Otunga’s road to sainthood begins

• This will be the first time Kenya is hosting the process.
• Canonisation is a ruling regarding the religious adoration of an individual

Catholic faithful who gather in Nairobi this morning to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of the cardinal at the Resurrection Garden in Karen will witness the start of this journey when John Cardinal Njue names the team during mass.

The beginning of the canonisation process is well within the late Pope John Paul II’s direction that there is need to wait for at least five years before one is canonised.

Religious adoration

Canonisation is a ruling regarding the religious adoration of an individual, which may be permissive or perceptive as well as universal or local.

Dr Joseph Afulo Oduor, the principal of Hekima College Chapel, says the canonisation process is long and is led by a team of theologians, whose task is to gather information on the particular person to be canonised and examine how the person lived.

Based on testimonies from those who interacted with the person, the theologians charge whether one deserves to join the sainthood.

“These appointees have to be theologians because they have to know the Church rules on canonisation,” Fr Oduor says.

Devil’s advocate

Ordinarily the work of such a committee is vetted by another team led by the ‘Devil’s Advocate’, whose duty is to gather evidence to deny a candidate sainthood.

The theologians in this category gather all the dirt to show that the person in question does not merit canonisation, says Fr Oduor, adding that the two teams at one point come together to examine the evidence before them.

This will be the first time Kenya is hosting the process. Uganda, Sudan and Congo have undergone it.

And the secretary-general of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, Fr Vincent Wambugu, says that the process can take between five and 50 years or more after a would-be saint’s death.

Usually, he says, a formal request is made to consider a person as saint by people from the candidate’s church and community.

This request is made to the bishop of the diocese where the person died.

The request includes testimony of the person’s exceptional virtue and dedication to God. The bishop then decides whether the evidence is compelling enough to take it to Rome.

If so, he asks the Congregation for the Causes of Saints for permission to open the cause.

If permission is granted, that is when the bishop opens a tribunal and calls witnesses to attest to the quality of the person’s public life.