Glorious! Countdown to the Feast of the Uganda Martyrs in Boston Waxing Spiritual
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In Summary: The excitement is pulpable. The much-awaited Feast beckons. The bells are tolling. The Ugandan-Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Boston is calling. The auditions are over. The choristers are buzzing. Come, it is time to worship! As Samuel Muwanguzi writes, its gona be glorious! The countdown to the Feast of the Uganda Martyrs in Boston is now waxing spiritual. Let’s go, it’s the holy place to be!
Waltham, Massachusetts—Preparations to mark the 21st celebration of the Uganda Martyrs Day in Boston are now in their final stages as the countdown to the Feast this Sunday June 9th, 2024, begins in earnest. The excitement among the Uganda Catholic Community in Boston (UCCB) is palpable and has almost reached fever pitch. “We are ready for the feast,” Ms. Lydia Nakimuli, executive secretary of UCCB declared to the EADM in a phone interview over the weekend. Apart from tying-up the usual loose ends, “the Ugandan Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Boston (UCCB) is raring to host the commemoration of the Uganda Martyrs Day feast on Sunday June 9th, 2024, starting with Mass at 12:00PM at St. Mary’s Parish located at 133 School St. Waltham, MA 02451,” Ms. Lydia Nakimuli said.
The celebration to honor the Uganda Martyrs is held every year by members of the Ugandan-Catholic Community in Boston (UCCB) on the second Sunday of June in the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts. The Uganda Catholic Community in Boston (UCCB) boasts a total of 512 registered members (adults) and about 50 children, according to Mr. Michael Mukisa, the chair of one of the most organized and united association of Ugandans in the Diaspora.
Celebrating under the theme, “Encourage One Another, Agree with One Another, Live in Peace” (2 Cor 13:11), the feast is preceded by an ongoing novena (9 day-prayer that started on Saturday May 31st and ends on Saturday June 8th, 2024. The Uganda Martyrs Day celebrations in Waltham, Massachusetts, where the faithful gather at St. Mary’s parish commonly known as the “American Namugongo,” will take place a week after the major event at Namugongo shrine near Kampala, Uganda where 22 catholic and 25 protestant early converts to Christianity were killed on orders of Kabaka Mwanga of Buganda.
His Grace Lambert Bainomugisha, from the Archdiocese of Mbarara will be the main celebrant at this year’s Holy Mass, organizers of the event announced in a press release issued recently. This year’s commemoration will also mark 60 years since 22 Uganda catholic Martyrs were canonized by Pope Paul VI on 18th October 1964 in Rome, Italy.
According to Ms. Lydia Nakimuli, UCCB Executive Secretary, the community and all guests will, after the Holy mass at St. Mary’s Parish in Waltham, gather for dinner at the Boston Marriot Hotel located at 2345 Commonwealth Ave, Newton, MA, 02466. Mr. Charles Mukuba Salongo, the chairperson of the Uganda Martyrs Day (UMD) organizing committee told the EADM that UMD is now using technology to manage receptions and got rid of the habit of paying for the dinner at the entrance of the banquet hall. “We advise our members and guests to go online, buy a ticket, get a receipt, and be allocated a seat on a table at the banquet,” he told me.
Meanwhile, “fundraising drives are ongoing for the successful celebrations of the Martyrs,” Ms. Lydia Nakimuli told me, adding, “any monetary and voluntary assistance is welcome.” According to the Uganda Martyrs Day (UMD) organizing committee, all the guests who will be hosted at the dinner event at the Marriot Hotel in Newton are expected to pay $40.00 for children 12 years and below, $100.00, for ages 13 – 21 and $150.00 for all adults. “Tickets to the dinner will not be sold at the entrance to the banquet hall but can be obtained via the association’s Keshap: $UCCB22, 781-226-9339 for ages 21 and below and on the UCCB website, www.uccb.us for all adults,” the tenacious Lydia Nakimuli told me.
