Janani Luwum

Life and Ministry

Janani Jakaliya Luwum was born in 1922 to a peasant family in Acholi country in northern Uganda, the son of an early convert to the East African Revival movement that swept through the lake region in the 1930s. He became a primary-school teacher, then was ordained an Anglican priest in 1956, and rose through the Church of Uganda's Acholi diocese, going to the London College of Divinity in the early 1960s for postgraduate study. He was consecrated Bishop of Northern Uganda in 1969 and elected Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Boga-Zaire in 1974 — the second African to hold the office. By the time he became archbishop, Idi Amin had been in power three years and the killings had begun.

Circumstances of Death

In early February 1977 the homes of senior Ugandan church leaders were searched on warrants alleging weapons caches; nothing was found. Luwum, with the bishops of his Anglican province, drafted and signed a public protest letter to Amin on February 12 — one of the only sustained, named, public protests against the Amin regime issued from inside the country during the eight years of his rule. Luwum was summoned to Amin's headquarters at Nakasero on February 16. He was held overnight, and on the morning of February 17 the regime announced that Luwum and two of Amin's own ministers had died in a "car accident" while attempting to escape custody. The bodies were not released to the families. The eyewitness testimony assembled later by Amnesty International and the Ugandan Human Rights Commission established that Luwum had been shot at close range by Amin himself or by a member of his immediate guard at Nakasero on the night of February 16 or the morning of February 17.

Legacy

The Anglican Communion observes February 17 as the feast of Janani Luwum, and his statue stands among the ten twentieth-century martyrs above the west door of Westminster Abbey alongside Bonhoeffer, Kolbe, and Romero. His widow Mary led the public protest after his death, declaring that her husband would have refused the offer of safety even if it had been given. The Amin regime fell two years later. Namirembe Cathedral in Kampala, where Luwum had served as archbishop, holds his commemorative marker; February 17 is also a Ugandan public holiday.