Kairo: The little child who shone a light to humanity

The matter of priesthood and marriage, women clergy and same-sex relationships remain some of the stickiest issues facing the Catholic Church today. There has been agitation and advocacy for the Canon laws to be changed so as to allow priests to marry as well as women to be appointed priests in the church hierarchy.

So sticky are the two issues that they will not let even retired archbishops rest in their retirement. And no less a retired prelate than the venerable Archbishop Emeritus Peter Kairo admits that the questions have followed him to his retirement abode in Kamakwa, Nyeri County.

In a new book to celebrate his 50th anniversary of priesthood, Archbishop Kairo, who retired in June 2017, says that the faithful still flock his residence more than three years after retiring as Archbishop of the Nyeri archdiocese.

“Since I retired,” he says in the postscript of his new autobiography, Moulded for Service, “I receive numerous faithful seeking my views and guidance on matters of faith and other issues in the church including controversial issues such as whether Catholic priests should be allowed to marry, whether women should serve as priests, or my views on same sex marriages and abortion.”

But the good bishop, whose distinctive service to the church is tallied by www.catholic-hierarchy.org, as “Priest for 50.07 years” and “Bishop for 37.52 years”, sees no point of controversy in the issues and refers his enquirers to both the Bible and the Canon Law. Simple! If anything, many of his colleagues describe him as humble and simple.

Women priests

For him, it is upon the church to decide on the matters of celibacy in priesthood and women priests. However, for the former, he opines that celibate priests are better placed to serve than would married priests. “One is spared the worries of the world and can, therefore, focus on serving God, the Church and the faithful.”

He further says that the journey to priesthood is long enough (eight years of studies in the seminary) to allow students reflect and make appropriate choices. Those who feel they cannot stand the demands of celibacy can always drop out. And one of his friends, Joseph Njuguna, disembarked from the wagon while they were studying at St Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary in Nairobi.

The book celebrates the humble rise of the archbishop from the chilly shoulders of the Mau Summit to the summit of the Catholic Church administration in Kenya, steering his flock through turbulent times.

The Archbishop shares one thing with Jesus Christ, the founder of Christendom. They are both sons of carpenters. Whereas the latter was born 2000 years ago through the Holly spirit and the Virgin Mary and Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth, Kairo was born in 1941 to Daniel Muraya, an itinerant carpenter, and Theresia Wangari in Londiani, Kenya.

Indeed, chapter one of the memoir, Moulded for Service, is titled “The Son of a Carpenter” perhaps to draw parallels with that of Jesus.

Like his father who sawed and hammered his way to wherever he nailed a carpentry job, Kairo travelled the world to wherever his calling took him: from the muddy tracks of River Nginyang’ in East Pokot, (currently Tiaty in Baringo county), to Europe and the USA.

Upon securing Theresia’s hand in marriage and formally marrying her, the couple set forth on a journey of many miles looking for jobs along the railway line to Kisumu. They landed in Londiani, Kericho and later moved further westwards to Koru in Kisumu County where they got a farm job.

Black child

Months later, when Theresia conceived their first child, they retreated to Londiani. That first child turned out to be Kairo, whose name (Kairu, in Gikuyu) denotes a diminutive black child.

This little, sometimes sickly, dark child would later grow to be a big guiding light to many a Christian faithful in Kenya and beyond. He attended Mother of Apostles Minor Seminary in Matunda near Eldoret and St Thomas Aquinas Major Seminary, Nairobi, and was ordained priest in 1970 by Bishop Ndingi Mwana’a Nzeki, becoming the first African priest ordained in Nakuru diocese.

His decision to join priesthood was initially opposed by his father, who feared that his eldest son would not bear children to be named after him and perpetuate the family lineage as per the Kikuyu custom. Worse still, two of the old man’s friends put it to him succinctly, “you will not be born” thus firing him to hit the roof.

Pastoralist communities

Thankfully, the old man mellowed and blessed his son during the ordination ceremony at St Mary’s church in Molo. Kairo would, however, encounter many such resistances in his service. He says many potential recruits, especially from the pastoralist communities, shunned the vocation due to its celibacy requirements.

The book, published by Big Books Ltd, oozes rich symbolism and historical anecdotes like syrup, coming so gently and measured as from an old man neither hurrying to give details nor struggling to recall events. How many of us knew, for instance, that the present-day Moi’s Bridge in Uasin Gishu was once Hoey’s Bridge (named after Cecil Hoey, one of the pioneer White settlers in the area)?

Kairo was appointed Bishop of the nascent Murang’a diocese in 1983 after it was hived off the Nyeri archdiocese where he served for 14 years and initiated many development projects.

Then he was posted to the Nakuru diocese, the theatre of turbulent politics and ethnic clashes in 1997. His eleven-year stint would become the most traumatizing period in his service given the heightened tensions that seeped into the church and even saw two of his staff fight in the office.

 It was in his diocese that Fr. John Anthony Kaiser was found dead on the roadside in 1999. Still, in the flames of the 2007/08 post-election-violence, a priest was killed in Muserechi, Baringo.

Momentous beatification

As if to rescue him from the hotbed of conflict, Bishop Kairu was transferred to Nyeri archdiocese in 2008, just as the PEV had ended and the Government of National Unity was formed. Among his highlight moments of service in Nyeri was that he was the hosting bishop to the momentous beatification of Sister Irene Stefani popularly known as Nyaatha in May 2015.

The archbishop relieves the events in the heady days of the Kanu era complete with the represion and agitation for democratic reforms. While the bishops spoke openly against social injustices, corruption and bad governance Bishop Kairo knew he had to balance things because there were people among his congregants who were sympathetic to Kanu.

In Murang’a, for instance, where the majority of the people were against Daniel arap Moi’s Kanu government, the face of that regime within the diocese was Mathioya MP and ruling party’s secretary general who was also a staunch Catholic.

While in his youth things were quite clear on what he wanted to be, the same could not be said of his retirement. As his retirement date approached, the archbishop could not easily choose the place of his retirement as he had chosen his career.

He was spoilt for choice deciding if to retire in Nakuru, his home diocese, or Muranga, his first diocese of appointment as Bishop, or Nyeri, his last station as Archbishop. In the end he chose the latter where he whiles away the time reading the Bible and attending to many faithful who still flock to him for counsel.

Moulded for Service has, yet again, reaffirmed our faith in memoirs as a storehouse of literature. It is sold in major bookshops including Text Book Centre, Prestige Bookshop as well as Bookstop.

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