Blessed Sister Nyaatha's virtues to live on through education fund

Dedan Kimathi University of Technology Chaplain Dr Donatus Mathenge near Blessed Sister Irene Stefani Nyaatha‘s commemorative plaque at the university grounds. (PHOTO: COURTESY)

Tomorrow, Catholic faithful gather at the Dedan Kimathi University of Technology to mark the first anniversary of beatification of Blessed Sister Irene ‘Nyaatha’ Stefani.

Nyeri Catholic Archbishop Peter Kairo will also launch Blessed Nyaatha Education Sponsorship Fund, to benefit needy students.

The fund has already been started, with the university’s chaplain Father Prof Donatus Mathenge saying members of the public and well wishers will be raising funds to ensure needy students at the university remain in school.

This is the first fund related to the nun who lived in Kenya for 15 years, teaching, treating and preaching to the rural folk of Gikondi, the larger Mukurweini and Mathari areas of Nyeri County.

“We want her spirit of love and instilling knowledge in poor children to live on through the fund. Blessed Nyaatha was a teacher and a nurse and her drive to sharpen the minds of the poor people should not go down the drain,” Father Mathenge said.

The chaplain termed Sister Irene a teacher and nurse who loved people of Gikondi without discrimination. “Blessed Nyaatha’s life was about people, especially the poor and the sick. She paid the ultimate price of death after she contracted a disease as she treated a villager who was sick,” said Mathenge.

The university will also unveil the shrine in remembrance of Blessed Sister Irene at a venue where she was beatified on May 23 last year. The sister was named Nyaatha by residents of Gikondi due to her enduring acts of mercy and compassion to the poor and suffering populations. John Mbuthia Baiye, who died last year after the beatification said the nun loved children so much that during their free time, they would wake up in the morning, to go scavenge for amaranthus and then spend the rest of the day at Gikondi Catholic Parish where Nyaatha lived. “Whenever we found her at home, she would give us sausages and we would spend the rest of the day playing at her compound.

She used to teach us how to recite Catholic Latin recitations which we enjoyed a lot,” Baiye said last year ahead of the beatification.

Nyaatha was born at Anfo in the Province of Brescia on August 22 1891. She was the fifth in a family of 11 children. She lived with her family until she was 20, helping in the upbringing of her siblings after the premature death of her mother. She also worked for the Christian education of the youth in her parish.