Gripped with the realization of Christ’s love for him, a sinner, he decided to devote his life to announce the same message to others. Ordained first as a deacon and later as a priest, he gripped people with his enthusiastic, descriptive sermons.

In 1977, the assassination of Anglican Archbishop Luwum shocked the world. Since his military coup in 1971, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin had been sowing terror around the country. Being a Muslim, he allowed three forms of Christianity in his country (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican) only as long as he could keep them under his control. Dissenting voices were quickly and often violently silenced.

Luwum had been one of the dissenters, who spoke out against Amin’s abuses. He was arrested several times. The day after the last of these arrests, Radio Uganda announced that Luwum and two other men who had come under Amin’s suspicions had died in a car crash. But the news on TV showed one wrecked car and the newspaper another. No one was allowed to examine the bodies. Only much later, it was found that Luwum’s body was full of bullets. When questioned, Amin said he had nothing to do with the murder and any contrasting evidence was a result of a conspiracy against him.

In spite of the government’s threats, 45,000 Ugandans attended Luwum’s funeral. Soon after that, other churches around the world held memorial services, including Westminster Abbey in London. But Ugandan Christians knew that a new wave of persecution was on the horizon. Some wondered if fleeing the country was an option.

One of these Christians was the Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere. He had been one of the last people to see Luwum alive. At first, he and his wife Mera didn’t want to leave home. They loved their country and church. But Kivengere had been very open in his disagreements with Amin and he had been informed he would be one of his next victims. He and Mera drove by night as far as their car could take them, then walked to Rwanda.

Later, he heard of the suffering of Christians who had stayed in Uganda: many martyrs, broken homes, and looted houses. But he also heard of touching stories of forgiveness and prayers for the murderers.

I Love Idi Amin

Soon after his flight, Kivengere was invited to speak in different churches. Although he kept preaching forgiveness, he had not yet let go of the bitterness and resentment he harbored in his heart. “I had to face my own attitude towards Amin and his agents,” he wrote. “The Holy Spirit showed me that I was getting hard in my spirit, and that my hardness and bitterness towards those who were persecuting us could only bring spiritual loss. This would take away my ability to communicate the love of God, which is the essence of my ministry and testimony.”[1]

It was a Good Friday sermon at All Souls Church in London on Christ’s words, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34) that impressed on him the extent of Christ’s forgiveness and of his own duty to repent.

“Although I frequently had to repent and pray again for forgiveness,” he wrote, “I rose that day with a liberated heart and have been able to share Calvary love in freedom. Yes, I have forgiven [Idi Amin], and am still praying for him to escape the terrible spiritual prison he is in.”[2]

Soon after that, with the help of retired missionary Dorothy Smoker, he wrote a book with a shocking title: I Love Idi Amin. Its purpose, he said, was to “share what God has done for ordinary Christians in an ordinary church in the middle of storms and stresses – because Christ does shine brighter when all around is darker.”[3]

“We love president Idi Amin,” he wrote. “We owe him the debt of love, for he is one of those for whom Christ shed His precious blood. As long as he is still alive, he is still redeemable. Pray for him, that in the end he may see a new way of life, rather than a way of death.”[4]

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