“Go to them”: Apostolic Nuncio in Kenya Urges New Deacons to Serve the Troubled, Abandoned

Homabay, 18 May, 2023 / 9:40 pm (ACI Africa).

The representative of the Holy Father in Kenya has urged the new Deacons he ordained on Thursday, May 18 in Kenya’s Homa Bay Diocese to reach out to “the troubled” and “the abandoned” during their Diaconate Ministry.

“The Church needs to be in those places where most of the pain is,” Archbishop Hubertus van Megen said, and highlighted hospitals, “families where they have lost their loved ones … where men and women are struggling, not able to keep their marriage together” as some of the situations that need the presence and action of Deacons.

Archbishop Hubertus van Megen,Bishop Michael Cornelius Otieno Odiwa in procession during the 18 May 2023 Diaconate Ordination Mass. Credit: Fr. Joshua Mege/Arise Communications Network

“You have to go to them. Visit them at home, visit them in hospitals, visit them when there is death in the families, when they are sick, when there is somebody in prison; visit the old people, be with children so that in the evening when you go to bed and look back at your day, you have something to give to Him and you can tell Him Lord, this is what I give today,” Archbishop van Megen emphasized, and added, “This is where God is calling us to be.”

The Apostolic Nuncio in Kenya and South Sudan who was presiding over the Diaconate ordination of five Seminarians belonging to Homa Bay Diocese, and two members of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ (Passionists) also blessed the foundation stone for Holy Trinity Cathedral, a new Cathedral for the Kenyan Diocese with a sitting capacity of 3,000 worshippers.