There is the feast day of Saint Charles Lwanga:
Upon becoming majordomo, Mkasa appointed a young catechumen, Charles Lwanga, to supervise the court pages. A short time later, the two of them began to observe that the new king was homosexually attracted to the teenage pages and was seeking to have them brought into his private company. Bugandan culture at the time accommodated such sexual abuse, especially coming from someone in a position of power.
Though just a neophyte and a catechumen, Mkasa and Lwanga knew that such behavior was absolutely incompatible with the Gospel and determined to do all that they could as good shepherds to protect the sheep entrusted to them from the ravenous wolf in regal garb.
Even though Mkasa and Lwanga were willing to die to defend the pages from the king’s moral corruption, they did not have a death wish. They first tried to persuade those pages who could easily disappear from court without any harm coming to their families to run away. With various ruses, they next began to ensure that the pages who remained were “otherwise occupied” whenever the king sent for them. Third, they began to teach the pages various ways to avert the king’s advances if the other measures failed.
These stratagems worked for a time, but the king eventually figured out what was going on. No longer able to avoid a direct confrontation, Mkasa bluntly rebuked the king for his perverse attraction to the boys in his service. Mwanga was consumed with anger against Mkasa and his fellow Christians who were helping the boys to avoid his advances. Under the pretext of Mkasa’s disloyalty for putting the commands of another king, “the God of the Christians,” over his own, Mwanga had him executed.
A few months later, when the king returned from a trip to see one of the routine victims of his sordid desires receiving catechetical instruction — which obviously involved teaching on the sins of homosexual activity and sexual abuse — he summoned the catechist, St. Denis Sebuggwawo, put a spear through his chest and had the court executioners hack his corpse to pieces.
The following day, the king rounded up all the pages and gave them a choice between the Christian God and him, between prayer and the predator, between life and death. He asked “those who do not pray” to stand with him and “those who pray” to stand opposite. Three sided with the king. Charles Lwanga and 26 pages — 16 Catholics and 10 Anglicans — sided with God. Mwanga sentenced the latter to be burned alive, which they were, after brutal torture, on Ascension Thursday, June 3, 1886.
There is the anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre:
The eightieth anniversary of D-Day:
A statue depicting the Canadians who fought Nazi Germany 80 years ago will have a permanent home near the beaches they stormed on D-Day.
The Royal Regina Rifles statue is to be unveiled Wednesday at Juno Beach in France, a day ahead of the milestone anniversary of the invasion that launched the beginning of the end of the Second World War.
The names of 458 soldiers from the infantry unit who died during that conflict are etched in the statue’s base.
The Regina Rifles were among the first Canadians to storm Juno Beach on June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day. The soldiers battled alongside troops from the United States and United Kingdom to dislodge Nazis from northern France, marking the decisive turning point in the conflict.
You know - important events.
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