Marsabit Diocese honours its founding shepherd, Bishop Charles Maria Cavallera.

By Silvio Nangori

Bishop Cavallera Girls gathered today for a special feast day celebration, marked by a Holy Mass presided over by the Bishop of Marsabit, Rt. Rev. Peter Kihara Kariuki, I.M.C., in honour of the diocese’s founding shepherd, Bishop Charles (Carlo) Maria Cavallera.

In his homily, Bishop Kihara reflected on the day’s Gospel image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, urging Church leaders to embody that same spirit of care in their own ministries  whether in schools, in tending to the most vulnerable, or in the everyday work of the diocese. He said the Church’s leadership today is called to mirror Christ’s example, watching over those entrusted to it just as a parent watches over a child.

The celebration, he explained, was also an act of remembrance  a way of “immortalising” those who laid the Church’s foundations before passing on. Recalling the words of the prophet Ezekiel from the day’s first reading, in which God promises to search for his scattered sheep and bring them home, Bishop Kihara said this promise found its fulfilment in Bishop Cavallera’s own mission to northern Kenya.

Bishop Cavallera arrived in the region in 1947, when Marsabit still fell under the jurisdiction of Nyeri. Bishop Kihara noted that Cavallera had prayed for missionaries who had been sent to South Africa during wartime to return safely to Kenya, and that his ministry was driven by a deep concern for the poor, the sick, and the burdened  bringing them, in his words, “the consolation of God.”

Addressing the congreganta, Bishop Kihara reminded the faithful that every state of life religious, married, or lay carries a shared call to serve alongside Christ. He thanked visitors who had travelled from afar to take part in the celebration, describing their presence as itself a form of the assistance Jesus asks all his followers to offer one another.

The bishop went on to trace Cavallera’s remarkable path of service seventeen years of missionary work in Nyeri, followed by seventeen more in Marsabit, before he retired at the age of seventy-two, worn out but faithful to the end.

The Catholic Diocese of Marsabit paid tribute to Bishop Cavallera as one of the missionaries whose name is “deeply woven into the history of the Church in Northern Kenya.” Born in Italy on 8 January 1909, he was ordained a priest of the Consolata Missionaries in 1931.

After years of missionary service in Kenya, he was appointed the first Bishop of Marsabit on 25 November 1964, following the establishment of the Diocese. He served as bishop for 17 years, until 1981. His years in Marsabit were among the formative years of the young Diocese. In a vast region characterised by difficult terrain and widely dispersed pastoralist communities, Bishop Cavallera and the missionaries of his time worked to establish and strengthen the foundations of the local Church.

Mission stations such as North Horr and Loiyangalani became important centres of pastoral outreach, while the Church’s mission increasingly embraced education, human development and service to communities. Today, his name is not merely found in the history books it lives on in the institutions that continue to serve the people of Marsabit.

One of the most visible reminders is Bishop Cavallera Girls Secondary School in Karare, a girls’ boarding school that continues the work of investing in education and the formation of young women in Northern Kenya. The school carries the name of the pioneer bishop whose missionary service helped lay the foundations of the Diocese.

Today’s celebration is, in many ways, a fitting tribute: a new generation of girls gathering under the name of the missionary who helped establish the Church in this vast part of Kenya.