Time to Look Inward for Funds as Oldest Missionary Congregation in Kenya Rallies for Support to Form Future Priests

Credit: ACI Africa

Fr. Omwoyo said that Priestly formation in the Spiritan Congregation was initially funded by early missionaries, most of them Irish and French, who were supported by their networks abroad. But with time, the numbers of these foreign missionaries started dwindling. Some died while the rest retired and went back to their respective native countries.

The Congregation’s governance structure would also later be decentralized, requiring each circumscription to take care of its own training and formation of candidates.

Credit: ACI Africa

For the Spiritans in the Province of Kenya and South Sudan, annual Family Day collections at St. Austin’s Msongari Parish would cover some of the formation expenses. But annual fundraisers could only cover part of the formation, Fr. Omwoyo said, adding that the Congregation has always been in debt at the institutions, where its Seminarians are enrolled for studies.

“We had many Irish missionaries here, and they had donor support from their networks. The system was centralized. But today, each province takes care of its own formation and training of missionaries. This prompted us to devise strategies to support the formation of future missionaries for the province of Kenya and South Sudan,” Fr. Omwoyo said in the April 25 interview with ACI Africa.

Credit: ACI Africa

“We have a lot of work to do as Spiritans, but we don’t have enough Priests. It is frustrating then, when we have to turn away qualified candidates for Priestly formation because we don’t have the funds to train them,” he said, adding that owing to the lack of personnel, the Congregation has been forced to close some of its missions.

Fr. Omwoyo described Priestly training and Religious formation as a costly endeavour and explained that the duration of formation of a member of the Congregation is between 10 and 12 years.

“Currently, the Province of Kenya and South Sudan has more than 50 Seminarians in different stages of formation. The annual budget for each Seminarian is approximately USD 4,500. This has posed a great challenge to the administration over the years,” he said. 

Credit: ACI Africa

Fr. Omwoyo went on to outline the different stages of Priestly training and Religious formation, including a year of Postulancy, three years of Philosophy, a year of Novitiate, some four years of Theology and finally the Missionary Pastoral Experience. “All these stages have different expenses, but the most expensive stage is Theology which takes up to 4,500 USD in a year,” he said.

“Seminarians go to university where some study up to Masters, and we pay their tuition fee as well as accommodation,” the Vice Provincial Superior of Spiritans in Kenya and South Sudan, who doubles as the Councillor for formation explained.

Credit: ACI Africa

He said that owing to financial constraints, the Spiritan Province of Kenya and South Sudan is in debt in the various institutions, where the Seminarians are currently enrolled.

(Story continues below)

The April 25 dinner was part of an array of initiatives lined up to grow the Spiritan Formation Endowment Fund, an initiative that seeks to provide long-term sustenance of the training and formation of candidates to the 322-year-old Missionary Congregation.

Established by the Nairobi-based Spiritan governing council in May 2024, the fund is also expected to contribute to the long-term sustenance of specialized studies, as well as the retirement of Spiritans in the Province of Kenya and South Sudan.

Dr. AnnMary Nkirote, a Nairobi-based advocate, is the designated chairperson of the fund that has a Board of Management (BoM) made up of four Spiritans and three lay people.

Credit: ACI Africa

One of Dr. Nkirote’s roles was to help the Spiritans on the BoM to understand the different endowment funds out there, and to settle on a fund that they thought would be free of abuse or misappropriation.

The fund’s policy, which Dr. Nkirote developed indicates who the owner of the fund is, its objectives, how it will be grown, and how it will be used to achieve its objectives.

“An endowment fund relies largely on the support of donors. We had to look for some people of goodwill to put in the initial amount of money,” Dr. Nkirote told ACI Africa at the April 25 fundraising dinner, and added, “The challenge now is to build it.”

Credit: ACI Africa

“In this dinner, we are looking to see if we can raise some money that can sustain the ongoing formation of Seminarians for at least one year. We are going to have continuous fundraising,” Dr. Nkirote, who is volunteering at the said.

