Young African men begin their journey to missionary priesthood at the Maryknoll house in Nairobi.
By the time Michael Clement was growing up in a Catholic parish in Tanzania founded by Maryknoll priests, the U.S. missioners had long moved on to start new missions. What Clement knew about them he gleaned from dog-eared copies of Maryknoll magazine.
“I saw in those old magazines the charism of people who found Christ in working with the poor,” he says. “I wanted to do that also.”
Clement completed his studies at the diocesan minor seminary, the equivalent of high school, and went on to university. As he approached graduation, his desire to become a priest remained strong. Remembering the old magazines, he sought out Maryknoll and joined a Maryknoll-run clinical pastoral education program at Bugando Hospital in Mwanza. It was his first formal step toward becoming a Maryknoll priest — a vocation once limited to U.S. residents.
“Maryknoll is changing,” Clement says. “What was planted by those missionaries long before I was born is today bearing fruit in Africa.”
Frederick Richard Luhende and Babluu Ekama Kyamba (left, right), make pastoral visits to patients at St. Francis Community Hospital in Nairobi as part of their discernment process to become Maryknoll priests. (Paul Jeffrey/Kenya)
Clement now lives at the Maryknoll Formation House in Nairobi, Kenya, where he and more than a dozen other young African men discern their calling to the priesthood through study, prayer, manual labor and pastoral work ranging from hospital chaplaincy to accompaniment of homeless families. “Decades ago, Maryknoll sent missionaries from the United States to the four corners of the world to proclaim the Gospel to people who hadn’t necessarily heard it,” says Maryknoll Father John Waldrep, director of the Nairobi house. “Now we’re at a different place.”
Clement and five others are part of Maryknoll’s introductory discernment program, while seven other young men at the formation house are further along the path as seminarians. Their next step will be going to Chicago to continue their training. The young men study philosophy for three years at Tangaza University, a Catholic campus in Nairobi that draws students from 45 countries to prepare for religious vocations in a wide variety of Catholic orders and congregations.
Tangaza’s rector, Spiritan Father Patrick Mwania, says that Maryknoll has played a central role in “making Christian faith at home within African culture and traditions.” He speaks from experience: After earning a doctorate in theology in Europe, he returned to his native Kenya and enrolled at the Maryknoll Institute of African Studies, housed at Tangaza.
What he learned there, Father Mwania says, allowed him to see how “theology must take flesh in Africa, with culture being a ground for both good theology and effective pastoral ministry.”
Father Mwania says those who prepare for church vocations at Tangaza will serve a Church that is increasingly lay-oriented and more open to context.
“Instead of that typical hierarchical pyramid where you have the priest at the top and everyone else below, today the Church is celebrating synodality. Small Christian Communities are revitalizing the Church at the grassroots,” he says. “And in encounters with people of other faiths, we are developing values that we all cultivate together.”
Alois Simpilisi, who is discerning a vocation with the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, visits a young patient at St. Francis Community Hospital in Nairobi. Seminarians offer several hours every week in volunteer activities to assist the sick and vulnerable. (Paul Jeffrey/Kenya)
Father Joseph Ouma Oindo, a diocesan priest and research director at Tangaza, helps select and supervise the Maryknoll seminarians studying in Nairobi. “We don’t look just at their academic performance,” he says. “Are they also growing spiritually, participating in the spiritual exercises in the house? Are they growing in the pastoral experience to which they’ve been assigned?”
The men in discernment “must have a love for the people,” he adds. “Are they called to evangelize both the rich and the poor? Can they help unify society? Can they overcome tribalism?”
Father Ouma says he has watched a transition unfold over the last decade, since the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers began to admit candidates from mission sites. “The Maryknoll House was quiet and felt empty. Most of the older Maryknoll priests had retired and gone back to the United States,” he says.
“Then the Africans came in and brought new life with them.” Now, he notes, “There is a new crop of very passionate Maryknoll priests coming up, men who want to take Maryknoll to the next level.”
Maryknoll Father John Waldep, the house director, celebrates the liturgy at the Nairobi House. Ordained in 1990, Father Waldrep has served in Africa for most of his priestly ministry. (Paul Jeffrey/Kenya)
Elwin Majungu Mlimira is another resident of the Nairobi house. He and another seminarian have already finished their three years of discernment and preparation — but are awaiting visas to the United States to continue their studies with the Maryknoll seminary program in Chicago. Like Clement, Mlimira grew up in Tanzania, where he attended a school built by foreign missioners.
“The Maryknoll fathers came from afar to share our struggles, because they saw us as human beings. They came to train local clergy and catechists so we Africans could run our own parishes,” he says. “Once the parish could sustain itself, they moved on to another place. Now it’s time for us Africans to do that.” When Mlimira first approached Maryknoll, he says, the Society was not accepting local prospects. He recalls the impact of seeing Father John Siyumbu — the first African to be ordained a Maryknoll priest — at the altar. “I was there when he came back to Kenya and celebrated his first Mass at home,” Mlimira says. “As I watched him, I knew we are now welcomed.”
That warm welcome is not matched by the U.S. State Department, however. Mlimira and his fellow candidate have each been denied a visa three times. In response, Maryknoll Father Patrick Okok, a Kenyan ordained in 2025, was sent to supervise the waiting candidates in coordination with Maryknoll Father Brian Barrons, rector of the Chicago seminary program, who visits Nairobi several times a year.
For now, the two seminarians take online classes based in Chicago, but they have not given up hope of obtaining visas.
Michael Clement distributes Communication at St. Vincent Pallotti Church. Originally from Tanzania, Clement spends several hours a week at the Nairobi parish acquiring pastoral experience as part of his discernment process. (Paul Jeffrey/Kenya)
Visa applications have grown more expensive and more laborious than in the past, and different rules apply to different nationalities. Kenyans are issued visas that are valid for five years, Father Barrons explains, making it feasible for them to study in Chicago, leave for overseas training and then return to the States. Tanzanians currently cannot get F-1 student visas. Up until a few months ago, they could get another type of visa, he says, but the reentry permit was good for only 90 days, meaning they would have to keep returning to Tanzania.
Despite these challenges, at the Nairobi House, Father Waldrep says he is excited about what the young Africans bring to the Maryknoll family. “These young men from Tanzania and Kenya bring a different dimension to Maryknoll,” he says.
“The Gospel is the same, but how we’re preaching it and who’s preaching it, and the tools that they’re using to preach it, all that has changed,” he says. “That difference is exciting. They bring life, they bring exuberance, they bring a desire to share their faith with people of cultures different from their own. And that is what Maryknoll has always done.”
Featured image: Babluu Ekama Kyamba volunteers in a Nairobi slum with Mama Africa, a service organization, as part of a Maryknoll discernment program for the missionary priesthood. (Paul Jeffrey/Kenya)
