Catholic Priest Shares His Journey to Quit Smoking and Get Married: ‘I Now Have 3 Children’

• Father Edwin Waiguru has shared his internal conflict as a Roman Catholic priest while out of the county.
• After years of preaching in North and South America, Waiguru felt a strong desire to marry and start a family.
• Returning to Kenya during the COVID-19 pandemic, he married Margaret Wanjira Githui and the two are blessed with three children.
• Chuka Catholic Church priest Denis Mutembei told TUKO.co.ke that Reformed Catholics are a group that has excommunicated itself from the Church.

Father Edwin Waiguru from Gathigi, Kiambu County, has narrated how he stopped being a priest in the Roman Catholic Church after deciding to get married and have children.

Waiguru noted that he began his journey to the priesthood at a young age, attending a missionary school for his primary education before heading to the seminary for his secondary education.

The priest said his main path to the priesthood was in different seminaries across the country, where he studied spirituality, philosophy and theology.

He earned two degrees and a certificate in spirituality, which he says took him nine years, noting he started in 2003 and finished in 2012.

“I started the main journey to the priesthood, I did spirituality in Nakuru at a seminary called St Mary’s Molo, philosophy at St Augustine in Bungoma and completed theology in Eldoret at St Mathias Mulumba ” he said in a Citizen TV report.

Kiambu Catholic priest resigns

Furthermore, Waiguru explained that he has not abandoned his service to God. He only stopped being a Catholic priest because they don’t allow priests to marry.

“I trained in the Roman Catholic Church, which has a rite of not marrying. Only the Roman Catholic Church has the discipline of celibacy,” he explained.

The priest said he went to Rome and served as a missionary in the United States before moving to Haiti, where his desire to marry was born.

“It was a mystery to me how things worked out because, after finishing my studies, I went abroad, to Rome and as a missionary in the United States, before my superior sent me in Haiti,” he said.

“Things started to change when I was in Haiti because I introduced myself as a Roman priest and I’m a black man, so I wondered if I was Roman or African. A true African should have a family, a wife and children; that’s where it all started,” he added.

He then moved to the United States, shared his desires with his superior and began to explore and learn.

Father Edwin Waiguru gets married

The former Roman Catholic priest said he met his lovely wife, Margaret Wanjira, when he returned to Kenya in 2020.

According to him, the reception was not as he had expected because the villagers saw him as someone who brought COVID-19 rather than a priest who had defected.

“I came back during COVID-19, and that’s when I met my lovely wife. At that time, people were afraid of catching the disease; there was social distancing and no greetings. People in my village considered me as someone who had arrived with COVID-19 and not as a priest who had left the church,” he explained.

Waiguru explained that he had moved in with his wife and they were expecting their first child once the COVID-19 pandemic was over.

“I already had my family, my wife was pregnant and everyone was happy. We called both of our families and we had a beautiful church wedding,” he said.

The father-of-three said he had a traditional wedding ceremony and was also ordained as a Catholic charismatic priest on the same day.

“I was ordained as a charismatic priest again and made my marriage official. God has blessed us with three children and I also serve God as a priest,” he added.

He also noted that he still serves God in the Catholic Church but differs only on the sacrament of marriage.

Catholic priest from Chuka describes charismatic Catholic

TUKO.co.ke spoke with Father Denis Mutembei of the Chuka Catholic Church, who said charismatic Catholics were splinter groups from the Roman Church.

“There is nothing like a charismatic Catholic priest. What they have are these splinter groups that call themselves Reformed Catholics. They do not depend on the Catholics of Rome,” Mutembei said.

The priest explained that Reformed Catholics are a group that has excommunicated itself from the Church for various reasons.

“As soon as you leave the Roman Catholic regime, you are no longer under the pontiff. They do not depend on the Pope but operate independently.

“Even in Church history, we have had problems with people defecting to their own churches, making different names for themselves. In short, it is like any other Protestant church, which perhaps feels at odds with one or two disciplines and is not comfortable, so it lives,” he said.

Catholic bishop urges men to return to family roles

In other news, TUKO.co.ke reported that Catholic Bishop Joseph Mbatia has called on Kenyan men to return to their traditional role as head of household.

He emphasized that being a father is a valuable role that requires commitment, work and sacrifice that will guide and care for the family.

At the Catholic Men’s Association’s annual day of prayer, an official said men would honor their duties at church and at home.

Edited by Asher Omondi, current affairs journalist and editor at TUKO.co.ke.

Source: TUKO.co.ke