Biography
Lukka Baanabakintu
About Lukka Baanabakintu
Lukka Baanabakintu, also known as Luke Banabakintu, was a lay Christian from Ntolomwe in Buganda. He served the chief of Ssingo and helped instruct people preparing for baptism at Mityana. His friendship with Matthias Kalemba Mulumba was an important part of this work. Accounts differ about his age, placing him in his thirties when he died.
As a young man, he went to Mityana with his uncle and entered the chief’s service. He eventually supervised servants who lived outside the chief’s enclosure. Shorter records a clan tradition that he was married. After studying Christian teaching, he was baptized on May 28, 1882. He then helped Mulumba teach others and made long journeys to receive the sacraments.
Mityana’s Christian life extended beyond the two men. Shorter’s account of Maria Matilda Munaku identifies Baanabakintu and Mulumba as leaders of the community to which she and her brother Noe Mawaggali belonged. Munaku learned the catechism from her brother and Mulumba. This local network of teaching and friendship helps place Baanabakintu’s service among the lives of other African Christians.
During the persecution in May 1886, Baanabakintu told the chief that he would not disclose the names of the children he had instructed. He was imprisoned with Mulumba, condemned, and taken toward Namugongo. Mulumba was killed on the way; Baanabakintu continued to the place where other prisoners awaited execution.
Benedict XV’s 1920 beatification account remembers his readiness to discuss religion with friends and his decision to remain when he could have fled. It presents his final imprisonment as a witness to faith.
He was burned to death at Namugongo on June 3, 1886.
He was among the twenty-two Ugandan Catholics canonized by Pope Paul VI on October 18, 1964.
Ugandan devotion associates him with fishermen, sailors, mechanics, students and blacksmiths. New Vision reports these patronages from Brother Tarcis Nsobya’s book The Uganda Martyrs Are Our Light. They connect his remembrance with ordinary work and learning.
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