Church vows not to abandon Fr Grimes in Namasagali ‘bush’

Mill Hill Missionaries from the United Kingdom (UK) have expressed interest in reviving their cooperation with Namasagali College in Kamuli, Uganda, where Rev Fr Damian Grimes served as headteacher for 34 years and was buried on Saturday, 28th September, 2024. Jinja Catholic Diocese has also announced establishment of a full-fledged parish in Namasagali which has hitherto been a vicariate under Kamuli Deanery. Rev Fr Ben Wakabi aka Kyuma Kiyaka, the Dean of Kamuli, who represented Jinja Diocese Bishop Charles Martin Wamika, said the Church could not abandon Fr Grimes alone “in that bush”, thus the decision to establish the parish.

Fr Grimes, a UK Mill Hill Missionary, arrived in Uganda in 1959 and worked in educational institutions till 2002. He was Namasagali headmaster between 1967 and 2000 when he was, due to disagreements over management, acrimoniously forced out. Namasagali was Uganda’s oldest and then most prestigious private, co-educational, fully boarding establishment, with a secondary school and the country’s first private university.

Fr Grimes died in the UK, aged 94, on 4th September but the Namasagali Old Students Association (NOSA) and GoU sought a special dispensation from Mill Hill and the UK Government to return the remains of the UK passport holder, back to Namasagali for burial. The standing instruction in the Catholic Church is that priests are buried wherever death finds them. President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni contributed UGX100m (US$26,600) toward.