On Monday, thousands of Ugandans rallied in Kampala to celebrate the recent passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a law targeting Uganda's LGBT community with harsh legal sanctions and possible life imprisonment. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who signed the act into law in late February, spoke at the rally and denounced oral sex, "sodomy," and Western threats to withdraw aid from the East African country. He was joined by Catholic, Anglican, Muslim, and other religious leaders, who echoed Museveni's condemnations of homosexuality.
Archbishop Cyprian Lwanga of Kampala, the leader of Uganda's Catholic Church, delivered a closing prayer in which he exhorted the crowd to pray for those "who had been led astray by this vice of homosexuality." Last October, Lwanga invited Pope Francis, who has adopted a more compassionate tone toward the LGBT community, to visit the country and preside over this year's Martyrs Day celebrations on June 3, when Christian pilgrims from Uganda and neighboring countries flock to a shrine at Namugongo, just outside the Ugandan capital of Kampala, and mark the anniversary of the deaths of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions, known collectively as the Uganda Martyrs. In 2013, more than 3 million pilgrims trekked to the shrine for the occasion.
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