Utterly inconsolable but vowing to fight on, Dr William Charles Fryda, the American missionary who co-founded St Mary's Mission Hospital now walks like a wounded lion. He can hardly believe that the work he did with others to grow the reputation of St Mary's as one of the most affordable hospitals in the country serving the poor has turned into dust amidst a protracted battle for control, that laid bare the greed and deceit within the Catholic Church. In the end, the tussle characterized by ugly public spats, embarrassing fits of rage and court cases ended up in a pyrrhic victory of sorts with no winners. Bill, as he is fondly known not only lost a battle of his lifetime, he also lost a spiritual and a legal fight that left his persona mortally punctured. He is now a priest who cannot preach and a cancer doctor without a hospital or patients to treat. His beard is greying, perhaps a little faster than his age. The brave face he puts up as he meets strangers cannot fully cover the thick cloud of hopelessness that surrounds him. But he is not defeated. He is not done fighting, at least not yet. “It is not over,” he says from his house in Naivasha but asks not to be asked to comment on the aftermath of the legal battle. Well-wishers are helping him fund-raise for the next phase of the battle. His bitter rivals, nuns and also members of the Catholic Church that defrocked him and later defeated him in court, have put up three more layers of building blocks on a perimeter wall that separates his home from the St Mary’s Missions Hospital along Nakuru-Naivasha highway. The hospital is one of the two institutions that he and a catholic order of nuns fought for, each demanding total control. The wall has effectively blocked his view from the hospital he founded. At its peak, it was serving nearly 350,000 patients a year, majority of whom from the low income settlements. The hospital in its hey days was charging between Sh5000 to Sh7000 for a Caesarean section. This same procedure costs over Sh100,000 in most private hospitals.
“Our model was to be inexpensive. But not poor quality.”
Fryda is the main protagonist in a brutal property fight that has placed the Catholic Church’s teachings on humility, greed, and raw accumulation of material wealth to test. But the biggest puzzle is why a priest or a nun would go against the preaching of Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church to fight over property. More puzzling, even to the judge who presided over the battle was the fact that the property they were fighting over was majorly funded by donors and they were mere caretakers. Worse still, they were irreconcilable in the fight described by the church itself as a ‘public scandal.’ The judge would wonder how members of the church, would not take an out of court settlement, forgive each other and move on, in line with the principles of the church. “I must say that I was rather taken aback that the parties herein could not agree, even to an attempt to resolve their dispute out of court, despite my continued encouragement and cajoling that they pursue this path,” Judge Munyao Sila, who presided over the feud notes in his 121 paged judgement.
“Regrettably, my efforts on this came to naught. It is a high time that the parties considered pursuing out of court remedies which bring satisfaction to both parties, especially where they have unique relationships such as the one in this case,” Munyao added. This way, there will be a win-win situation, unlike a court process, where usually the winner take all scenario ends up being the result. He would also be shocked at the lies that were presented before him in court from the clergy. “On my part, I think both parties were not entirely honest on the input that the other had in the initialization of the hospital. I say this with a heavy heart, given that both parties profess the Christian religion, and are both persons within the church pecking order,” Judge Munyao observed. A priest is supposed to live a simple life. In the Catholic Church, he is not supposed to receive a salary for their work. Instead, he is given what is known as the ‘viatique’, which is a stipend for maintenance. For those who do jobs that should attract salaries, their money is collected and turned over to their congregation. In this case for Fryda, it is the Maryknoll Fathers.
On their part, nuns dedicate their lives and talents to serve the communities they live in. Just like priests, they live in convents and are it is not common for them to own any property. For a hospital that was serving nearly 1000 patients a day, it is impossible to miss how the fight has taken its toll on its operations and reputation. The car park in Naivasha was virtually empty when we visited. Hardly no patients had checked in. In Nairobi, which seems to be picking up its pieces, the lines of hundreds of patients that characterised the hospital are now shorter. There are more and more empty waiting benches. Security guards say they are serving fewer people than they did a couple of months ago. At the heart of the battle is the ownership of four properties. Two of these properties are situated in Lang’ata in Nairobi. The third property is in Elementaita, which was donated, while the fourth is in Sagana. This story is pieced together from the court documents and testimonies in court that helped the judge to rule that Dr Fryda had no place at the St Mary’s Mission Hospital table.
Dr Fryda arrived in Kenya in 1991.
