Father Josiah Asa K'Okal, Father Allois Cheruiyot Bett, Father John Maina, Bishop Luigi and Fr Anthony Kaiser.
Thursday’s shooting of Catholic priest Allois Cheruiyot Bett in the volatile Kerio Valley, and the murder of Igwamiti Parish priest John Maina days earlier, have jolted the Church community.
The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, through its Justice and Peace Department, posted on X on Thursday that the two deaths are “a tragic loss to the Church and nation.”
“We call for urgent government action to ensure justice, safety, and an end to impunity,” read the post.
Earlier, Bishop John Lelei, who is the assistant bishop at the Eldoret Diocese, had termed Fr Bett’s killing unfortunate.
The late Father Allois Cheruiyot Bett.
“The priest was on his mission of spreading the Gospel when he was shot dead by an unknown assailant,” Bishop Lelei said of Fr Bett, who was attached to the Tot Catholic Parish in Marakwet East.
Fr Maina, on the other hand, died under unclear circumstances on May 15. Detectives have been trying to establish whether he was poisoned, assaulted, shot at, or if all three were executed at once. Investigations are also ongoing to find out whether his death had any connection to him hosting former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua two weeks earlier.
Catholic Priest Father John Maina from Nyandarua was brutally murdered, dying from multiple gunshot wounds.
As investigations continue into the killing of the two, it is flashbacks galore into cases of Catholic priests whose lives were ended by bullets, brutal assault, questionable suicides, among others.
In 2000, one of Kenya’s most controversial priest deaths occurred. It involved Fr John Antony Kaiser, who was found dead on August 23, 2000, with his shotgun lying beside him while his pickup truck was about 10 metres away in a ditch. He had been shot in the back of the head.
Father John Kaiser.
Investigations by the police and by America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that Fr Kaiser committed suicide.
However, there were lingering questions, because he was an outspoken critic of President Moi and had lived in Kenya for 36 years.
Further compounding the mystery was a manuscript he had written about his life in Kenya, published after his death under the title If I Die.
One statement in that book was revealing: “I have no intention of leaving this parish voluntarily or going underground. Since I have been threatened before by the Rift Valley Provincial Commissioner, I want all to know that if I disappear from the scene, because the bush is vast and hyenas many, I am not planning any accident, nor, God forbid, any self-destruction.”
On December 10, 2018, another gruesome killing of a priest happened, where Fr John Njoroge Muhia was shot dead by robbers near his parish as he was taking Sunday Mass offerings to the bank. A gunman on a motorcycle blocked his car near Kinoo, shot through the windscreen and hit the priest, then made away with the collection.
This mirrored a 2003 incident where Fr Martin Macharia Njoroge, who was based at St Francis Xavier Parklands, was shot dead and his car stolen in Zimmerman.
The then Archbishop of Nairobi, the late Ndingi Mwana ’a Nzeki, said the assailants dragged Fr Njoroge from his car and shot him four times at close range.
“He did not resist them, but apparently even handed over the keys to his car, which the bandits left 500 metres away. His body was left on the ground, then found by a Good Samaritan who took him to the hospital,” Mwana ’a Nzeki told the Missionary News Service.
In 2005, a highly controversial killing of a prelate happened. It saw Italian bishop Luigi Locati shot dead in Isiolo. Then aged 76, he was gunned down as he walked to his station.
Bishop Luigi Locati
“Just a few hours earlier, Bishop Luigi had been one of the signatories of a statement issued by the Kenyan Bishops’ Conference appealing for peace after ethnic violence in the region claimed more than 70 lives,” the Independent Catholic News reported then.
Nine years after the bishop’s murder, a Catholic priest and four accomplices were sentenced to death. High Court judge Fred Ochieng found that Fr Guyo Wako Malley, one of the five convicts, had hatched the plan to kill Bishop Locati, bankrolled the entire plot, which included buying firearms, recruiting people to execute the bishop, and storing and transporting the guns.
In October 2017, residents of Kisumu were treated to a ghastly sight when Fr Evans Juma Oduor was killed near Chiga Market after sustaining serious head injuries. His car was found about five kilometres away and had been set ablaze. Until his death, Fr Oduor was priest in charge of the Nyabondo Catholic Parish in Muhoroni.
While some priests have died locally, others died in other countries, still under controversial circumstances.
In January 2024, a 54-year-old priest hailing from Siaya County died in Venezuela under questionable circumstances. Fr Josiah Asa K’Okal’s body was discovered by police officers hanging on a tree a day after he was reported missing.
Father Josiah K'Okal (left), a Consolata missionary born in Kenya and a Venezuelan national, died on the first of January. He was 54 years old, with 30 years of religious profession and 26 years of priesthood.
Prior to his death, he had raised concerns about his safety but maintained that he could not run away from his missionary work and fighting for the minority community, which adopted him after he acquired Venezuelan citizenship.
His death was classified as suicide, but his family insisted there was foul play.
Ordained as a priest in Kisumu in 1997 before heading to Venezuela as a Consolata missionary, Fr K’Okal was vocal in his criticism of President Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship and also spoke against drug barons in the South American country.
And on November 21, 2018, Fr Cosmas Omboto Ondari was killed in Cameroon. He was shot dead at Kembong in the troubled Anglophone region of Cameroon.
“Eyewitnesses said that he was killed by government soldiers who were firing at random from their vehicle,” said a statement from the area bishop after the incident.
Fr Ondari, who died at 33, had been ordained in 2017. At his posting in Kembong, he was working with those displaced in conflict.
He was standing outside his church, meeting refugees, when soldiers entered the church compound at high speed in an army vehicle. As they drove by, they started shooting. As the refugees fled into the church, Cosmas was still outside and was hit in the thigh and chest.
Back home, some priests have been killed in circumstances that touched on matters of the heart or other personal issues.
They include Fr Michael Kyendo, who died in October 2019. He was seen driving before he went missing, and his body was found a week later stuffed in a gunny bag with the throat slit. His body had been buried in a shallow grave. Three suspects were charged over the death, and one of them claimed in court that the priest had been assaulting him.
A few months earlier, Fr Eutycas Murangiri Muthuri, who was based at the Limbine Parish, was stabbed to death in Meru.
The June 2019 murder of the 35-year-old saw two suspects charged, but they were later acquitted.
After the murder, a woman claiming to be in a relationship with the priest came to speak about their relationship, which was published in a local tabloid.
The woman said the priest left a room they had booked that night and never returned.
