After three months, the founders of the hospital, Dr. Piero Corti and his wife Lucille Teasdale-Corti, had decided that he would be their successor. He soon came to be known to his colleagues and patients as "Dr. Matthew". Many patients were victims of attacks by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. On Good Friday 1989, the rebels came to St. Mary's to abduct several Italian nuns. Lukwiya managed to convince the rebels to take him instead and spent a week wandering through the brush in his physician's gown until the rebels released him. He subsequently opened the gates of the hospital compound to people seeking a place to sleep that was safe from rebel attacks and abduction. Until the Ebola outbreak, 9000 people sought sanctuary on the hospital grounds nightly to sleep. In a later incident, Lukwiya, his wife Margaret and five children were lying in bed one evening listening to nearby fighting between the rebels and government forces when a mortar shell crashed through the ceiling of their house, but failed to explode. He also played an unpublicised role in advocating for a peaceful solution to the war.