Stories

By Ines San Martin

World Mission Sunday turns 100 this year. To mark this milestone, MISSION Magazine will feature a new section in each issue — From the Archives — bringing stories from the past that continue to inspire the Church’s mission today.

In this inaugural feature, we revisit a 1994 article from Missio Germany, written by Ingelore Happ, recounting the story of the Ugandan Martyrs — the first canonized saints of sub-Saharan Africa and witnesses whose faith continues to animate the missionary Church.

From the Original Article (1994)

“Station for station, around 1,500 people proceed through the streets of Kampala on the first youth pilgrimage of the road to Calvary. Singing and praying, they pass Muslim street traders in their crocheted caps, through the old part of the city. The faces of the pilgrims are marked by the three-hour journey. Others have already passed this way — Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, Mathias Kalemba Mulumba, Charles Lwanga...”

“Charles Lwanga and 14 pages refused to be daunted. For months the Christians had been spied upon and persecuted. For months they had been waiting on the day that they could give testimony of their faith... Together they prayed and called from the flames: ‘Kanda Katona!’ — God, my God.”

“The present large number of Christians in Africa,” said Pope Paul VI at their canonization on World Mission Sunday in 1964, “lives from the strength of this martyrdom, which made an ostensibly barren soil yield fruit.”

Reflection: Then and Now

Thirty years after that article was written — and one hundred years after Pope Pius XI established World Mission Sunday — the witness of the Ugandan Martyrs continues to remind us that the Church’s missionary spirit is not an abstract idea but a lived reality of love, sacrifice, and joy.

In 1886, their courage transformed a kingdom. Today, Uganda is nearly 40% Catholic and home to one of the most vibrant Churches in Africa, forming priests, religious, and lay leaders who carry the Gospel to every corner of the continent.

As we celebrate the centennial of World Mission Sunday in 2026, we remember that missionary zeal, born in martyrdom and nourished by faith, still shapes the life of the Church. Like those first witnesses, we are called to stand firm in love — “One in Christ, United in Mission.”