Tensions between the Catholic Church and State Grow Steadily Worse in Uganda

Fuente: FSSPX News

Outside the cathedral of St Mary's, Kampala. Photo: Daily Monitor

The already tense relations between the Church and the Ugandan Head of State have worsened since Easter, when the archbishop of Kampala, the country’s capital, revealed the existence of an organized conspiracy against him at the very highest level of the government.

It all began on March 30, 2018, Good Friday, when Archbishop Cyprien Kizito Lwanga of Kampala declared while visiting a school that he was being “spied on to by Church personnel recruited by the government.”

The prelate reiterated his declarations in his sermon on Easter Sunday in the capital’s Sainte-Marie cathedral, revealing that an anonymous source had informed him of a government conspiracy to get him to leave his charge in Kampala.

The prelate’s informant supposedly warned him to be careful not to become the next Janani Jakaliya Luwum, an Anglican archbishop who was accused in the late 70’s of being an agent of former president Apollo Milton Obote. He was arrested and convicted of treason. The archbishop was later assassinated on February 17, 1977.

“If God allows me to die in this way, so be it, but it is criminal to make someone die for false accusations,” declared Archbishop Lwanga at the end of his sermon, explaining that “they are doing everything to intimidate him” because he speaks of the “problems of the people in this country,” but that as a Churchman, he cannot “remain silent”.

The State's Response

President Yoweri Museveni responded to the archbishop of Kampala’s statements on Monday, April 2, accusing him of turning to the media in the hopes of finding an echo to his personal grievances.

Over the years, the relations between the Ugandan president and Archbishop Lwanga have deteriorated, the prelate accusing the president of violating human rights, being incapable of ensuring the security of the Ugandan people and allowing certain members of the armed forces to behave like outlaws in all impunity.

In 2016, the archbishop of Kampala spoke out against the amendment to the Constitution that abolished the age limit for being elected president, allowing Museveni to run for another term.

Head of State since 1986, the Evangelical Ugandan president declared at the time with a certain amount of acrimony:

Some of our religious are so full of arrogance. They speak with authority on anything and everything, even when they have not bothered to discover the truth. There is no truth in them.

According to a 2014 census, 84.5% of the 41.5 million people in Uganda are Christian. Catholicism is the majority religion and represents 39% of the country’s total population. The country was first evangelized in 1879 by French missionaries from the congregation of the White Fathers.