The story of missionary work in Uganda is a complex narrative interwoven with religious zeal, cultural exchange, and the sociopolitical landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This period saw the arrival of various missionary groups, each leaving an indelible mark on the country's religious and social fabric. Among the most prominent were the White Fathers and the Church Missionary Society (CMS), whose activities shaped the trajectory of Christianity in Uganda.
The Arrival of the White Fathers
The pioneer White Fathers were affiliated to the Catholic Missionary Society of White Fathers, also known as the Religious Institute of the Missionaries of Africa. They arrived in Algiers in February 1874. The Catholic missionary society of White Fathers, also known as the Religious Institute of the Missionaries of Africa, sent a group of ten missionaries to Equatorial Africa under the leadership of Léon Livinhac.
They arrived in Zanzibar on 30 May 1878. On 15 November 1878, they started their journey to the Victoria Nyanza region. The missionaries included Pere Siméon Lourdel Marpel (often misspelt as Simon Laurdel Mapeera), also known as Mapeera, Brother Delmas Amans (aka Amansi), Léone Livinhac, Ludovic Girault, and Léon Barbot.
On 20 January 1879, Fr. Mapeera and Bro. Amansi started their lake journey after buying a boat (canoe) and also hiring five guards and 8 eight Oarsmen. Fr. Charles Lavigerie wrote letters that were meant to stop Fr. Mapeera and brother Amansi from continuing to Uganda after he had gotten information about the murder of two Anglican missionaries on the Ukerewe island. But the letter reached Fr. Mapeera and brother Amansi in late September 1879 when they had already arrived in Buganda.
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On 21 February 1879, the late Amir Sekikkubo, a Ugandan Muslim, welcomed and hosted Fr. Mapeera and Brother Amansi into his home in Kitebi. On 22 February 1879, Sekikkubo took them to the palace but he was beaten by the Kabaka's guards (aka Abambowa) as they suspected that he had come to attack the Kabaka until the Katikkiro Kayiira saved him after him explaining why the visitors (Fr. Sekikkubo informed the Kabaka Muteesa I's about the visitors and the Kabaka instructed him to keep the visitors for 15 days until the Lukiiko decided their fate.
Sekikkubo constructed a hut for Fr. Mapeera and Brother Amansi until they met Kabaka Muteesa I who offered Fr. Mapeera and Brother Amansi land of about two miles in Nabulagala on which they constructed a catholic church in Kitebe Village in Rubaga Division. When Fr. Simeon Lourdel met Kabaka Muteesa I in March 1879, he was given a name "Mapeera" which means Guava after hearing the French words "Mon Pere" which means "my father". Kabaka Muteesa I also named Fr. Mapeera "Mwana w'embuga" which is translated as "Son of the palace".
Kabaka Muteesa I gave Rubaga hill to the catholic church of Uganda to be her headquarters and he moved his palace from Rubaga to Kasubi where he was laid to rest after his death on 10 October 1884. The altar of the Rubaga Cathedral was built in the place were Muteesa I's palace was located.
Early Challenges and Triumphs
After three months at Nabulagala, Fr. Mapeera and Brother Amansi negotiated, bought out the slaves from the Arab slave traders and redeemed them. They managed to save 28 children whom they called orphans. The first ever catholic mass of the Latin rite mass was not celebrated in January because Fr. Mapeera and Brother Amansi had left the portable altar and books/articles that are used to celebrate a catholic mass in Kageye Village in Tanzania with a group of other missionaries.
But those items were later brought by Msgr. Léon Livinhac, Pere Ludovic Girault and Léone Barbot on 24 June 1879 and celebrated mass on 25 June 1879 with Msgr. On the Easter Vigil of 28 March 1880, the first baptism of the Uganda Catholic converts was celebrated. Among those who were first baptised by Msgr. Léon Livinhac in Uganda included Paul Nalubandwa (aka Paolo Nlubanwa), Peter Kyonooneka Ddamulira (aka Petro Ddamulira), Joseph Lwanga (aka as Yosefu Lwanga) and Leon Kaddu. Fr. Mapeera baptised Andrew Kaggwa and Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe on 30 April 1882.
