Mill Hill Missionaries celebrate 100 years in Kenya

Source: CISA

This year, the Mill Hill Missionaries are celebrating 100 years of their presence and apostolate in Kenya.

To mark the occasion, a series of events have been planned in various parts of the country. Tomorrow there will be a celebration of the Eucharist at the Holy Family Basilica, Nairobi, starting at 10am presided over by Most Rev Raphael Ndingi, mwana Nzeki, Archbishop of Nairobi.

There will be a symposium for the laity on Sunday at Kibuye Cathedral Hall, Kisumu. On March 19, the Solemnity of St Joseph, there will be a Eucharistic celebration at Kibuye Cathedral in Kisumu at 11am. That afternoon's program will include the unveiling of the memorial at St Joseph's Parish Milimani in Kisumu and a reception.

A youth rally is scheduled for March 22, at Tumsifu Centre.

The Mill Hill Missionaries congregation in England in the 1860s by Fr Herbert Vaughan, who later became cardinal.

Fr Vaughan started the College for Foreign Missions at Halcombe House, Mill Hill on March 19, 1866. Besides priests, Mill Hill also has a sisters' congregation, the Franciscan Missionaries of St Joseph, also known as Mill Hill Sisters. They were founded in 1883 by Alice Ingham and Herbert Vaughan. These are closely associated with the male congregation, alongside whom they often work. The missionaries began working in what is now Kenya in 1895 and were officially established in 1903. They founded and still serve many parishes, schools, colleges, hospitals and community projects throughout the country.

Several Mill Hill Missionaries have given their lives in the course of their work. Most recently Fr Declan O'Toole MHM was killed in Uganda on March 21, 2002) and Fr John Kaiser MHM was killed on August 24, 2000.

Archive story February 2003