By press time, hundreds of members of UCCB and guests from North America, Uganda, and from elsewhere in the world had expressed their readiness to attend the Holy mass at St. Mary’s parish in Waltham and reserved their seats at the banquet at the Marriot in Newton, according to the publicity secretary of UMD, the youthful Mr. Geoffrey Kateregga Kaweesa Katetemera. Available records suggest that the Ugandan Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Boston (UCCB) envisages to be “a united, lively, thriving, loving, and caring community of Christians walking together on their shared journey of faith, according to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.” It adds: “It is a family of believers boldly professing, openly celebrating, and clearly living out their Catholic faith together with the local community of the Archdiocese of Boston, enriched by their Ugandan Catholic experience; and ready and willing to promote general and specific self-improvement among her members.”
Members of the Ugandan Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Boston (UCCB) who have made St. Mary’s Parish their church home for two decades, fall under the spiritual leadership of Fr. Michael Noland, the Parish Priest of St. Mary’s parish in the Archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts. Meanwhile, the Chaplain of the Ugandan Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Boston (UCCB) congregation is Fr. John Bosco Lugonja. The UCCB is guided by a leadership council headed by Fr. Patrick Ssekyole, the Board President.
Meanwhile, while reflecting on his 3-year term of office, the chairperson of the Uganda Martyrs Day (UMD) Organizing Committee, Mr. Charles Mukuba Salongo disclosed that “This is my 3rd year of service as chair of UMD and my last,” adding, “I was nominated and endorsed by several committees of the leadership council in 2022 and I think it is time to let others serve.” “I have involved many young people in the organization of the Martyr’s Day during my term because I wanted to prepare them to take their turn to assume leadership and move the organization forward,” he told me. He recalls with fond memories the excitement and enthusiasm expressed by members of UCCB during the first post-COVID Martyrs Day celebrations organized under his newly installed leadership in 2022. “Members had saved lots of money, were excited to meet for the first time after COVID, and easily raised the funds to organize the Feast honoring the Martyrs,” he said.
The gregarious Mr. Charles Mukuba Salongo said that during his 3-year leadership, he introduced a number of changes to reflect new post-COVID realities including meeting via Zoom for one hour to discuss only 2 items on an agenda. He advised that moving forward, future UMD leaders should start planning for the next celebration immediately after the current one has ended because more funds will be needed than the previous event. “We also need a sustainability strategy of raising funds beyond the traditional avenues we have used for a long time,” he said. Mr. Charles Mukuba Salongo also noted that he learned earlier on to delegate responsibility to other members, mainly the youth and insisted on accountability as a top expectation to ensure transparency. As a parting shot, Mr. Mukuba observed that since UCCB/UMD leadership is not a business but a volunteer activity, “members need to cultivate a degree of trust in the leadership, desist from undermining leaders’ authority, and injecting politics into spiritual matters.”
Meanwhile, the chairperson of the Ugandan Catholic Community in the Archdiocese of Boston (UCCB), Mr. Michael Mukisa told the EADM that members of UCCB have exceptionally done well in supporting each other. “What we do is reflected in how we are truly one people; when one of us suffers, we all suffer; when one heals, we all heal,” he told me. As a community, he continued, “we spiritually support one another; we pray for the sick; we pray Novena; and we offer sacrifices of Masses and Rosaries. Also, Mr. Mukisa stated that as a community, UCCB fundraises for so many causes to support members with unique needs, such as, “death… people gather for vigils (kuma lumbe); provide food, company and money to assist in funeral arrangements (mabugo); assist with immigration related issues to new arrivals; and weddings.
The sagacious Mr. Michael Mukisa disclosed that UCCB has a Bubondo system (Small Christian communities or cells) which organize and mobilize members to support each other in unique needs including psychosocial, spiritual, physical, or financial. “The community celebrates together successes like Baptisms, Graduations, Birthday Parties, Weddings and Marriage Anniversaries, Priest and Nuns ordinations and Anniversaries,” he said.
According to the UCCB constitution, the community of Catholic Christians of Ugandan origin in the Archdiocese of Boston, “accepting that each and every one of us has been chosen by God to be a worker in His vineyard and a builder of His kingdom here on earth, are mindful that the family is the domestic Church where the faith is first caught and taught; believing that God is already at work among us and within the global fellowship of the Roman Catholic Church; entrusting ourselves to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the holy Martyrs of Uganda; is on a mission to foster unity among Catholic Christians of Ugandan origin; their families; and their friends and to engender a keen and dynamic sense of belonging, fraternity and solidarity among her members, their families, supporters, and friends.”
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