Laurean Rugambwa was born on July 12, 1912, at Bukongo in north-west Tanganyika in an aristocratic but pagan family. His father, a Batista, was descended from the Kings of Kiyanja and his mother from the royal Bayinga family. Both parents were converted to Christianity when he was nine.
In 1926, at the age of 14, he was sent to Rubya seminary, Rutabo (1926-33) and then to Katigondo seminary in Uganda (1933-43). After five years as a parish priest he went to the University of Propaganda in Rome in 1948 to read for a Doctorate in Canon Law, which he passed in 1951 with a thesis on social work in East Africa.
On December 13, 1951, Rugambwa was appointed Titular Bishop of Febiana and the first Apostolic Vicar of Lower Kagera. The youngest of Africa's bishops, he received his episcopal consecration on February 10, 1952 from Archbishop David Mathew, with Bishops Joseph Kiwanuka, MAfr, and Joseph Blomjous serving as co-consecrators. Upon his Apostolic Vicariate's elevation to a diocese on March 25, 1953, Rugambwa was named Bishop of Rutabo by Pope Pius XII. He was created Cardinal Priest of S. Francesco a Ripa by Pope John XXIII in the consistory of March 28, 1960, and thus became the first native African cardinal. On the following June 21, the diocese was renamed as Bukoba.
The progressive Rugambwa attended the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, and was active in implementing its reforms. He was one of the cardinal electors in the 1963 papal conclave that selected Pope Paul VI. Advanced to Archbishop of Dar es Salaam on December 19, 1968, he later participated in the conclaves of August and October 1978, which selected Popes John Paul I and John Paul II respectively. The Cardinal, who had known Pope John Paul II from before his election, resigned as Dar es Salaam's archbishop on July 22, 1992, after twenty-three years of service, during which he founded the first Catholic hospital in Ukonga and a female Roman Catholic religious institute, the Little Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi.
A gifted churchman, administrator and bishop, he was the first African to be elected to the College of Cardinals in Rome in 1960. This achievement was the more spectacular because he came from Tanganyika, a country where church history was far shorter than in other parts of Africa: neighbouring Uganda, where he did much of his early seminary training, was more than a decade ahead.
