Honouring Grandparents and the Elderly in Catholic Tradition:
A Christianised Ganda Cultural Reading
by Michael Kakooza
for Rorate Cæli
Introduction
In 2021, Pope Francis instituted the fourth Sunday of July as the annual World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly in the reformed Roman calendar. This year, the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly will fall on 27 July 2025.
In the message he issued for the first World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, the pope stated:
Think about it: what is our vocation today, at our age? To preserve our roots, to pass on the faith to the young and to care for the little ones. Never forget this.
It makes no difference how old you are, whether you still work or not, whether you are alone or have a family, whether you became a grandmother or grandfather at a young age or later, whether you are still independent or need assistance. Because there is no retirement age from the work of proclaiming the Gospel and handing down traditions to your grandchildren. … The future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old. … Keeping memory alive is a true mission for every elderly person: keeping memory alive and sharing it with others.
In the following discussion, I wish to contribute to broadening our appreciation of the concepts of grandparents and the elderly within the context of Catholic Tradition, drawing from the wisdom of my own cultural background as a Ugandan Catholic who is attached to the Traditional Latin liturgical heritage.
Background and Thesis
The formal institution of the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly was a follow-up to a series of earlier catechetical reflections on the family which Pope Francis had started during his weekly general audiences from 17 December 2014 till 18th November 2015. Two of the audiences, 4th and 11th March 2015, had been dedicated to grandparents and the elderly.
The papal interventions on the family were welcome and timely, given the unprecedented complexity of challenges to which family structures and familial relationships are being subjected in contemporary times. It is spiritually inspiring that the pope started and ended his catechetical reflections with a special focus on the Holy Family of Nazareth. Further, during the period he had dedicated to his discourses on the family, he canonized the parents of St Therese of Lisieux, Louis and Zélie Martin, about whom he said:
The holy spouses Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin practised Christian service in the family, creating day by day an environment of faith and love which nurtured the vocations of their daughters, among whom was Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.
In the quoted excerpt of the message issued for the first World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, Pope Francis made reference to three key concepts, namely, ‘roots’, ‘traditions’, and ‘memory’.
The reference to these three concepts drew my attention as a Traditional Catholic to the paradoxical ecclesial situation that pertains today. In the aftermath of the second Vatican Council, and the problematic implementation of the so-called ‘Vatican II spirit’, it is truly challenging to arrive at an intra-ecclesial consensus on the essential meaning and significance of those three critical concepts. During the same Francis pontificate in which the family was being reflected upon, legislation was enacted to effect the marginalization of the Traditional Latin Mass, together with its traditional sacramental practice and devotional heritage from mainstream parochial life. Other than reference to an unbroken Catholic Tradition, one is at pains to ground the meanings and direction of ‘roots’, ‘traditions’, and ‘memory’. Which roots are being assumed, described or understood, how far do they go? Which of our Catholic traditions have remained sacrosanct in a doctrinal and moral situation of flux? Can we meaningfully talk of memory today when there has been and continues to be an ecclesial culturicidal situation of damnatio memoriae?
For the Traditional Catholic, the paradox remains of having to navigate between appearance and substance. Unless those same concepts of ‘roots’, ‘traditions’, and ‘memory’ are engaged with in the context of an unbroken Catholic liturgical and devotional Tradition, then their application appears to take on a metaphorical significance, at best, rather than point to a grounded substantiality.
As a Traditional Catholic, I firmly believe that unless well-meaning and timely papal reflections on the family are also firmly grounded within the framework of an uninterrupted dogmatic and devotional Tradition, then the risk emerges of reducing our ecclesial concerns with and initiatives on the family to a horizontalist sociological level. The implications of this risk have already been documented and experienced in ecclesial life when generations of poorly-catechized Catholics have emerged because the essence of the three critical concepts of ‘roots’, ‘traditions’, and ‘memory’ has been subverted. Rather than handing down the traditions capturing sacred memory whose roots can be traced back to apostolic antiquity and, through organic development, to a vibrant spirituality across the centuries, large sections of the ecclesial equivalent of the 68 ers handed down ideological nostrums instead, with the ensuing doctrinal and moral bankruptcy sadly evident today.
As a Traditional Catholic, I cannot be oblivious to the unique blessings of the great spiritual family of the communion of saints, pronounced as an article of faith in the ninth clause of the Apostles’ Creed. It is vital for the sustained spiritual efficacy of the family today that the Church rediscovers and repopularises the living reality of the communion of saints as our great spiritual family in heaven, on earth and in purgatory.
To this end, I wish to briefly explore some ways in which the terms, grandparents and the elderly, as understood and applied within the Christianised Ganda culture, can contribute to an effective spiritual reanimation of the Christian family.
