Ugandan Archbishop Urges Women to Stop Beating Their Husbands

In an odd twist, the Catholic Archbishop of Kampala, Uganda, has admonished women to refrain from beating their husbands, saying they “should love and respect them” rather than take out their frustrations physically upon them.

Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga, who was appointed to his present post by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, reached out to women after the publication of a police report showing that women perpetrate violence against their husbands with surprising frequency.

The police report from the Mpingi district in Uganda’s central region found that a full 50 percent of reported cases of domestic assault involved women beating their husbands.

Appealing to the teaching of Saint Paul, Lwanga said that women should accept men as the head of families.

“Do you want to take over power from men in your families? I think you want to challenge God who tells us that men are the heads of the family,” he said.

“Stop torturing the innocent servants of God,” the archbishop added. “There is no need for you to behave like some people we are seeing nowadays in the country who are merciless.”

The issue of domestic violence has been a concern of the Archbishop for years.

In 2015, Lwanga publicly appealed to the Ugandan government to implement the Domestic Violence Act of 2010, aimed at curbing Uganda’s increasing problem with violence within families.

The Archbishop asked the government to carry out awareness campaigns countrywide and strengthen the capacity of leaders to handle family conflicts.

“Some married couples are not open to each other and don’t speak the truth, especially men who don’t want to reveal their incomes, lifestyle, among other things, which when discovered fuel domestic violence,” Lwanga said.

He said that the effects of domestic violence go beyond the immediate family and do damage to the church, society, and the State.

“We cannot have a stable and progressive society when our families are still unstable. This is a very big problem we are facing as a country and we need to address it,” he said.

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