Kampala, Uganda: St. Matthias Mulumba Parish

The entrance to St. Matthias Mulumba Parish.

While doing evangelization outreach in Kampala, I was blessed to stay at St. Matthias Mulumba Parish in Old Kampala, just below the large mosque donated by Moammar Gadhafi. The church is built on a hillside with the entrance to the compound on the upper side, and the actual church located in the lower part of the structure shown below.

Above: the sloping church structure (hall on top, church proper underneath);
Below: grotto and statue of St. Matthias Mulumba.

 

The church is built on the actual site of the martydom of St. Matthias Mulumba, the oldest of the Uganda Martyrs. He was about 50 years of age at the time of his martyrdom and served in an official government position at the time of his arrest. He was still a relatively newly baptized Catholic at the time he was asked to bear supreme witness to Christ. In order to be baptized he had to separate from most of his multiple wives (whom he continued to support materially), choosing only one to be his Christian wife, and so is also a great witness to the sanctity of Christian marriage. He was killed ahead of and in a different place than the other Ugandan martyrs, being hacked by machetes and left for dead, enduring an agony that lasted for several days. I had visited the church as a pilgrim a few times before, and had the blessing of celebrating the wedding of lay missionary Dennis Kiyimba there in December 2010.

Church sanctuary (above) with closeup of the baptism and death of some of the other martyrs (below).

 For more information about St. Matthias Mulumba visit the Dictionary of African Christian Biography site or ugandamartyrs.com.

Painting of the martyrdom of St. Matthias Mulumba in the church rectory (above);
stained glass window of the saint in the church sanctuary (below).