The shocking happenings that rocked the church these past 10 years threatened to tear it apart. The prayer for most Christians is that God blesses His house this coming decade and helps them fight the power of darkness that seeks to ruin it, writes Edwin Nuwagaba

Over the years, the church has been bathed in endless scandals - child molestation, rape, sodomy, extortion… name it. Let’s start from home.
In October 2006, something comic happened when a respected and popular pastor, David Kigganda, shocked the nation after he publicly divorced his wife, Hadijja Nassejje, for allegedly cheating on him with a chapatti maker. Around that time, he also revealed plans to take all their children for DNA testing.

In September 2008, Pastor Isaac Kiweweesi of Kasanga Miracle Centre, was also accused of sexually indulging young boys. A member of his church, David Arinaitwe, 28, claimed the pastor had sodomised him for years.

Then, Pastor Jackson Senyonga, 41, of Christian Life Centre, was questioned by the FBI over allegations that he fondled a 13-year-old girl aboard a United Airlines flight on August 16, 2008. He denied the allegations.

Also in 2008, three senior pastors from The Universal Church of The Kingdom of God convinced an HIV positive woman, Frances Adroa, that they would heal her, taking her car as payment for “the miracle to come”. After an endless wait, the lady ran to the authorities. The pastors were: Gilson Costa, Gerald Nkayi and Patrick Maserere.

In the same year, there was a similar case; Grace Kushemereirwe accused Pastor Imelda Namutebi of paying her to testify that her prayers had cured her of Aids way back in 1999. Pastor Namutebi was to pay Kushemereirwe Shs350,000 every month for this lie, but when she reneged, the latter threatened to spill the beans in 2005, so goons turned up at her house and beat her daughter to near-death. And as if that was not enough, Namutebi was also accused of “stealing” the man she is currently married to, Tom Kula, from another woman who had allegedly come to her for counselling.

In March 2009, self-confessed former homosexuals accused the renowned Catholic priest, Fr. Anthony Musaala, of being a homosexual. Paul Kagaba, who said he was a homosexual for eight years, told a press conference in Kampala that Musaala, a gospel music award-winner, regularly held parties for gays at his residence in Gayaza near Kampala. To add salt to injury, Musaala’s boy-band members accused him of sodomising them, creating a furore around the once popular priest. Police and church investigations into the case fizzled out but not before Musaala was given a set of rules to abide by from the Catholic Church, among them having a curfew.

And in the same year, the popular Pastor Robert Kayanja was accused by fellow pastors Martin Sempa, Solomon Male and Bob Kayiira of sodomising two boys. The case went on and on, with Kayanja saying he was being accused falsely. The victims were Samson Mukisa and David Mukalazi. Amidst investigations, the police said the two victims had retracted their statements, but the victims denied this. Even if he was on the front page of every newspaper, Pastor Kayanja still preached at his church with resilience as he comforted his congregation, saying he was only being witch hunted.

On the international scene
Now, away from Uganda, the Catholic Church found herself in a tight spot when she was exposed in the Murphy Report for failure to handle child abuse and subsequent cover-ups by the church hierarchy. The report was published in Ireland and stated that church authorities in Dublin covered up child sexual abuse until the mid 1990s. The problem was these clerics had known that the priests had raped children for decades but chosen to protect them. They did not tell the police, ignored the cries of the children and parents and moved the guilty paedophile priests to “safer” parishes, burying their scandals. The three-volume report found that the “maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets” were prioritised over justice for the victims. In this incidence, a fifth high-ranking cleric, Limerick Bishop Donal Murray, stood down after he was singled out for mishandling allegations against an abusive cleric.

But the Anglican Church also had its fair share of scandal. Having ordained the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire in 2003, the Anglican Church almost split in 2009 over the ordination of a lesbian Episcopal bishop, 55-year-old Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool. The election of the lesbian bishop raised very serious questions about the Episcopal Church and its position in the Anglican Communion. Glasspool has lived with the same female partner since 1988.

And now with conservative Anglican bishops from Africa like Uganda’s Archbishop Luke Orombi and Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola opposed to the gay bishops, one can only wonder whether Canterbury still has influence on the entire Anglican fraternity - which already has elements threatening to break away. Conservative Africans are bitter that new trends and culture are penetrating and breaking the traditional ideals of the Anglican Communion. The Times reported that the influential American Anglican Council was among the first of the conservative bodies to condemn the latest election, accusing the Episcopal Church of a further departure from biblical teaching.
Amidst the Anglican Church’s troubles, Pope Benedict XV1 said that he was ready to welcome the disgruntled members of the Anglican Communion to the Catholic faith. Was this mockery or was it simply taking advantage of the situation? These were questions from sceptics about whether the two faiths could once again be reunited.

And who can forget the case of Kenyan-born Gilbert Deya, who claimed to have a supernatural ability to make infertile women pregnant? Deya’s case only got stranger when a UK-Kenyan investigation concluded that he and his wife were stealing Kenyan babies and smuggling them into the UK. The Kenyan police alleged that the ministry was a baby-snatching ring and in 2006, called for his extradition by the UK, which is, unfortunately, where he still remains - Deya moved to the UK in the 1990s and started several churches.