When a Shepherd Opens Doors: Kenyan Catholic Sister Reflects on Enduring Legacy of Bishop Sulumeti

Tracing her own journey back to a modest two-classroom school that Bishop Sulumeti insisted on building for vulnerable girls, Sr. Lando raises a story of compassion that rises like incense from a quiet corner of a Catholic Convent. In her remembrance, she paints the portrait of a shepherd after the heart of Jesus Christ – a shepherd who never stopped showing up: across years, across continents, and across every season of her life.

A moment that travelled across continents

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

Sr. Lando still recalls with warmth the August 2022 moment that caught her off guard while she was thousands of miles away on official duty in Gold Coast, Australia. The Nairobi-based Sister remembers her phone “buzzing nonstop. Call after call, message after message, in the wee hours of the morning.” Her first instinct was fear; something terrible must have happened back home.

But then a friend clarified what the commotion was all about: “You’ve been mentioned at Kakamega Bukhungu Stadium, in the Bishop’s speech, for the great impact you are making in education.” It was the Episcopal Golden Jubilee celebration of Bishop Sulumeti, who started his Episcopal Ministry in August 1972 as Auxiliary Bishop of the then Catholic Diocese of Kisumu.

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

When Sr. Lando heard this, she sat up in awe. In her words, “Bishop, I was humbled beyond words. That you remembered me, that you spoke my name during your Golden Jubilee celebration!” For her, the moment felt like life completing a circle – because none of that recognition, she insists, “would have ever happened if you hadn’t held my hand all those years ago.”

The birth of a new school – and a lifeline

Sr. Lando traces the beginning of that journey to her father, whom she describes as “mwalimu (teacher) choirmaster and devout Catholic”, a man who valued education deeply and had promised to take her to the best high school if she earned the grades. She did. But the family could not afford the prestigious provincial schools to which she had been admitted.

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

Her father proposed an alternative: a brand-new day school run by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (SNDdeN). She recalls him telling her, “This school is good… I know you will like studying there… And the fees is not so high.” With only two classrooms at the time, the school did not resemble the dream Sr. Lando had worked for. “My first day… was not joyous,” she admits.

But the Sisters encouraged the girls, telling them that “Bishop Sulumeti was building the school… to cater for the education of vulnerable girls from financially challenged families.” The school would be named Bishop Sulumeti Girls High School, “our lifeline,” as she calls it in her reflection shared with ACI Africa on November 21.

Every week for four years, the students “saw” Bishop Sulumeti as he personally supervised construction at the school. He often arrived accompanied by “a beautiful, tall and slender sister… in neatly ironed grey habit,” Sr. Lando recalled, referring to Bishop Sulumeti’s biological sister, Sr. Philippa Sulumeti of the SMK who she says is an educator in her own right.

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

These visits offered lessons deeper than brick and mortar. Sr. Lando observes that great work requires collaborators, and notes in her reflection, “I learnt from you, Bishop Sulumeti, that I need significant others to complement my good work.” His concern for excellence was uncompromising. The SMK member recalls vividly the day “he ordered the contractor to demolish a poorly built classroom and rebuild it.” To her, this was not wasteful; it was dignity.

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A Catholic Bishop who formed hearts, not just schools

True to her father’s promise, the school created a work-study program: tending gardens, cleaning the grounds, learning responsibility. And Sr. Lando testifies with gratitude, “None of the girls was ever sent home for school fees.” Bishop Sulumeti’s vision for education was not transactional; it was pastoral, she affirms with gratitude.

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

Bishop Sulumeti’s fatherly care continued into Sr. Lando’s adulthood. During her university years at DU, Bishop Sulumeti visited her three times to “check on me and strengthen my Catholic faith in a non-Catholic environment.”

One of her most emotional memories comes from Rome during her doctoral studies. Exhausted and hungry after a long day, she prepared to rest when an intercom message summoned her downstairs: “Scendi subito! Hai un ospite (Come down! You have a guest).” There she found him, waiting quietly. When she entered, immediately she saw Bishop Sulumeti, he “stood up, gave me a hug and said, ‘I’ve come to check on you.’” She cried, knowing what that gesture meant.

Sr. Lando with Sr. Beatrice Muchesia, her classmate and best friend at SMK. 

On each of his three visits to Rome, he asked her to gather all Kenyan Clergy and women and men Religious for dinner – memorable evenings at the Vatican Chinese Restaurant, where “we ate and drank to our fill without counting the cost because you always paid the bill for all.” Upon returning home, Bishop Sulumeti would share during parish celebrations that “he had been in Rome and visited Sr. Lando and that she was doing well.”

“Who does that?” she asks, answering her own question: “Only someone whose calling is more than a role.”

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

A legacy written in lives

Reflecting on her life, Sr. Lando writes in her reflection shared with ACI Africa in reference to late Bishop Sulumeti, “I am who I am today because of the two classrooms at Bishop Sulumeti Girls High School… because you knew that education would open doors for such girls.” Today, graduates of that modest school are “scattered across the globe, touching hearts and transforming lives,” evidence of a shepherd who believed in the potential of every child.

Credit: Courtesy photos: Sr. Prof. Lucy Agnes Lando, SMK/Kenya

“Our lives carry your fingerprints,” Sr. Lando affirms, adding, “We stand tall today, because you lifted us.”

As the people of God commend Bishop Sulumeti to God, Sr. Lando appeals to late Bishop Sulumeti, “Pray for us that having received the light and love of God from you, we may, like you, have the grace to open a door for someone who believes it is locked.”

She concludes her reflection by recalling the words of St. Paul VI: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers…” Bishop Sulumeti, Sr. Lando insists, was both for 59 years as a Priest and 53 years as Bishop, a witness who lived his vocation to the full.

“May the good Lord, whom you faithfully served here on earth, grant you eternal rest with Him in heaven. Amen!” Sr. Lando implores in her reflection shared with ACI Africa on November 21.