How letters define most famous nun who ever preached in Kenya

In a booklet titled Nî Nie, Sr Irene, Gikuyu for It is I, Sr Irene, Italian missionaries paint an interesting picture of a woman named Irene Stefani (1891-1930).

Of particularly interest to the authors is the Catholic nun’s exploits at a small village far away from her birthplace in Italy.

The village is called Gikondi, tucked somewhere in Mukurwe-ini, Nyeri, and this is, in the true sense of the world, Sr Irene’s second home.

In the booklet, first published by the Consolata Missionary Sisters under the title Al Lume di una Lanterna in 1993, and later translated to English in 2002, locals offer personal testimonies regarding the life of Sr Irene, especially towards the end of her short life.

A total of 112 letters, originally written in Gikuyu between 1920 and 1930 by Sr Irene to, or on behalf of, the Gikondi Parish, are featured in the book.

According to a presentation by Sr Gian Paola Mina in the book, these 112 letters are an invaluable sample of over 2,000 others that Sr Irene wrote to keep contact and even pursue her former pupils — the newly baptised Christians — wherever they were; in their homesteads deep in the forest, or in the shacks on the outskirts of Nairobi and Mombasa.

In Sr Irene’s letters, the proclamation of the good news stands out as the key concern, including in business letters written on behalf of someone else.

“There is something else worth underlining,” says Sr Gian. “Quite often her messages, even in rough draft, carried the initials JMJ (Jesus, Mary, Joseph) in the top left-hand corner. Several of her letters started with the typical Christian greeting: Tukumie Yesu Kristo (Let’s Praise Jesus Christ), standing out in her finest handwriting, followed by an outside exclamation mark to bring out the charge of love the invocation carries.”

UNTIDY NOTES, NEAT LETTERS

Sr Gian continues to say that occasionally dots follow the invocation and exclamation-mark, suggesting that the addressee is invited to add, at least mentally and with the same charge of love, the response “for ever and ever” before he or she continues reading. If the letter was addressed to community, all would stand up and express their faith in response to the call of the woman who, in more than one such letter, does not shy from referring to herself as “the mother of their souls”.

Sr Irene, the letters show, fully identified with Gikuyu culture, attitudes and ways of life. She also knew how to use local expressions and proverbs, and her attractive use of vernacular expressions added impact to conventional greetings.

Sr Gian describes the way in which Sr Irene ended her letters with traditional formulas as attractive. Nî Nie, Sr Irene (It’s me, Sr Irene), for instance, conveyed her boundless love and the authority which derived from “her being a woman of God”, as the locals called her.

Sr Irene was also described as being neat. “Her notebooks were untidy, inevitably so, yet she evidently took trouble over the layout of the letters themselves, which are surprisingly and expectedly neat. The priests and teachers from Gikondi to whom photocopies of the letters we have were shown were struck by the neatness, the careful handwriting, without erasure marks or blots.

“Although the paper itself is from exercise books, the edges are straight and there are no strains. The recipient, who may be a stone-cutter, would probably not notice all this care, but Sr Irene’s starting point was that whatever came out of the hands of a missionary teacher contributed to the process of education and had to set a standard even for those who were still completely illiterate,” states Sr Gian in the book. Proper note paper and envelopes carrying a letterhead were available at Gikondi Parish, but these had been preserved for official business or overseas mail.

In the rural areas, post office did not exist and the mail was carried by hand, from mission to mission. The envelopes were recycled from used ones or made on the spot from sheets of paper or exercise book pages.

The fluid dripping from banana-stems was used as glue to seal the envelopes, and either an entrusted person or a reliable parishioner would be given the task of delivering the mail.

Sr Gian states that the letters in Gikuyu witness to Sr Irene’s uncontrollable zeal and remain a unique apostolic record of the activity of the early Consolata Sisters.

DOWN TO BOOTS

“True, we have priceless diaries stored away in our archives, but unlike many of our pioneer Sisters and priests, Sr Irene left no diaries. What has come down to us is the pair of worn-out heavy boots that she wore up and down the hillsides, and the thick cluster of letters and rough drafts prompted by her apostolic drive,” she says.

Seventy decades after her death, last year on June 12, Pope Francis authorised the beatification of Sr Irene, nee Aurelia Giacomina Mercedes.

Sr Irene, now referred to as “venerable” ahead of her beatification in Nyeri tomorrow, is suddenly on the lips of many Catholics. According to the church’s doctrine, a venerable person has of yet no feats day, no churches built on his or her behalf, and the church has made no statement on the person’s probable presence in heaven.

However, according to church officials, prayer cards and other materials may be printed to encourage the faithful to pray for a miracle produced by his or her intercession as a sign of God’s will that the person be canonised.

Catholic Archdiocese of Nyeri priest, Fr Peter Githinji, who has been overseeing preparations for the beatification ceremony, says the remains of Sr Irene, now referred to as relics, will be preserved in the principal church where Sr Irene worked and died.

“In this case, those of Sr Irene will be preserved at Our Lady of Consolata Cathedral in Nyeri town,” says Fr Githinji.

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First missionary port of call was Murang’a, but bad roads made the place unattractive 

Fr John Baptista Kariuki notes that the entry point of the Consolata Missionaries in the region was a place called Tuthu in Murang’a County, through the Gikuyu paramount chief Karuri wa Gakure, who received the first missionaries in his area.