He is an American citizen and a catholic connected with the order of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers. This order of catholic priests do not take vows of poverty but take vows of chastity and obedience to religious matters. “I came from cowboy land in the states. My dad was a cowboy and my mum was a standard six teacher. They were poor. I was in class six before I learnt that most people don’t take a bath in a cow tank,” Fryda says. “We didn’t have money, but I never felt poor.”
He graduated as a medical doctor from Baylor University in Houston, Texas. Before he landed in Kenya, he specialised in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic. At the clinic, he narrowed down his specialisation further to haematology-a branch of medicine involving study and treatment of the blood. He was ordained as a catholic priest in 1988. By the time he landed in Kenya, he had worked as a missionary in Nigeria, and Haiti where he was engaged with Mother Teresa Sisters in Port Au Prince. His tour of duty had also seen him spent time in Guatemala. He had also volunteered as a missionary in Bukoba, Tanzania as a lay mission volunteer. These should have prepared him for his mission in Kenya, one that has been the most painful for his illustrious career. Before St Mary’s was born, he was attached to the Nazareth Hospital in Limuru, which was managed by the Consolata group-an Italian religious order. But he says his experience saw him frown upon the model where nuns ran hospitals like a high school despite growing resistance from trained local medical personnel who never wished to spend their career under the supervision of nuns. This was what inspired the St Mary’s dream. Dr Fryda started looking for land in Nairobi in 1998. Specifically, the land he sought was for catering for the poor. With the help of Mr Ramesh Shah, described as a businessman and philanthropist is court papers, he found two parcels in Nairobi’s Lang’ata area, which he says he bought for Sh38million. He instructed his lawyer to register the properties under the name of the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi (ASN), move that became his single biggest mistake.
“He needed a place where the land could be held before his company was incorporated and he thought that he could trust the Assumption Sisters,” the judgement reads in part. “He had trusted them with smaller things, such as a Sh5million advance the sisters needed to buy some land, when the deal fell through they gave it back so he believed that he could trust them with bigger things.” His plan was to get a company registered in whose name these properties would be transferred. But because the company had not yet been registered at the time of the purchase, he pleaded with the Assumption Sisters in Nairobi, a catholic order, to register the land in their name. He says the deal was to transfer the land to the company once it was registered and using the nuns was just a stop gap measure. Fryda says he started developing these parcels using his own money and what he solicited from friends. He sunk Sh553million in developing these parcels of land in Lang’ata. He later got the Elementaita land and put up another hospital at a cost of Sh365million. He also purchased another property in Sagana at a cost of Sh4.8million. He operated these two hospitals while awaiting the Assumption Sisters to transfer these parcels of land as earlier agreed. Fryda would in the beginning receive money directly into a personal mission account from donors. The money would first be deposited into a mission account in New York and then transferred to his personal mission account in Nairobi.
This money was meant for mission work only. It is from this account, he says that money to buy the land came from. The land was to be held by the Catholic Church. But he was not comfortable with this position, hence the move to approach the Assumption Sisters. He hoped they would hand it to the company. His first contact with the nuns was when he heard that they were taking over Nazareth hospital in 1997. Since he had been there, he offered to assist them set up shop. The nuns gave him a residence at their premise from where he offered them free medical care. He also doubled up as a chaplain then. It was while he was living here that the Assumption Sisters say they helped conceptualize the idea St Mary’s. But he would hear none of this in court. Retired Bishop Ndingi Mwana a’Nzeki gave his support for the hospital and wrote a letter for Fryda to use to seek funds from the Vatican. This set the pace for fundraising and building of the hospital. In his words, all the money used to purchase the properties came from himself (his own money) and his donors. According to him, the nuns did not contribute a single penny. He oversaw the design of the buildings and the layout. In his own words, he put together ‘every little detail.’ He tendered the construction work to Kilimanjaro Construction and the architectural work to one Andrew Gremley. He signed the contracts with the professionals and paid them. The first account of the hospital was opened in 1998 before the company was formed. It was held at Barclays Bank. It had three signatories but Dr Fryda was the custodian of all the cheque books and signed the cheques alone.
August 2009. More than a decade later and with the hospital running, there was a change of leadership at the Assumption sisters, a change that became the beginning of their fall out. Fryda says the new leaders started to claim they owned the parcels of land and the developments in both Lang’ata and Elementaita. Fryda accused the nuns of interfering with the running of the two hospitals by imposing some employees and allocating them some duties without consulting him or the hospitals management.
