Theology

When I taught in Nairobi, Kenya in the late 1980s, one of my students shared with me a saying from his Ugandan village: “If a priest puts a curse on you, curse him back, but if a bishop puts a curse on you, dig your grave.”  While this ominous maxim had nothing whatever to do with the ecclesiology I was trying to teach, it did serve as evidence that bishops were formidable figures in East Africa.  The most formidable bishop I met over there was Serapio Bwemi Magambo, of the Diocese of Fort Portal Uganda.

Fort Portal is a market town near the Rwenzori Mountains – sometimes called the Mountains of the Moon.  It is the home of the Congregation of Holy Cross in East Africa.  The first members of the community to serve there were three newly ordained Holy Cross priests who arrived in 1958 to assist the White Fathers who had established the mission long before.  A Holy Cross priest, Vincent McCauley, was consecrated the first bishop of the newly established diocese in 1961.  Bishop Magambo, McCauley’s successor, was the first African bishop of the diocese.  He held the memory of his predecessor in great reverence, preserving the founding bishop’s old office just as he had left it, as a kind of shrine.  In this Bishop Magambo proved prescient, as Bishop McCauley’s cause for sainthood has since been introduced.  Bishop Magambo was a burly, robust, charismatic man with a deep, booming, resonant voice.  He had an ample waistline in at a time when great girth was indicative of high status.  He had a warm, avuncular personality and exuded sublime confidence in the dignity of his office.

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