St. Stephen Kairi: our first parish in the Archdiocese of Nairobi
On 2 August 2024, Archbishop Philip Anyolo entrusted St. Stephen Parish, Kairi, in the Mang’u deanery, to the Sons of Divine Providence. It is the Congregation’s first parish in the Archdiocese of Nairobi.
The parish is not new: it was founded in 1997 and served by diocesan clergy for twenty-seven years. What changed in August 2024 was the hands it was placed in. The first Orionine parish priest is Fr. Denis Aoka, with Fr. Martin Kamau; the community counts three priests.
What was received
Kairi is a parish of about 1,800 Catholics and 542 families, with five chapels. It also runs and supervises the parish primary school, where 396 students are enrolled and where the parish priest serves as school director. To receive a parish is to receive its Sunday assembly; to receive its school is to receive its Monday morning as well.
Charity Day 2025
In its first full year, the parish held a Charity Day: back-to-school hampers and mentorship for 50 children of the community. Not a programme — a beginning, in the Orionine grammar of doing the concrete thing that is in front of you.
Why it matters to the Delegation
The Sons of Divine Providence have been present in Nairobi since 1996, when Fr. Giuseppe Vallauri opened the formation house on Langata South Road. But for twenty-eight years the Congregation’s parishes in Kenya lay outside the Archdiocese — in Ngong, in Murang’a, in Meru, in Kisumu. Kairi is the first time the Delegation has been asked to take pastoral care of a parish in the archdiocese where its own mother house stands.
It arrived five months after the Delegation “Our Lady of the Rosary” was erected in Tortona. The timing was not planned. It was received.
Visit St. Stephen Parish, Kairi
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