The chief allowed them to stay and even assigned them a Mugumo tree where they conducted their first Mass.

However, the poor road network and topographical state of Tuthu became a great challenge to the missionaries and forced them to move to Mathari area in Nyeri, a flat and a more conducive place from where to evangelise.

A Consolata Missionary Priest based in Mathari, Fr Joseph Gitonga, says the beatification of Sr Irene will also be of great significance to the Consolata congregation, which consists of priests, brothers, sisters, lay missionaries and laity.

“The process is true evidence that there is need to live true to God and the need to extend love to others,” says Fr Gitonga.

The Consolata Missionaries were founded by Joseph Allamano on January 29, 1901 in Turin, Italy, and its first missionaries arrived in Kenya in 1902, when they landed in Mombasa from a ship and travelled to Nairobi and onwards to Murang’a.

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CATHOLICS AND CANONISATION |

Pope John Paul II, the Saint-Making Machine

The number of saints in the Catholic Church is disputed, and the church says it does not really pay attention to numbers.

It is estimated that there about 1,000 canonised people, but the number has been fluctuating as several saints are struck off from the official catalogue of saints and others added.

Ironically, modernity, with all its problems, has seen a surge in the number of canonisation.

This is attributed to the very things that have made the world more secular; communication and science. Pope John Paul II, as conservative as he was, greatly opened up the process.

Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, takes the trophy for having canonised more people than all his 20th century predecessors.

By the time of his death, the immensely popular pope canonised 500 people, earning the moniker The Saint-Making Machine.

Grrrrrr! The unlucky dog who would become St Guinefort

As it were, some early saints were proclaimed so by popular attribution and mostly were martyrs of the church.

Others are said to have been more mythical than real people.

Valentine is one of them! And St Guinefort was not even human, but a French dog! According to folklore, Guinefort was a greyhound that belonged to a Knight in Lyon, France.

The story goes like this: one day the Knight left his child under the care of the dog. On his return, the house was in chaos. Everything was upside down. 

The dog greeted his master, blood all over its head. The baby was nowhere to be seen.

The nobleman knew immediately what had happened. Guinefort had devoured his child! He took a mallet and clobbered the dog to death, threw it outside and returned to the house crying. 

Then he heard the soft murmur of the child under the cot; and a dead cobra (some versions say wolf) lay dead beside the baby.

Guinefort had killed the animal that had tried to kill the child. The knight was filled with remorse. He realised his mistake and was greatly saddened.

He buried the dog, but then the villagers heard of its heroic deeds, and started a devotion that grew into a cult. The myth says sick babies would be taken to the grave and would heal miraculously. Guinefort, the dog, became the patron saint of small children.

The church never recognised it officially as such, though. However, some literature attributes this myth to a misinterpretation of St Christopher, himself presented as dog-faced human being.

Was St Josaphat, Buddha?

Another curious entry in the list of saints is that of St Josaphat, (not to be confused with St Josaphat Kuntsevych). The saint is said to have actually been Buddha himself.

According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, the story of a young man who left his father’s riches and inheritance to live in poverty and dedication to the less fortunate is a Christianised version of one of the legends of Buddha, as even the name Josaphat would seem to show.

This is said to be a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again corrupted from the middle-Persian Budasif (Budsaif, Bodhisattva). Other saints said to have doubtful existence are Barbara, Margret, Alexius, George,  Christopher, Eustance, and Philomena.

Their existences may have entertained medieval minds, and their lives inscribed on in people’s names, churches, and some continue to be invoked in prayers, but they are not historical figures. 

The Catholic Encyclopaedia, though maintaining St Catherine of Alexandria’s historical existence, admits that stories about her “are to be rejected as inventions, pure and simple”.

Catherine was removed from the Church’s liturgical calendar in 1969 — but she was restored by Pope John Paul II in 2002.   

Were it left to some people, we would have a St Julius Nyerere... 

Some modernists demand that the whole attitude towards sainthood be overhauled to reflect modern lifestyle and challenges.

The time has come, they say, to shift the emphasis from the mystical nature of saints to their status as role models.

Others are pressing for a new definition of miracles in the Internet age, while still others point out that the church will really have come of age when people like the former president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, are considered for canonisation. 

... but a St Otunga is a more likely prospect. Amen!

Cardinal Maurice Otunga, former head of the Catholic Church in Kenya, is seen as an appropriate candidate to attain sainthood. However, for the Cardinal, who died in 2003, to be declared a saint, a miracle through prayers offered to God through his name has to happen.

Then after that another miracle will also have to happen for the canonisation process to sainthood to begin.

According to Catholic Archdiocese of Nyeri priest, Fr Peter Githinji, all the miracles have to be investigated, questioned and proven beyond reasonable doubt.

“Once the canonisation process is over and a Blessed Servant of God is declared a Saint and the person’s name is included in the church’s official list of prayers, a day is set aside for a mass to be celebrated in their honour,” says Fr Githinji.

John Cardinal Njue appointed a tribunal in 2009 to collect and investigate the works of Cardinal Otunga while he was in the church ministry.

Among some of the things that the Catholic Church investigates for the process to begin are one’s love, faith, hope, justice, humility, kindness and patience to other people and to God’s work.