How Otunga’s life mirrored Mother Teresa’s

This year marks the 13th anniversary of the death of Maurice Cardinal Otunga, the country’s premier cardinal and the first Kenyan to earn the title Servant of God.

While Otunga’s process makes progress in Rome, Blessed Mother Teresa of Kolkata was declared saint by Pope Francis in an elaborate canonization Mass last Sunday.

Saint Teresa of Kolkata and Servant of God Maurice Otunga have more in common than meets the eye.

They knew one another well and collaborated in several works of mercy.

Each began service in the Church as a teacher: St Teresa instructing girls at a Loreto Convent school in Kolkata and Servant of God Otunga training young boys for the priesthood at St Peter’s Seminary, Kakamega.

The more fundamental similarity, however, is that these servants of the gospel had a deep love for all, with a soft spot for the poor.

And it was not just a theoretical, platonic love. Each took practical steps to touch and change the lives of disadvantaged members of the human family.

St Teresa and Servant of God Otunga partnered in founding the Nyumba ya Wazee in Kasarani, Nairobi.

It is widely known that Mother Teresa requested to leave the Loreto Convent located in a middle-class neighbourhood in order to live in a slum and serve its residents.

She founded the Sisters of Charity to minister to the poorest of the poor.

Her congregation has spread to over 140 countries with a membership of over 4,000 religious sisters.

They have a vigorous presence in Kenya and it was Cardinal Otunga who first invited them to this country.

The ascetical Maurice Otunga was saddened by the plight of people in informal settlements who constitute 60 per cent of urban dwellers.

In the 1990s he collaborated with the Kenyan Government and German development partners in forming the Amani Housing Trust which initiated the Mathare 4A Development Project, one of the first attempts at upgrading informal habitations in Nairobi.

Though faced with great challenges, the experience taught an important moral: it’s not only possible to bring about beneficial change in seemingly hopeless situations such as slums, but it is imperative to make the effort. Problems of urban poverty are not intractable.

SPIRITUAL INDIVIDUALS
Besides his involvement in Mathare 4A, Cardinal Otunga gave invaluable support to Sr Martin Wanjiru of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi who worked in the Kibagare slum, neighbouring the leafy Lavington suburb.

Against the odds, the prelate persuaded the Nairobi City Council not to render the residents of Kibarage homeless by bulldozing their shanty dwellings.

One of the legacies of the cardinal’s efforts and of Sr Wanjiru’s work is St Martin’s School Kibagare — an institution that runs from Pre-Primary through Primary to Secondary with an enrolment of more than 1,000 learners.

Cardinal Otunga believed that the human person is an embodied spirit whose vocation is to finally meet God and see him “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12).

When friends gave Otunga substantial funds in the early 1990s to spend as he wished, he dedicated it all to creating the Resurrection Garden in Karen , a place of singular beauty devoted for prayer and meditation, as a reminder to Kenyans that the destiny of humans is to return to God and live with him for ever.

The cardinal’s choice to invest in a spiritual venture rather than a technological enterprise surprised many.

But that was Maurice Cardinal Otunga. His vision always went beyond the merely human.

Both St Teresa and Servant of God Otunga were deeply spiritual and ascetical, but also fully committed to serving the temporal, earthly needs of persons in their care.

It is for this reason that they cooperated and founded Nyumba ya Wazee.

Mother Teresa personally came from India to see the home established by her Sisters of Charity.

How fitting it was that Maurice Cardinal Otunga lived the final years of his life at the home he helped found.

Announcing a major decision after retirement during Mass at the Holy Family Basilica in 1998, Cardinal Otunga said: “I have opted to live with the people of my riika, my agemates, at Nyumba ya Wazee for the remaining time the Lord wants to grant me.” There was an audible hush in the congregation.

And there he lived five more years among ordinary men and women, sharing the same food, drink, prayer and conversation with his agemates before passing on peacefully at the Mater Hospital in 2003.

Fr Lawrence Njoroge was Cardinal Otunga’s Pro-Secretary from 1981 to 1982. He is a professor of Development Studies and Catholic Chaplain at JKUAT ([email protected])