Inter-Religious Council launches tourism packages at Catholic shrines

The Inter-Religious Council of Uganda  has launched the martyrs trail from Munyonyo martyrs shrine to Namugongo martyrs shrine with intentions to give tourists and other visitors yet another experience.

The initiative which will have priced leisure activities and tourism packages like cycling, guided walking, an driving at religious sites aims at attracting more visitors to promote faith based tourism.

For long the Martyrs shrines in Uganda have acted as sacred places and attracted pilgrims and other Christians from all over the world.

However because of sensitivity to ensure that tourism does not disrupt religious activities or offend local communities, there has been a lack of effective marketing and promotion of religious sites, limiting awareness and interest among potential tourists.

Rev. Canice Enyiaka, the regional representative for Africa global peace foundation says there is a need to promote religious sites and create an enabling environment to attract potential masses.

Herbert Byaruhanga , a tourism consultant says  they have trained 50 religious guides and are yet to train more than 200 of them to carry out tour activities like cycling, guided walking, biking and driving from one religious site to another as a way of popularizing faith based tourism.

Lazarus Okurut, the programs officer at the inter religious council of Uganda tourism centre, says activities going forward will be capturing significant areas in the martyrs story to earn from them as it hasn't been the case.

"For the Uganda martyrs story, we are looking at how we can develop it economically, so that if pilgrims are coming from allover the world, just like way of the cross, there is some economic impact left in the country. We are doing that so that tour operators can develop different products," Okurut said.

Fr.Wojtek Ulman alias Male, the Rector of Munyonyo martyrs shrine called upon Ugandans to prioritize promote cultural and religious sites to earn revenue from them other than benefiting from spiritually.

" About religious tourism, let us promote together our own heritage. You know sometimes we want to copy from others but we have so much in our  cultural heritage, religious heritage. It is just a matter of finding the things that are underlying and exposing them so that we can benefit from them. Of course, we want to benefit in a spiritual way because we want to grow our faith but I believe we can also benefit in other ways," Wojtek noted.

Fr. Wojtek also revealed that the Munyonyo martyrs shrine will put up a 16 meter statue of Jesus Christ to attract believers and tourists.