He says the fallout with the nuns was made worse after they started doing things behind his back. For a man who believes to have been the promoter of the company having paid for its incorporation and registration, he expected these bits of information to count in court. He also hoped that having been solely involved in the acquisition and development of the parcels of land and the hospitals would help him wrestle the property from the nuns. But what tipped the scales of justice against him was when the nuns started Regina Pacis University College, which is a constituent college of Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), on one of the parcels in Lang’ata. The university was established by a trust deed on July 13, 2009 with an emphasis on education for the less privileged women. Fryda thought that the establishment of the university, in the space that would deny the hospital room for future expansion was contrary to the tenor and intentions of the acquisition of these parcels of land. As the feud escalated and moved to the courts, he says he started receiving pressure from the Catholic Church to withdraw or face sanctions. To survive being ousted from the country due to lack of a work permit, he changed his work permit from the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers to the medical mission charitable trust formed in 2010.
Fryda’s testimony got a big boost in court from a Mr Joseph Boro Ngera, who donated the land where the hospital in Elementaita sits. Ngera, also a catholic, said he had approached Bishop Ndingi, then of Nakuru diocese with a need to give back to the community. The man who owns 900 acres of land in Elementaita said he donated 58 acres to Dr Fryda to do the hospital. He told the court he never met any of the nuns before his donation was done. He says at some point, Dr Fryda came to him and told him the sisters were looking for land to put up a university. He thought it was a good idea and agreed to give them 100 acres of land, opposite what he had already given for the hospital. He testified that Dr Fryda built the Elementaita hospital on the land he had donated and his wishes as a donor were fulfilled. Some years later, he came to learn of the differences between the priest and the nuns. He tried to reconcile them with the assistance of Cardinal Njue, and the Nuncio, in vain. He asked that the hospital land be transferred to Dr Fryda or St Mary’s company. He threatened that if the nuns failed to do the transfer, he would revoke his donation of 100 acres. When they failed, he went ahead to withdraw his donation. He told the court that his donation was to have Dr Fryda and not ASN whom he thought were persons trained in education and thus more suited to managing the university and not hospital.
Fryda’s case was also supported by the testimony of a Mr Ramechandra Khetshi Shah who was there in the beginning. Besides helping him secure the Lang’ata land, his family also donated money to Dr Fryda to help with the construction. He never met the nuns during this period. But this evidence was not good enough to wrestle the land back from the nuns. So just who are the Assumption Sisters? And how did they turn the tables against Dr Fryda, who was once a close confidant, and convince the judge to kick him out?
Pope Francis received four disturbing letters from Nairobi in the last three years. As members of his church here in Kenya battled in court, four desperate letters penned by destitute children, donors and beneficiaries of the Lang’ata based hospital landed in his office in Rome. The letters sent through the Pope’s secretary were part of efforts from well-wishers who wanted direct intervention from Rome to reign in the wrangles.
And hopefully stop the hospital established to serve thousands of the poor in Kenya from self-destruction. One such letter was written by a Mr Mike Murray, who describes himself as the President of Crystal Springs Foundation. In his letter to Rome, Murray, who leaves in Seattle, Washington says he is saddened by how a hospital he has provided funding to of over Sh120million has been ‘sunk by avarice and pride.’ Other letters were written by Father Richard Mangini from California and a Mr Kenneth Makokha, an orphan raised through the hospital. Also in the Pope’s mailbox is a letter from a Mr Ramesh Shah, one of the donors who helped source for land where the hospital in Nairobi sits. The main theme that ran through these letters was – the irony of priests and nuns fighting over the ownership of a hospital meant to serve the poor. But Rome did not respond, at least not directly to the authors.
However, Pope Francis’ voice on wealth and the church has been growing louder and louder in his sermons. In his first Saturday sermon this year for instance, Pope Francis preached against making the pursuit of money, a career or success the basis for one’s whole life. The head of the Catholic Church also asked his congregation to resist “the inclinations toward arrogance, the thirst for power and for riches.” In a preface to his book, Francis who heavily talks against greed and selfish accumulation of wealth writes that he cannot fail to denounce with the Gospel the ‘personal and social sins committed against God and against the neighbour in the name of the god of money and of power. But his sermons are as far from a section of his clergy here in Kenya as Rome is to Nairobi, at least in the tragic tale of St Mary’s Mission Hospital.