A Traditional Catholic Hermeneutic of Inculturation
Before I begin engaging with my local culture, I wish to distance myself from any association with ideological narratives on inculturation that have gained currency in academic circles, and have even influenced pastoral thinking and practice in the Church. I express my full agreement and identification with the following sentiments of Robert Cardinal Sarah:
Nevertheless, it seems incumbent to be very clear on what we mean by inculturation. If we truly understand the meaning of the term as an insight into the mystery of Jesus Christ, then we have the key to inculturation, which is not a quest nor a claim for the legitimacy of Africanization nor Latin Americanization nor Asianization in substitution of a Westernization of Christianity. Inculturation is neither a canonization of a local culture nor a settling into this culture at the risk of making it absolute. Inculturation is an irruption and an epiphany of the Lord in the depths of our being. …
The inculturation of the faith is the challenge of sanctity. It verifies the degree of holiness, and the level of the Gospel's penetration, and of the faith in Jesus Christ in a Christian community. Inculturation, therefore, is not religious folklore.
The approach to my Ganda culture is one that appreciates the Christianization of those cultural elements that contained within themselves the seeds of truth, and a purging away of all that disfigured and obscured the truth. It is with this sense of Christian freedom that I now explore how the concepts of grandparents and the elderly in my Ganda Culture can enrich our re-appreciation of Catholic Tradition.
Grandparents and the Elderly in Ganda Culture
The Buganda nation, comprising about 20% percent of modern-day Uganda’s population, is geographically located along the shores of the Nnyanja Nalubaale (otherwise known as Lake Victoria since British colonial times) and belongs to one of Africa’s largest ethno-linguistic families, the Bantu, who populate much of central, eastern and southern Africa. It is an ancient monarchy, whose current dynasty traces its roots back to the 13th century.
The Missionaries of Africa (aka the White Fathers) introduced the Roman Catholic faith into this polity in February 1879. Within less than a decade of their zealous missionary enterprise, the sacred drama of Christian witness of the first Uganda Martyrs, St Charles Lwanga and his companions (all laymen), was played out (1885-1887).
In the language spoken in Buganda (Luganda), there are two levels of meaning to the words, grandparents and the elderly, namely, the denotative and the connotative.
Basing on a simply denotative, that is the literal dictionary, meaning, the two words are translated as follow:
Grandparents - Ba-jjajja (ba is the prefix denoting plural)
Elderly - Ba-kadde (omu-kadde is the singular, omu denoting an
individual)
The above definitions were captured by the White Fathers in their pioneering lexicographical efforts to cultivate formal literacy among their converts. Two examples are given of how these denotative meanings are used in ecclesial life.
English: St Anne the Grandmother of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Luganda: Anna Omutukirivu, jjajja omukazi [woman] wa Mukama Waffe Yezu
Kristu
English: St Joachim the Grandfather of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Luganda: Yoakimu Omutukirivu, jjajja omusajja [man] wa Mukama waffe Yezu
Kristu
English: The retired (emeritus) bishop of ….
Luganda: Omukadde omusumba [shepherd] wa …
The denotative meanings of grandparents and the elderly are circumscribed within familial- generational, age- and service-related boundaries.
Beyond the denotative meanings of the Luganda terms for grandparents and the elderly are the multi-layered cultural connotations of these two terms. The cultural connotations ascribe meanings to these terms that provide glimpses into the underlying philosophical and ethical worldviews of the people of Buganda (the Baganda). Three layers of the cultural connotation of grandparents and the elderly will be considered, namely, social etiquette, authority as structure, and the metaphysical.
The first layer refers to social etiquette, specifically regarding communication in a social setting. As forms of respectful and courteous address, the two terms, Jjajja [grandparent] and omukadde [elder] are employed in direct interface with or in polite reference to persons of advanced age, or senior citizens, regardless of whether there exist familial relationships or not.
The second layer describes persons of authority within the social structures. The traditional Ganda governance system is hierarchical and reflects the dual dimensions of the cultural authority of the clan heads, and the political authority of the king and his chiefs.
The heads of the cultural clans are referred to as Bakadde [elders]. Retired chiefs and clan heads are addressed as Bajjajja. This second layer of cultural connotation has been adapted by the Catholic Church in Buganda.
A Catholic priest, even a young curate, is described as omukadde w’eddini (literally, an elder of religion, in other words, clergyman).
Pope Benedict XVI, as an emeritus pope, was fondly described as jjajja papa, eyawummula [literally, the retired grandfather pope].
The third layer is described as metaphysical because the meanings ascribed to grandparents and the elderly go beyond the boundaries of the material reality to refer to the ancestors.
In the pre-Christian polytheistic and animistic religion of Buganda, the spirits of the ancestors were described as Bajjajja. These spirts of deceased relatives were believed to actively influence the individual and collective fates of the living. Some of the spirits were believed to be benign, while others were seen as malevolent, and even maleficient, and had, therefore, to be regularly appeased by supplication and sacrifice. This was the situation described by ethnologists as ancestor worship.