She continued, “The responsibility of growing this endowment fund lies with us. It is us Kenyans who believe in the work of the Spiritans, and who would like to support the growth of vocations among the Spiritans that will ensure that the fund grows.”

Since its establishment in May 2024, the fund has accumulated a seed investment of KSh5.9 million (US$45,200.00). The target is to grow the fund to KSh100 million ($767,000.00) within five years. This year’s target is KSh20 million ($153,300.00).

Credit: ACI Africa

At the end of the projected five years, the US$767,000.00 that will have been raised will be channelled into interest earning investments such as treasury bills and money markets.

Dr. Nkirote said that should the interest earned be enough to sustain the monthly training and formation of Spiritan Seminarians, the fund’s goal will have been achieved. “At such a point, we’ll stop these dinners and other fundraising initiatives because the fund will be earning us enough money to meet formation objectives,” she explained.

Fr. Omwoyo, the Vice Provincial of the Spiritans in Kenya, who doubles as the Assistant Parish Priest of St. Austin’s Msongari Parish, described the endowment fund as “a sustainable strategy” compared to the annual fundraisers.

Credit: ACI Africa

His sentiments were echoed by Fr. George Omondi, the Parish Priest of St. Austin’s Msongari Parish, who in his appeal for the support of the Spiritan initiative, said, “The time has come for the lay people to understand that we really need their support. We need their expertise in coming up with sustainable initiatives so that we don’t have to keep organizing for fundraising activities every year.”

“We are happy that we have been introduced to a type of fund that will earn us interest if we grow it very well, especially in these initial five years,” Fr. Omondi said.

The Kenyan Spiritan Priest underlined the need to grow vocations within the Missionary Congregation, saying, “I am no longer a young person, and with time, I will need someone younger to carry on with my work of evangelization.”

Credit: ACI Africa

“It is time to look inwards for funds,” Fr. Omondi emphasized, and added, “We are already sending missionaries to places that evangelized us. Many of us from Kenya are working in places such as Europe, in Oceania, in America, and in Asia. There is also a big number of African Spiritans now working in Australia where the Superior is Kenyan.”

He said that many regions in Europe now have Africans as their Superiors as more and more missionaries from Africa take up leadership roles in various parts of the world. “We therefore need more missionaries to be prepared for that kind of mission,” the Priest in Charge of St. Austin’s Msongari said.

In his appeal for support, the Provincial Superior of Spiritans in Kenya and South Sudan, Fr. Fredrick Elima Wafula, outlined the Spiritans’ desire to venture more into territories, where missionaries are needed the most, and underscored the need to train more Priests for the ministry.

Fr. Fredrick Elima Wafula. Credit: ACI Africa

“The Congregation’s mission is clear. To go where it is most needed. There are so many Dioceses on the peripheries still calling us to attend to them,” Fr. Wafula told ACI Africa, and added, “We cannot venture into new mission areas when sustainability, in terms of personnel, is not assured.”

“It is critical for us therefore to strengthen our formation programs and have more personnel being formed to meet those needs,” the Provincial Superior of Spiritans in Kenya and South Sudan said during the April 25 interview.

There were 2,714 Spiritans present in some 60 countries across the globe as at 30 April 2024 statistics of the Congregation. 

Credit: ACI Africa

Over the years, the Congregation’s membership has undergone a “significant demographic shift” from the Northern hemisphere. For every 10 Spiritans, seven “come from 25 circumscriptions in Africa”, comprising 1,906 members (70.23%), Fr. Alain Mayama, the first African Spiritan Superior General, said in his Pentecost 2024 Message.

Fr. Mayama added, “Perhaps more striking is the fact that of the 532 professed scholastics, 480 come from Africa (90.23%); 1 from Europe (0.19%), 10 from the Indian Ocean (1.88%); 1 from North America (0.38%); 9 from South America (1.69%); 8 from the Caribbean (1.50%); 22 from Asia (4.14%)” and none from Oceania.

ACI Africa’s Editor-in-Chief, Fr. Don Bosco Onyalla, is a member of the Spiritans.