You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Tuesday, June 14th, 2020. Now this week on the Catholic Spouts, we are talking about some really important and fun and powerful saints that are celebrating their feast days during June.

Yesterday we talked about St. Anthony of Padua, whose feast day was yesterday.

But today we're going to go back to the beginning of the month, back to June 3rd,

and we are going to talk about St. Charles Luwanga and the other Ugandan martyrs. They celebrated their feast day on June 3rd, but their story is still so powerful, such an powerful reminder to all of us,

just how valuable our faith is, and our duty to remain true to Jesus Christ and to evangelize others, even when it is

uncomfortable or even dangerous. So St. Charles Luonga and the other Ugandan martyrs,

they lived during the 1800s. So the Christian faith came to Uganda in the mid-1800s, and it was brought there predominantly by an order of priests called the White Fathers.

At first, when the missionaries arrived in Uganda, they were greeted, they were accepted, and many people began to convert.

But then a new king took the throne in Uganda,

and this man was very immoral. He asked the people in the palace to do very immoral, sinful things.

And when he learned that this was against the Christian religion, he got very angry. He began to martyr

the missionaries, and he began to hunt down the Christians in his palace. When he learned that

one man was instructing other people that worked for him in the faith, he killed that man

instantly. And soon, he told all of the people in the palace

to come and assemble before him. And if they were Christians to step to the side, he told them,

you know, he said, are you determined to remain Christian even though you will die? And all 17 of them said that,

yes, they would not deny Jesus even if it meant their death. Now, Charles Luonga, he was a

brilliant young man who had been sort of handpicked to come and work for the king in the palace.

He was well respected, but he was one of the

first converts from these missionaries. And he was working in the palace, unknown to the king,

to share the faith with other people. When the persecutions began in the palace, he actually

...