Uganda’s Archbishop Dr. Cyprian Kizito Lwanga who passed on last Saturday is going to be the third person to be buried inside the Rubaga Cathedral.
While appearing on a local television the Kampala Archdiocesan Acting Administrator, Charles Kasibante has confirmed that the deceased Archbishop Lwanga will be buried inside Rubaga Cathedral.
Gerald Kalumba, one of the senior priests in the archdiocese and former priest general, said that it has been a tradition of the church to bury Archbishops in the Cathedrals they served.
“It is the tradition and in many times, Bishops who served in that particular Cathedral are worthy of being buried in there,” Kalumba said.
The first Archbishop was late Bishop Edourd Michaud, a Canadian clergyman who was one of the priest missionaries known as White Fathers. He was the Vicar Apostolic of Uganda from 1933 until he died in 1945.
The second prominent person to buried in that very church happens to be Dr Joseph Kiwanuka, the first native African to be ordained a Catholic Bishop in modern times who died in 1966 five years after his appointment as Archbishop of Rubaga.
Found within the Cathedrals are areas called crypts already set aside to bury the prelate. This concept of building crypts is said to have been drawn from the persecution of Christians and the believers who were buried in these caves when they died. The faithful have preserved this tradition to date.
In the event when the Cathedral can no longer accommodate more graves, the administration of the Archdiocese can locate another site to serve the same purpose.