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After the death of Kabaka Muteesa I and the succession of Kabaka Mwanga who was friendly to the catholic missionaries in October 1884, Fr. Mapeera left the mission of Bukune for Buganda in March 1885 after its closure. On 12 July 1885, Fr. Mapeera and the other missionaries were received in Buganda after a team 300 oarsmen and canoes was by Kabaka Mwanga to fetch them. Fr. Mapeera and other missionaries were given a place in Nalukolongo near Rubaga royal palace. On his return, Fr.
The Church Missionary Society (CMS)
After the arrival of the first Christian missionaries that were sent by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of England were British ex-service men, Lt. Shergold Smith and Rev. It was the mercenaries of a British trading company with their maxim guns that intervened decisively on the side of the numerically inferior Anglican politico-religious party to catapult them to power.
CMS missionaries on the ground and administrators back in London were swift to lobby for the extension of British power into Buganda. In this they were continuing three decades of anti-slavery campaigning, missionary enthusiasm, private British commercial initiatives and British government policy in East Africa. The resulting political settlement privileged Anglicans over and above the other politico-religious groups in terms of chiefly offices and therefore landholding.
CMS in London firstly advocated this trading company to remain in Buganda and raised £16,500 from the British public to enable this, and then actively lobbied the British government for Buganda to become a British protectorate. Christian agents, both European and Baganda, accompanied these advances west and east. One CMS missionary and a Ganda deacon went as chaplains to the Ganda army invading Bunyoro, while another missionary fell into the role of supply officer for families of Sudanese mercenaries working for the British.
Hitching our missionary chariots to politico-military horsepower is a human, not just a European tendency, as these Ganda examples illustrate. In all of these, the missions often proceeded as if there was little of value in pre-existing cultures of Uganda’s peoples. The syllabus taught in an Anglican village school was overwhelmingly European in orientation (Figure 2). CMS tended to sponsor Luganda publications that translated pre-existing titles by European authors rather than those by Ganda authors. Traditional therapeutic systems were labelled as both dangerous and sunk in witchcraft.
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Conflicts and Challenges
After Kabaka Mwanga realising that there was no catholism in England as the Church Missionary Society were from England while the White fathers came from France. The White fathers contacted the Mill Hill Mission in England to send in the British Catholic Fathers to remove Kabaka Mwanga's doubts. In 1895, Bishop Henry Hanlon from the Mill Hill Mission arrived in Uganda and he was given Nsambya Hill by Kabaka Mwanga. The Mill Hill missionaries spread Christianity in the Tooro region.
As the religious identities of Ganda converts fused into political and military groupings, winners took the kingdom, losers were banished in multiple cycles of alliances, victories and defeats, with external European agents only playing a decisive role in the latter stages. European missionaries in Uganda entered initially as guests of and were dependent on the Ganda monarch at multiple levels, their presence only tolerated because of what the court wanted from them: guns (and other European trade goods) not the gospel, alliances with encroaching external powers for Buganda’s benefit and the wondrous tool of literacy.
The Mill Hill Missionaries
The Mill Hill Missionaries were invited to Uganda in the early 1890s by Bishop Livinhac of the White Fathers. At the time, many locals believed Protestantism was for the English and Catholicism for the French. The first group of Mill Hill Fathers left London on May 9, 1895, and arrived in Kampala on September 6. They settled on Nsambya hill and built St. Peter’s Proto-Cathedral, which became a center for preaching, education, and healthcare.
In 1902, the Franciscan Sisters from England, led by Mother Kevin (Kevin Teresa Kearney), arrived to help in Nsambya. Their care for the sick marked the beginning of Catholic healthcare in Uganda. The missionaries also focused on education. In 1902, Bishop Hanlon opened St. Peter’s Primary School in Nsambya. Around the same time, Namilyango College was founded following requests from Buganda’s leaders for higher education.
