Abstract
This book explores the development of Catholicism in Uganda from the 1950s. It focuses on the life and work of seven distinguished Catholic leaders, four men and three women. The book is intended for a wide readership, providing questions for parish discussion groups after each chapter. But it does not over-simplify or gloss over the complex issues that Ugandan Christian leaders faced in these years, and the account will be warmly welcomed within Uganda itself.
Jay Carney has read widely in unpublished and printed sources, and has conducted a wide range of interviews, aided by George Mpanga and Herbert Busiku, his Ugandan research assistants. Carney’s historical and theological analysis is sophisticated and finely judged. He begins with a discussion of the great Catholic politician, Benedicto Kiwanuka. In the last years of British colonial rule, Kiwanuka fostered the growth of a disciplined political party, the Democratic Party. He became the first Prime Minister of Uganda in 1962, before being outmaneuvered by Milton Obote’s Uganda Peoples’ Congress.
One of Kiwanuka’s aims was to give voice to Catholics, the largest religious grouping in Uganda but one that had suffered discrimination by a Protestant (Anglican) establishment. Kiwanuka did not aim to establish a Catholic political movement, but rather to appeal to all Ugandans, by working for a moderate democratic independent state, based on the example of Christian Democratic Parties in post-1945 Europe. Imprisoned by Obote, he was released by General Amin after the coup of 1971. Kiwanuka, a lawyer, was appointed Attorney General, but his honesty and integrity soon alienated Amin, and Kiwanuka was brutally murdered in 1972. Kiwanuka was inspired by Catholic social teaching, as expressed in the Vatican II social encyclical Gaudium et Spes.
Cardinal Emmanuel Nsubuga headed the Church from 1966 until 1990. These were extraordinarily difficult years for Uganda: the dictatorship of Amin, followed by the bitter civil war under President Obote. Nsubuga was a pastor at heart, at ease with ordinary Christians. He also established warm relations with the leaders of the Anglican Church, his namesake and fellow Muganda, Dunstan Nsubuga, Bishop of Namirembe, and with Archbishop Janani Luwum. Carney discusses whether the Cardinal should have been more outspoken and, in particular, whether he could have joined forces with the Church of Uganda in protesting against the abuses of the Amin regime, a protest that directly led to the murder of Luwum in 1977. There is as yet no consensus on the reasons why such a joint declaration did not emerge at that critical time. Carney well outlines the dilemmas faced.
The account of Fr. John Mary Waliggo is of personal interest to me. Waliggo and I were contemporaries in Cambridge, he exploring Catholic Buddu in Buganda—a landmark study; I, on Protestant Christianity in Kenya. We both graduated in 1976. We met from time to time in Uganda and even contemplated writing a joint ecumenical history of Christianity in Uganda: alas, that was not to be. Waliggo is credited by Carney as the inspiration behind some of the impressive Pastoral letters issued by the Catholic bishops in the aftermath of Amin’s fall, a time of considerable violence and civil disruption. These remain outstanding diagnoses of the situation and examples of positive engagement with social and political issues. Waliggo had to flee the country, only returning when Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986. Waliggo was a key player in the drafting of a new constitution in 1995. After that he became an important member of a newly constituted Uganda Human Rights Commission. Carney usefully discusses the ambiguity of a priest being so heavily involved in the political life of the country, and whether it inhibited a critique of the Museveni regime. Waliggo is undoubtedly one of the foremost intellectuals and activists in modern Uganda, and his premature death from cancer in 2008 is sadly missed.
The remaining biographies include Sr. Rose Muyinza, a radical nun who founded the Daughters of Charity, to live alongside and encourage orphans and the poor of Kampala; and a lay woman, Rosalba Oywa, whose vocation was to stay in war-torn northern Uganda during the depredations of the Lord’s Resistance Army, suffering alongside her fellow Acholi. Like Sr. Rose, she did not confine her work to Catholics only. She gained the accolade “Mama Peace”. Finally, two expatriate missionaries are studied, Fr. Tonino Pasolini and Sherry Meyer, who established Radio Pacis in the West Nile district, and are important for combining both a generous spirituality and a concern for social justice.
Altogether, this is an intellectually impressive, highly accessible account of Uganda’s Catholic Church in recent years, by a fine historian and theologian.