonial context leads to the mistake of regarding Mwanga as a heroic or liberatory figure, with the Martyrs merely the unwitting dupes of the future colonial overlords of the region, which is also incorrect. It's no corrective to colonial narratives to act as though Mwanga's butchery of innocents, some of whom were children who rejected his advances, can be called a fight against imperialism. Both are a form of dehumanization, just with differing ideological justifications.  This tension helps to explain the interesting and often complicated relationship Uganda has with these historical figures. For example: modern Uganda is a hotbed for vicious homophobia that is often driven and led by Christian ministers. This has led some LGBT activists in the country to adopt Mwanga II as a sort of patron, both as an anti-Christian symbol, and as a indigenous bisexual serving as a counter-example to the notion that same-sex attraction is a Western innovation. The fact that Mwanga, a serial rapist and pedophile, is deeply problematic to use in this way was immediately seized upon by figures like Martin Ssempa, who use this as an illustration of their belief that men who love men are inherently predatory. Phenomena like this is a profound illustration of the uses and abuses of history, as well as the power of Christianity to both help and harm in different contexts. Tragically, a generation of young Ugandans are likely going to have their views on what Christianity is shaped by someone like Martin Ssempa, whose anti-LGBT campaigns have had a noxious effect on Ugandan culture and have even made him a minor internet celebrity.  This is particularly tragic given the massive disconnect between this twisted caricature of Christianity and what was being taught to the Martyrs who became so devoted that they were willing to suffer great torments and humiliations.

The Ugandan Martyrs embraced, and ultimately died for, a vision of Christianity that was liberatory, both in the worldly and supernatural senses of the word. This, along with the horrific violence of their deaths, helps to explain why they inspire such strong devotion among Christians in Uganda. These were innocent victims, whose only real crime was saying "no" to a man who believed he deserved to have absolute power over their lives. That's the real tragedy of colonialism: the people who get caught in the crossfire. This is where I think Fr. Martin's work with the JRS makes the most difference in his framing of the story. He's someone who is always required to be mindful of the little people, people in their everyday lives who have to live with the results of bigger political struggles. It's a delicate balance to be mindful of the social context of a group of saints while not letting that erase their lives and personality. If I had to grade Fr. Martin on how effectively he does this, I'd give him a B minus. If I were grading on a curve, compared to every other mainstream account of the Ugandan Martyrs in the English language, it's an easy A+.  At the very least, he can be credited with seeing the Africans of the region as actual people rather than props for a particular historical narrative, and that's most of the grade anyway. 

My Life With the Saints Day 13 - The Ugandan Martyrs