Here in Nairobi, not even his constant messages were persuasive enough to calm down the feuding priest and nuns. What is worse, members of his church have fallen far back on his preaching’s, employing cronies, relatives and friends to run a facility donated. Just who are the Assumption Sisters? And how did they turn the tables against Dr Fryda, who was once a close confidant, and convince the judge to kick him out?
The Assumption Sisters of Nairobi as an organisation was formed by African religious women in the year 1973. It champions its mission to the poor through health services, education and social work. The nuns have projects both here in Kenya and abroad. Their leader is known as a superior general. The top decision making organ of the group of nuns is a general council, which has four members and the superior general. This council is voted in every six years. When it was their turn to lay their case before Judge Munyao Sila of the environment and Labour court in Nakuru, the Assumption sisters left the judge as confused he was puzzled on how conservative even members of the church can be when push comes to shove. “I think both parties were not entirely honest on the input that the other had in the initialization of the hospital. I say this with a heavy heart, given that both parties profess the Christian religion, and are both persons within the church pecking order,” Judge Munyao would observe having assessed the evidence and testimonies from both parties. Their version of the story is as far different as is Fryda’s. Being a case among the clergy, he expected both sides to be honest. But as he would later observe in his judgment, both parties were very conservative with the truth. Between 1992 and 2002, the superior general was Sister Maria Felix Mwikali and she was succeeded by Sister Marie Theresa Gacambi. Sister Gacambi was one of the original shareholders of St Mary’s Mission Hospital Company, which was supposed to be the legal entity that would own the hospital. Gacambi knew Dr William Fryda, the main protagonist in the feud, in 1998 when she served as the deputy to the superior general. The nuns told the court that the American priest was only to assist them to build and manage the hospital, and being a missionary, he would move on. That is why all the parcels were registered in their name, she said. The first spanner in the works that destroyed Dr Fryda’s case was her move to point out that he had an option to register the land in his own name or that of his congregation, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers from New York USA. For them, the idea of setting up hospital was as a result of a meeting between them, Fryda and the Superior General of the Maryknoll catholic congregation.
They say although the idea was a collaborative effort, it was agreed that they would be the legal owners of the hospital and would be responsible for the running of the hospital. The funds used to buy the land and develop the hospitals, according to them, was provided by donors who they helped find. Dr Fryda, they argued, raised the money for the project having received a letter from Ndingi Mwana a’Nzeki, the then archbishop of Nairobi. The nuns formed the company of St Mary’s Mission Hospital to run the facility. They developed a hospital manual that allowed Dr Fryda to be the doctor in charge. But ultimate responsibility lay with the superior general. Sister Gacambi said Dr Fryda was the only signatory of the accounts including a project account, an optimum interest account and a dollar account.
Differences cropped up when Dr Fryda proposed a different manual and proposed a different way forward for the hospitals, one of which was to have the title deeds returned, and the properties transferred to a new ownership authority. Gacambi claimed that sisters were ejected from the hospitals in the most inhumane way. She denied that Assumption Sisters did not contribute to the hospital projects. She said their initial contribution was Sh5.6million. But court records did not capture any other amounts contributed by the nuns out of the Sh1billion or so used to buy land and build the hospitals. Their other contribution was not monetary. They helped develop the idea and in finding donors for the project. Being the CEO of the hospital, she said Dr Fryda was allowed to prepare plans and contracts. She did not agree, that it was Dr Fryda who contacted donors for funds, and asserted that the original letters seeking the funds were written by a Sister Maria Felix Mwikali, the then superior general. “Dr Fryda would report on the progress of the construction and seek authority from ASN (Assumption Sisters of Nairobi) to pay the contractor if the payment was beyond a certain ceiling,” Gacambi said in her testimony. But she did not know the ceiling. She did not know whether Assumption Sisters ever met the contractor. But work was completed and the hospital in Nairobi was opened in 2000 while the one in Elementaita opened its doors in 2007. They say their move to oust Fryda was because the goodwill that existed between them before had expired. And that it was time for the missionary priest to pack his bags and go.
