Letter from Kenya

Fr. Martin Murnaghan was parish priest of St. Mochta’s parish in Porterstown / Clonsilla from 2000 to 2006. Prior to his work in Dublin 15, Fr. Murnaghan had served with the missions in Africa and always retained a love of that great continent.

During his time in Porterstown, when others would take their annual holidays to rest and recharge their batteries, Fr. Murnaghan used his vacation time to visit missionary colleagues to further assist them in their work.

On his retirement in August 2006, Fr. Murnaghan again travelled to Kenya to assist the Kiltegan Fathers with their missionary duties.

In recent weeks, Kenya has been riven by civil unrest following December’s disputed general election. During that time a number of local residents have contacted Community Voice to express concern about Fr. Murnaghan’s well being.

Community Voice has now received an e-mail from Fr. Murnaghan thanking his former parishioners and well-wishers for their concern and confirming that he is safe and well.


The following is the full text of Fr. Murnaghan’s letter:

Sadly Kenya is now in an awful mess, all within the space of one month.

Today I attended to the funeral of the father of six children, who was dragged from his car, in a town called Molo and killed, in sight of his daughter. I served in Molo parish for five years in the early nineties. For one of those years my assistant was Fr. Michael Kamau, a young man of immense enthusiasm and faith. His biggest problem was an inability to say no, which got him into endless trouble, as he would be expected to be in both ends of the parish at the same time on the same day.

On Friday, I will attend the funeral of Fr. Michael, he also was dragged from his car and brutally murdered.

These are only two of the endless stories of misery and suffering that have befallen this unfortunate country since New Year’s Day.

We are pinning our hopes on the efforts of Kofi Annan and his colleagues to bring the powers that be to their senses. But since there are so many different perspectives on the situation, due to tribalism, there is a real risk of the Balkanisation of Kenya. In African terms Kenya is not a big country, but until the 29th December it did have a high profile and credibility on the continent.

Whatever credibility and strength it had in the international arena is in danger of going up in smoke if this opportunity is ignored or dropped by the powers that be. Based on experience so far one may be forgiven for suspecting that they do not even realise the danger,

Can you imagine the Irish tourism business going up in smoke in the space of a month? On the 1st January, I was the last of five guests to leave a small lodge called the Baringo Club – the place was empty. I suspect it has closed since then, the road to it and three other tourist destinations is blocked by unofficial road blocks.

That is just the story of one small area. The country’s number 1 foreign exchange earner has suffered this catastrophe because of the blindness of a small group of stupid selfish people.

Enough for now.

With best wishes,

Fr. Martin Murnaghan.

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