The Feast of St. Luigi Orione becomes service to the poor in Nyadorera
There are many ways to celebrate a saint. In Nyadorera, in Siaya County, the community of St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish chose the one the Founder himself would probably have chosen: they opened the gate and served whoever came.
More than 800 people were welcomed in a single day. Food was served. A medical team saw patients. Lawyers gave free legal advice to people who would never otherwise reach a lawyer’s office. Counsellors sat and listened. Barbers cut hair. Clothes were given out. Priests heard confessions for as long as there were people waiting.
“Do good always, to all; evil to none.”
St. Luigi OrioneNyadorera is one of the poorest territories the Delegation serves — a stretch of country near Lake Victoria and the Ugandan border where Luo and Abaluhya families live side by side, and where many young men still earn their living harvesting sand from the riverbeds. For a whole day, the parish compound became a place where none of that had to be explained or justified in order to be helped.
Why the feast is kept this way
St. Luigi Orione died on 12 March 1940 and was canonized on 16 May 2004. His feast is kept in May — and the Sons of Divine Providence have long held that the proper way to honour a man who spent his life among the abandoned is not with speeches about him but with charity done in front of him.
The parish community, present in Nyadorera since December 2021 and inaugurated on 20 September 2022, is made up of four religious. Around them work the catechists, the teachers of St. Rose of Lima Academy and the farmers of the parish agricultural project. On the day of the feast, all of them were serving at the same tables.
“Water is life, work and dignity” is a phrase used often across the Delegation. In Nyadorera on the feast of the Founder, dignity looked like a hot meal, a doctor who had time, and someone to explain what a legal document meant.
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Visit St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish, Nyadorera
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