I was reading some of the corollary to the martyrs we celebrate today, the numerous ‘pages’ of King Mwanga put to death for resisting his unnatural sexual advances. He had them burned alive, an unpleasant way to go, but Charles Lwanga, who was in charge of the pages, and saved them from the king’s lust – one wonders, but Mwanga had at last count seventeen wives. As the flames began to scorch Charles’ own body, declared to his executioner, It is as if you are pouring water on me. Please repent and become a Christian like me.

Well, I’m not sure about the executioner, but King Mwanga himself did become a Christian, if an Anglican, accepting Baptism during exile on the Seychelles Islands, after being deposed, and various attempts to regain his throne. He took the name Daniel, fitting as one who survived the flames unhurt, as did the martyrs, in the end – their souls in glory, to be reunited with their bodies. Mwanga went to face his eternal fate in his mid-thirties.

And while on many wives, Boris Johnson is the first Prime Minister to live in 10 Downing Street with a woman not his wife. He was married – twice – both of those women, to paraphrase Christ, were not really his wives. He was baptized a Catholic as a baby, lost his faith as he grew up, adopted some vague Anglicanism. Hence, both his marriages were invalid, for once a Catholic, always a Catholic, and he was still bound by the laws of the Church concerning the sacrament of matrimony. Hence, it is with some degree of satisfaction that he and Carrie Symonds – also a Catholic, and, besides her previous domestic situation, a practising one – regularized their union by marrying in the Church, at Westminster Cathedral.

We may rejoice in what good there be, hope for the salvation of each soul, and never give up interceding.

 

The post An Addendum to the Ugandan Martyrs, and King Mwanga appeared first on Catholic Insight.