TO STOP SENSELESS KILLING: STRENGTHEN SOCIETY’S MORAL FOUNDATION

June 3, Feast Day of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions, martyred by the eighteen-year-old King of Uganda, Africa.

This infamous crime in 1886 and the mass shootings in 2022 “show us clearly that a new people needs a moral foundation, needs new spiritual customs firmly planted, to be handed down to posterity. ”

The above quotation, applied to the recent mass killings, is from the 1964 homily of Pope Paul VI delivered at the canonization of Charles Lwanga and his companions, martyred in 1886. Let us pray hard in these days of Pentecost that we may be more open to the Spirit of God planting in us the wisdom and courage to help our society become “a new people.”

“The infamous crime by which these young men were put to death was so unspeakable and so expressive of the times. It shows us clearly that a new people needs a moral foundation, needs new spiritual customs firmly planted, to be handed down to posterity. Symbolically, this crime also reveals that a simple and rough way of life—enriched by many fine human qualities yet enslaved by its own weakness and corruption—must give way to a more civilized life wherein the higher expressions of the mind and better social conditions prevail.”  Pope Paul VI, June 3, 1964

Sister Loretta