Today, in a Ganda culture that is progressively being permeated by and purified through Christocentric doctrine, the term jjajja now refers to and describes the saints as our ancestors in the faith. This Christian understanding of jjajja appears in the following excerpt of the Marian canticle, the Magnificat rendered in Luganda:
English | Luganda |
54 He hath received Israel his servant, being mindful of his mercy: | 54 yalyoowa yisraeli omuweereza we nga ajukira ekisa kye |
55 As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed for ever. | 55 Nga bwe yagamba bajjajja ffe, okusikirira Yibraimu n’ezaade lye emirembe gyonna |
The founders of ancient religious orders, such as St. Francis or St Dominic, are referred to as Bajjajja.
The deceased White Fathers of venerated memory who brought the Catholic faith to Buganda are referred to as Bajjajja ffe [our grandparents].
The Uganda Martyrs, including the young pre-teen, St. Kizito, are also referred to as Bajjajja ffe mu ddini [our ancestors in the faith] because they preceded us in the Christian faith, and gave heroic witness heroically to their love for Christ and His Church in the manner of their death. By the same token, even a teenage beatus like Carlo Acutis qualifies by the very fact of his attested holiness to be called and venerated as a jjajja.
Insights for Catholic Tradition
Vyacheslav Ivanov observed:
Culture itself, in its proper sense, is not at all a flat horizontal surface, not a plain of ruins or a field littered with bones. It holds, besides, something truly sacred: the memory, not only of the earthly, external visage of our fathers, but of the high initiations they achieved. … In this sense, culture is not only monuments but spiritual initiation.
Basing on a Ganda cultural reading, it has been demonstrated that the definition and meaning of the terms, grandparents and the elderly, cannot be limited to the sociological markers of biological generation and age. Further, narratives about grandparents and the elderly cannot simply be framed within materialistic ideologies.
Corrupted as the pre-Christian religious world view of the Baganda was, there was yet an embryonic recognition that earthly life or material reality did not constitute the fundamental essence of existence. In that polytheistic economy, there was the supreme deity, Katonda, from whom all creation received its essence. The belief in the ancestral spirits, benign or malevolent, suggested that the fog of error notwithstanding, life could not simply be reduced to the physical or natural domain.
The pre-Christian Baganda believed that upon physical death, the deceased, for a variety of reasons and factors, either assumed the spirit form of benignancy or malevolence as a jjajja.
The purified Christian Ganda vision is that for the righteous, death is not the simply another state of life, but rather, the transition to a transformed state of eternal bliss:
Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible: and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption; and this mortal must put on immortality.
As illustrated above, our Uganda Martyrs now constitute part of that army of saints we describe, with joyful pride, as Bajjajja.
In his inimitable expressive style, G.K. Chesterton wrote:
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
It is helpful to locate and appreciate Chesterton’s sentiments within the early 20th century context of an increasingly strident secularized politics as well as the ideological pretensions of an unapologetically entitled materialism.
Despite the blanket of error and ignorance that weighed heavily over the intellect and will of the pre-Christian Baganda, they would not have intuited the physically dead as an obscure class. In strictly ethno-sociological terms, the pre-Christian Ganda society, like many such pre-Christian societies world over, was religious. The perceived reality and abiding presence of the ancestral spirits were foregrounded through an engendered crippling atmosphere of fear, fatalism, ceaseless supplication and sacrifice of appeasement.
For Traditional Catholics, any meaningful analysis of the structures of sin that assail the Christian family in contemporary times must go beyond the limitations of sociological endeavour, intellectually profound as it may be, and seek answers from the supreme and perfect community, the Most Blessed Trinity.
The dogma of the communion of saints offers consolation and mutual support of the great spiritual family that unites the Church in heaven (the Church Triumphant), the Church on earth (the Church Militant), and the Church in Purgatory (the Church Suffering). Bajjajja ffe [the saints], together with the angelic hosts, enjoy the timelessness of the Beatific Vision:
And one of the ancients answered, and said to me: These that are clothed in white robes, who are they? and whence came they "And I said to him: My Lord, thou knowest. And he said to me: These are they who are come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb".
Blessed eternity which is the lot of the saints supplants created time, in which the preservation and stabilization of earthly family structures and relations are negotiated within the contingencies of evolving social trends and developments.
Rather than inhabit a forbidding fear-filled world in which malevolent spirits hold sway, the reality of purgatory in the Christian Order for our deceased brothers and sisters [Bajjajja and Bakadde who are still in need of purification] points to the supreme goodness of God’s justice and mercy. Much as the souls in purgatory are in great suffering for deficiencies in charity, they are sustained by blessed hope. This hope is supported by the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Purgatory, and the prayers of the faithful still on earth, in the Church Militant.
