Saint of the Week: James Hannington, Bishop and his companions

Here is a saint I was a bit unfamiliar with. His day is today, October 29th. This comes directly from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, 2022. Not so sure its the best use of sainthood in our calendar. The infomration seems a little suspect. 

INFORMATION:
James Hannington was born in Sussex on September 3, 1847, and was educated at Temple School in Brighton. For six years, he assisted his father in the warehouse business. The family became members of the Church of England in 1867, and the following year, Hannington entered St. Mary Hall, Oxford, where he obtained his B.A. and M.A. degrees. 

Following his ordination at Exeter, Hannington served as a curate in his native town until, in 1882, he offered himself to the Church Missionary Society for its mission in Victoria, Nyanza, Africa. Serious illness soon required his return to England, but he went out again to Africa in 1884, as Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa. 

Hannington’s mission field was on the shores of Lake Victoria. He dreamed of creating a shorter and more efficient route directly from Mombasa, in Kenya, to Buganda. Ignoring the advice of his local guides and porters that the venture would be politically sensitive, and failing to heed a warning from emissaries of King Mwanga to stop, he and his party were apprehended and imprisoned. 

After a week of cruel privations and suffering, he and the remaining members of his company were executed on October 29, 1885, on the orders of King Mwanga. Hannington’s last words were: “Go, tell Mwanga I have purchased the road to Uganda with my blood.” 

Other martyrs of Uganda shared his fate before the gospel was firmly planted in this heartland of Africa, where today the church has a vigorous life under an indigenous ministry. Mwanga was eventually exiled to Seychelles in 1899, where he was received into the Anglican Church and baptized. He died there in 1903.

THE COLLECT FOR BISHOP HANNINGTON AND HIS COMPANIONS
O God, by whose providence the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church: Grant that we who remember before you James Hannington and his companions, may, like them, be steadfast in our faith in Jesus Christ, to whom they gave obedience even to death, and by their sacrifice brought forth a plentiful harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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