Legacy and Impact
On 25 March 1953, all the Vicariate became dioceses. The few baptised Catholics and catechumens met and discussed on how to run the church after the white fathers left Uganda. Fr. Mapeera and other missions spent three years out of Uganda and this forced the orphans to split into two groups where one of the groups formed the orphanage and mission of Kamoga in Bukumbi (near Mwaza Town in Tanzania).
Nabulagala was a sub-parish of greater Naakulabye prior 2006. On 24 June 2007, cardinal Emmanuel Wamala elevated it into a parish and named it St. John the Baptist Mapeera Nabulagala Catholic parish. The parish is being manned by the White Fathers and was inaugurated in 2007. Its first parish priest was Fr. St. John the Baptist, Mapeera-Nabulagala church with a capacity of 1000 members was constructed in Rubaga Division using the contributions from the White Fathers and Catholics in Uganda and diaspora at the same spot where Mapeera and Amansi built their first mission station.
Many pilgrims visit Kigungu at Mapeera church every 17 February every year to commemorate the arrival of Christianity in Uganda and celebrate the anniversary of Catholic faith in Uganda. St. Mary's college Kisubi (SMACK) on 12 May 1924 formerly it was St. Statue of Fr. Pere Siméon Lourdel Marpel aka Mapeera arrived in Uganda when he was 25 years old. He moved with Dallington Scorpion Mafta who was his monitor of language. He served as the Superior of Rubaga Mission and also as the personal advisor of Kabaka Mwanga during his stay at Nalukolongo.
Fr. Mapeera (Pere Siméon Lourdel Marpel) at the age of 37 died at 1:10 PM of 12 May 1890 at Rubaga due to Hepatitis and he was surrounded by Fr. Camille Denoit, Fr. Alphose Brard. Mapeera's remains together with the remains of the other pioneer missionaries in Uganda were exhumed, displayed for public viewing and re-buried at St. The Uganda Catholic church commemorates the death anniversary of Fr. Léon Livinhac was the leader of the pioneer White fathers that came to Uganda. In 1884, he was ordained and became the first catholic Bishop in Uganda.
Amansi arrived in Uganda at the age of 27 and he had not yet made his final vows that would make him a reverend father. On his way back to Europe, Amansi died after two hours on his arrival at the mission of the Spiritain fathers in Bagamoyo on 18 January 1895 as indicated in the diary of Zanzibar. He was buried in the mission cemetery at Bagamoyo. As a newly consecrated Bishop, Girault on 29 June 1913 at Villa Maria parish, he ordained Fr.
Fr. Mapeera's beatification process was started by Bishop Joseph Mukwaya but when he died, the task was launched in 1987 by Cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga. And after Nsubuga's death, Fr. Benedict Ssebulege took charge over Mapeera's beautification process. Cyprian Kizito Lwanga re-inititated the Mapeera's canonisation that had been silent for a while and he also added Brother Delmas Amans on the list for those to be canonised as saints in January 2010 and a new committee called The Kampala Archdiocesan for the beatification of Fr.
Statistical Overview of CMS Activities
The following table highlights the growth of CMS activities in Uganda over a 20-year period:
| Year | European Missionaries | African Clergy | African Lay Teachers | African Christians | Communicants | Scholars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1887 | 3 | - | - | 300 | 50 | - |
| 1892 | 13 | - | 36 | 3,400 | 120 | 400 |
| 1897 | 43 | 10 | 52 | 14,457 | 3,343 | 742 |
| 1902 | 82 | 27 | 2,199 | 38,844 | 11,145 | 12,861 |
| 1907 | 104 | 30 | 2,036 | 65,433 | 18,078 | 32,393 |
This data illustrates the significant expansion of Christian influence and education within Uganda during this era.
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