In Defense of All God’s Children: Remembering Bishop Christopher Senyonjo

A tribute to a life lived in faith, courage, and love

It is with profound grief that Gay Christian Africa mourns the passing of Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, yesterday July 19th 2026. He spent the final decades of his long life proving that faith and inclusion were never meant to be enemies.

A Life Before the Calling

Christopher Senyonjo was born on December 8, 1931, in Uganda, to Maria Nosianta Nakalyango Terugwa Mukulu-Abula-Aware and Erika Kapere. His name, drawn from a Buganda clan lineage, signified “cleanness” — a quiet foreshadowing, perhaps, of the moral clarity he would come to embody decades later.

His early life was marked by loss. He lost his father to a snake bite as a young man, and years later lost his first wife, Ruth Nakanwagi, the same way, only weeks after their marriage. Grief drew him toward faith rather than away from it. After a brief attempt at medical school in Makerere University, he found his way into teaching, and eventually into theology — earning a Doctor of Ministry from Hartford Theological Seminary and later a Doctorate of Divinity from Yale’s Berkeley Divinity School.

In 1974, he was consecrated Bishop of West Buganda in the Church of Uganda, a position he held until his retirement in 1998.

The Calling Within the Calling

Nothing in Bishop Senyonjo’s early ministry suggested he would become one of the most significant LGBTQ+ advocates the African continent has known. That transformation began after his retirement, when he opened a counseling practice and encountered gay and lesbian christians navigating faith, family, and rejection in a country with little room for either.

What he found in those conversations changed him. He began speaking publicly in defense of LGBTQ+ Ugandans — a stance that led to his estrangement from parts of the Church he had served for over two decades, and to years of public accusation, restriction from church duties, and personal risk in a country where such advocacy could — and still can — cost a person everything.

He never described this as rebellion. He described it as a calling — the same call, he often said, that had first led him to the priesthood.

In 2010, he founded St. Paul’s Reconciliation and Equality Centre, dedicating his remaining years to counseling and spiritual care for LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized communities across Uganda. For many, he became more than an ally. He became a spiritual father — offering what too few institutions in Africa were willing to give: unconditional welcome.

A Personal Encounter

I had the privilege of meeting Bishop Senyonjo in person two years ago, at his home in Kampala, during the two days of a short visit at the end of February 2024. The interview had been arranged at the last minute, and I wasn’t certain it would happen at all.

Getting there proved harder than expected. I lost my way navigating by boda-boda through Kampala’s streets — and Bishop Senyonjo, then in his nineties, came out to the main road himself to guide me in. It was a small act, but it told me everything about the man before we had exchanged a single word.

He welcomed me into his sitting room, its walls lined with photographs of his family — his late second wife, Mary, his children, a life fully lived alongside a faith fully practiced. As a Christian sitting across from him, I encountered, for the first time, what it truly means to be grounded and courageous in one’s convictions.

That afternoon was not simply an interview. It was a lesson in what it costs, and what it means, to live one’s faith rather than merely profess it. He described himself, simply, as an “advocate and ally.” At 92 years old, he remained unshaken in his commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion within the Church — a stance that had cost him standing, community, and comfort, but never his conviction. Through it all, the support of his late wife and children remained close to him, a quiet testament to a family that chose to stand with him rather than apart.

He did not separate the Gospel from action. He lived them as one.

A Legacy That Does Not End 

To the countless LGBTQ+ Christians across Africa who found in Bishop Senyonjo a rare and steady voice of affirmation, his death does not mark the end of his work. It marks a charge — to continue what he began.

He taught, through decades of quiet and costly persistence, that age, tradition, and culture are never sufficient reasons to deny someone’s existence. He taught that the Church’s welcome should widen, not narrow. And he showed, in the simplest terms, that faith without love toward “the least of these” is no faith at all.

May his memory be a blessing. May his life’s work continue to bear fruit in every dialogue his example makes possible. And may religious leaders across the continent find in him the humility, compassion, and courage to open doors rather than close them.