Kenyans Mourn Slain Priest They ‘Came to Love Very Much’

Amid howls and screams of thousands of mourners, the Rev. John Kaiser was buried Thursday in front of the roughhewn mission church the Minnesota native had built by hand for the people of western Kenya.

With a view of the Serengeti Plain and a few dozen Masai warriors watching from a distance, his congregation mourned the Roman Catholic priest who fought not only for their souls but also for justice.

“I feel very badly offended because he has always assisted my children. He was always very helpful to the congregation,” said Jane Rose Tata, one of Kaiser’s parishioners in Lolgorien, 155 miles west of Nairobi, the capital. “Because of that we came to love him very much.”

Kaiser was killed last week in what many politicians and human rights activists are calling a political assassination. He was found along a highway with a gunshot wound to the head, and police said it was obvious that someone tried to make his death look like a suicide but failed.

Kaiser had made enemies through his human rights work. Last year he was threatened with deportation, and in recent weeks he had received numerous death threats, according to his colleagues.

Local media reports said documents found on Kaiser’s body linked two unidentified Kenyan Cabinet ministers to violent clashes that coincided with national elections between 1992 and 1997. Kaiser intended to hand over the documents to a government commission.

In recent months, several young women in his parish told him they were raped by another Cabinet minister when they were in their early teens, the Rev. James Juma said.

Kaiser introduced the women to the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers, which brought a private prosecution in June against Julius Sunkuli, a minister in the president’s office.

Sunkuli has denied the charges.