Nuns says they authorised Fryda to solicit funds from donors in their name. But they say Fryda had failed to disclose and account for the operation of bank accounts of the hospital. To puncture Dr Fryda’s evidence, the nuns brought Father Lance Nadeau, a member of Maryknoll Fathers, where Dr Fryda belonged. At the time Father Lance testified, he the financial officer for Africa. He is the priest who wrote the letter suspending Dr Fryda when the fight spilled to the courts. They would revoke his work permit and order him to leave the country.
He accused Fryda of causing a public scandal by filing the suit. He would letter dismiss Fryda who appealed the decision in Rome. He testified that Maryknoll raised Sh490milllion ($4.9million) for the project. “He testified that he has never come across a situation where a member of Maryknoll itself, owns a project. He explained that if he got money to build a school, he will not own the school but will turn it over to the local church,” the judgement reads in part. When Fryda’s lawyer stood up, he introduced the hidden hand angle of Cardinal John Njue, the fourth arch bishop of Nairobi, in the fight. “He hinted at a hidden hand of Cardinal Njue in the matter and attempt to have the property transferred to the university against the wishes of the donors,” court papers read. The biggest question he raised was how Fryda had suddenly become a trespasser after being at the suit properties for 11 years. In their prayers, the nuns asked the judge to issue a permanent injunction to restrain Dr Fryda or his agents and servants from entering the hospitals. They also wanted to stop him from soliciting funds on behalf of the hospital. They also wanted to stop him from dealing in funds held in six bank accounts of the hospital. Nuns asked the judge to compel Dr Fryda to sign bank forms for change of signatories of the six accounts.
When delivered his judgement, judge Munyao noted that there may be a canon law, but here in Kenya, the constitution was supreme. He noted that the interventions by the Catholic Church may not have been ‘sincere and impartial.’ “It is not right in my view to destroy somebody’s life for the reason only that they have opted to pursue their rights in court,” he ruled. He had eleven questions to answer. Who conceptualized the hospitals? Who built them and where did the money come from? What was the relationship between Dr Fryda and the nuns? Are the properties held in trust for Dr Fryda? The other questions he had to answer was just under what form of ownership does ASN hold the suit properties? Who should manage the hospitals in issue? When he was done looking at these questions, he noted that it does not matter who raised more money than who. “From the evidence that I have, most money was raised through the personal efforts of Dr Fryda, who must have walked his soles off, to ensure sufficient funds were raised to make this project a reality,” he ruled. “I doubt ASN, at that time, would have raised enough money to develop a hospital of this magnitude,” he said adding that if the nuns had sufficient money on their own, they would not have needed the input of Dr Fryda and they would simply have gone it alone. “I actually find it detestable, if not immoral, in the manner in which ASN witnesses tried in their evidence, to belittle the significant input that Dr Fryda made,” he said.
The scales turned against Dr Fryda when the question of the legal ownership of the properties was answered. The shocker for Fryda however came when the evidence did not support the claim that the properties and hospitals were held in his trust. This was the end game. The judge ruled that despite his input, he had relinquished the outcome of his efforts to the Assumption sisters. He had also written to the Kenya Revenue Authority at one time when seeking tax exemptions for the hospitals that they were being managed by the nuns. From this, the judge handed over the properties to the nuns. “I ask the parties to take more out of the judgment. They should sit back, reflect on all that they have gone through, asses what they have achieved together, forget the bitter fights in and outside court, embrace each other, and push forward with one mission, that of developing the best healthcare for the poor in the Kenyan society,” the judge pleaded.
This advice fell on deaf ears and the nuns would hear none of it. After they got the orders, they did not hesitate to kick Fryda out. When we visited St Mary’s hospital in Lang’ata this week, no photography was allowed. Journalists were no longer welcome. Perhaps to allow the hospital to heal, and rebuild. Its gate had a fresh coat of paint. But it was not the same. Guards on duty said the hospital was turning away patients on emergencies to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). Staff who remained still get paid, though a little late. The long queues that characterised the hospital due have disappeared. Nuns won the case. But at too great a cost to the project.
There were two suits. Fryda first sued the Assumption Sisters on September 8, 2010 in the High Court in Nakuru. The second suit was filed on January 12, 2011, about four months later. This second case was filed in the High Court in Nairobi. The plaintiffs of the second case were Regina Pacis University College, through its board of trustees, and the Assumption sisters. This time, they were the ones suing Fryda. To deal with the matter, the court consolidated the two suits since they both raised the similar issues. The two suits were moved to the environment and land court of Nakuru, when it was created in 2010.