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The Diocese of West Ankole is one of the 31 Dioceses in the Anglican Province of the Church of Uganda. Rt. Rev. Yona M. Katoneene is the 3^rd and current Diocesan Bishop since 2006. The Diocese of West Ankole was curved/formed out of Ankole Diocese by promoting West Archdeaconry, one of its four Archdeaconries into a Diocese on 1^st October, 1976.   Its boarders coincided with those of the then Bushenyi Administration, which included Counties of Kajara and Rushenyi, which now form part of Ntungamo District.

Message from the Bishop 

On January 30, 1977 the new Diocese gathered in a huge make up shift canopy of banana leaves around the new Cathedral at Bweranyangi to consecrate the first Bishop and inaugurate the Diocese. It was a memorial day not only for the new Diocese but also for the whole province of the Church of Uganda. That same date, exactly 100 years earlier, the first CMS Missionaries to Uganda, the Reverends C.T. Wilson and Shergold Smith had arrived in Uganda and set in motion a successful Christian Mission which produced the Church of Uganda. Rightly arranged, the sitting capacity of the new Cathedral of about 1,000 people would not have been able to accommodate the numbers. More than one hundred Clergy from all over Ankole and beyond were there to witness the ceremony, and about forty thousand people gathered to formally receive the new Diocese. They used all the means of transport possible to come. Some traveled on foot, by bicycles, by buses, by lorries, tractors and by cars.

The Most Rev. Janani Luwum, the Archbishop of the Province of the Church of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga Zaire presided over the ceremony. The Rt. Rev. Festo Kivengere or Bishop Festo as he was popularly known, preached a memorable sermon entitled ‘Envelope of Love’ based on the RSV John 21:15 ‘Simon Peter, Simon son of John do you love me? The most memorable part of it was the illustration of the wrestling hyena and the ram. 

The hyena wrestled the ram, if it was defeated at least three times, the ram would lose the contest; the hyena would eat it. But as the hyena was bent to eating the ram, it could not accept defeat. When the ram defeated it the first time the hyena counted one; the second, third time it still counted one. The sermon reflected the hardening political and economic conditions, which were bent to destroy the Church. 

In fact the sermon was prophetic. The story about the killing of Archbishop Janani Luwum immediately after this ceremony is a well-known story. The following weekend on 5^th February, 1977, his home and that of the Bishop Yona Okoth of the Diocese of Bukedi were raided by Amin’s army men in the pretext of searching for illegal guns. A week later, on 16^th February 1977, Archbishop Luwum was killed; and many Bishops fled the Country. Fervent with the burden of work for the newly created Diocese, the Bishop of West Ankole did not flee. He suffered an internal exile in the remote hills of Buhweju in his diocese for over a month.