The Ganda cultural reading has demonstrated that atheistic secularism constitutes a historical aberration and is atraditional. A purified Ganda Christian outlook, liberated from the imprisoning errors of polytheism and animism, proposes a robust re-appreciation of the dogma of the communion of saints and rejuvenated devotional practices that enliven and sustain our belief in it. The counter-cultural revival and repopularisation of the Traditional Catholic pilgrimages in post-Vatican II Europe, such as the Chartres Pilgrimage and the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James), among others, are a most welcome development in this regard. This is what will save Christian families and restore the correct order of familial relationships.
The discussion has highlighted one layer of cultural connotation of Bajjajja [grandparents] and Bakadde [elders] that points to structures of authority. It can then be argued that this layer of cultural connotation essentially represents order, stability and the guarantee for authentic renewal. In Ganda culture, consistent reference to bajjajja and bakadde legitimized the structures of authority, ensured social cohesion, and formed the philosophical rationale for any reforms to be considered or undertaken.
In refuting the Sadducees' denial of the resurrection, Jesus declares:
And as concerning the dead that they rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spoke to him, saying: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You therefore do greatly err.
Jesus draws the attention of the Sadducees to the living reality of God’s covenant, as manifested in the names of the three great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Although they are physically dead, yet they memory continues to sustain the living structure of authority on which God's covenant with His people.
The order and stability of structures of authority is critical for the preservation of Catholic Tradition. Forty years after the closure of the Second Vatican Council and the ongoing implementation of its reforms, Pope Benedict XVI who had been a peritus [theological expert] at the Council, had to argue for a distinction between a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, and a hermeneutic of reform, renewal in continuity.
The recent ‘synodal’ experiments that appear to call into question the divinely-ordained hierarchical structure of the Church and the authority of sacred orders constitute a challenge to tradition and good order within the ecclesial family of the Church Militant.
Further, the release of the Vatican declaration, Fiducia Supplicans, that contained an ambiguously worded as well as ambiguously-argued section on ‘Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex’, served to cloud the Traditional Catholic belief in the sanctity of the Christian family that is formed from the sacred bond of one man and one woman, despite all loud protestations of orthodoxy by the declaration’s advocates.
During the Canonisation Mass for popes John XXIII and John Paul II, Pope Francis observed: “…, it is the saints who give direction and growth to the Church.”
The saints as Bajjajja ffe mu ddini [our ancestors in faith] are living and credible touchstones to the divine, reminding us of what is essential to the sustaining of family structures and familial relations.
Conclusion
A distinctly hopeful note for the revival of the family within Catholic Tradition was sounded when the Vatican Press Office recently announced that Robert Cardinal Sarah, Emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, had been appointed as legate of Pope Leo XIV to the liturgical celebrations on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the apparitions of St Anne to Yvon Nicolazic in France. The celebrations are to be held from 25 to 26 July 2025 at the Shrine of Sainte-Anne-d’Auray in French Catholic Diocese of Vannes.
Both the public positioning of that shrine in the consciousness of the Universal Church, and the enhancement of the liturgical profile of the celebration with the presence of a respected and senior prince of the Church serve a restorative function for the family in Catholic Tradition. The Shrine of St Anne is not simply a venerable place of Traditional Catholic devotion that countless pilgrims have visited and honoured over the centuries. More than its historical significance, it is a living touchstone of the divine will for the Christian family. St Anne is the mother of Our Blessed Lady, and therefore, the grandmother of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The shrine points to familial generations who epitomize fidelity, hope and charity in the very highest degree, and find their ultimate fulfilment in Christ. In other words, authentic engagement with the family in Catholic Tradition must be Christocentric. Any treatment of the family that appears to fall short of this standard may be doomed to sociological reductionism. Arising as a consequence of this would be an unfortunate horizontalist perception of the family. Indeed, one rather uncharitable and cynical view of the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly celebrations in Rome may see them as massive cross-continental gatherings of sundry geriatrics, and their minders, in Rome for Mass and a convivial fellowship, all taking place in the full glare of international media coverage.
In this article, I undertook a reading of the family and Catholic Tradition using a Christianised Ganda Cultural lens. The particular case study was the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, as formally instituted by Pope Francis in 2021. Evidence has been provided by the emerging discussion that the Christian family, challenged as it currently is in the contemporary climate, cannot be effectively addressed within the limitations of the prevailing sociological idioms. If the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly is not to remain of transient sociological significance, of similar significance as the annual events calendar of the United Nations, there is need to integrate it more closely into the liturgical and devotional mainstream of Catholic Tradition. Liturgically, the linkage with the already well-established traditional feasts of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day should be made more evident to minimize the limitations of any horizontalist approach to the Christian family. In devotional terms, the rich treasures of traditional Catholic prayers, religious customs, pilgrimages, processions, lives of the saints should be rediscovered and appreciated anew.
