Angelo D’Agostino, 80; priest founded home in Kenya for children with HIV

Father Angelo D’Agostino, an American Jesuit priest who founded Nyumbani orphanage in Kenya for children with HIV and was an advocate for all of the country’s HIV-infected children, has died. He was 80.

D’Agostino died Monday of a heart attack after being hospitalized at Karen Hospital in Nairobi, according to Erin Melendy, administrator for Nyumbani’s U.S. board of directors.

D’Agostino founded Nyumbani, which means “home” is Swahili, in 1992 in a rented house with three orphaned children in residence.

He had been serving on the board of a local orphanage that received large numbers of HIV-infected children but was not well equipped to take care of them.

“I suggested that a special facility be made available because of their needs,” D’Agostino wrote in a biographic essay posted on www.nyumbani.org, the home’s website. But most board members did not agree with him.

He established Nyumbani soon afterward. It now ranges across five acres with a health clinic, medical laboratory, school and cemetery where the young residents who die of AIDS are buried.

The orphanage can accommodate up to 100 children. Currently, the youngest is 6 months old, the oldest 24 years, Melendy said. The staff of about 76 includes nurses, teachers, cooks and gardeners.

In 1998, as an outreach of the orphanage D’Agostino launched a community service program that supplies medicine, clothing and other needs for HIV-infected children who live in the area.

His latest project, “Nyumbani Village,” in Kitui, Kenya, is set to open within a few weeks, Melendy said. It is a residence for the elderly and their grandchildren.

The AIDS epidemic in Africa has all but wiped out the middle generation of adults who traditionally would take care of both their older parents and their children, Melendy said.

Nyumbani Village allows the older and younger family generations to stay together.

D’Agostino once sued the government of Kenya, when children of Nyumbani were turned away by some local public schools because they had tested positive for HIV.

The judge ruled in D’Agostino’s favor in January 2004, guaranteeing that children with HIV are allowed to attend government schools.

Born Jan. 26, 1926, in Providence, R.I., D’Agostino planned for a career in medicine. He graduated from medical school at Tufts University in Boston.

He joined the Air Force in 1953 and served as chief of urology at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C.

After completing military service in 1955 he joined the Jesuit order and studied psychiatry. He trained at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute from 1962 to 1967. He was ordained a priest in 1966.

Before settling in Kenya, D’Agostino taught psychiatry for several years at Georgetown University and was chief of in-patient services at George Washington University Hospital.

His first job in Africa was as coordinator of a Jesuit Refugee Service Center, in 1981. He had a private practice in psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Nairobi from 1987 until 1990.

When he retired in September, he left Nyumbani with separate boards of directors in Kenya, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. The orphanage is funded primarily through private contributions.

He is survived by a brother, Joseph, of Fairfax, Va., and a sister, Sister Savina, a Catholic nun in the order of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Providence.

Contributions in D’Agostino’s name can be made to Nyumbani USA, c/o Collier Shannon Scott, 3050 K St. N.W. Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20007-5108.

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mary.rourke@latimes.com