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priest given that some of the instructors were the age of my father. It was a strange world but because I had been trained like them I was able to blend in. I found myself at home and able to serve. I worked especially with the youth whose parents were military officers.
How relevant is the Church to the military?
In each programme there is time set apart for spiritual care where soldiers come together to pray together and to consult on spiritual issues. One has to really walk with the soldier in order to remind and even facilitate their Christianity, there are those who come in when they are quite young and their only point of meeting the chaplain or a priest or a person of ministry was when they were in primary school or secondary school and now they have been put in a programme that on a daily basis is not talking about prayer. So the chaplain comes in to accompany the soldier. There are chapels built in the military and the fact that they recruit chaplains there is a mention of God in the national anthem and in our oath of allegiance so yes God is relevant to the military.
What constitutes your diocese, who do you administer to as a chaplain?
That would be the military officers and their families. The two go together, the defence forces stresses so much on family values. Just like any other diocese the military has complete Church structures; the parishes, small Christian communities, the deaneries, the prayer groups even diocesan pastoral offices.
The military has quite a mixture of denominations and religions, do you serve Catholics only?
As a chaplain you serve the military, you look at that one soldier. I am recruited and trained to be a catholic priest to serve Catholics but within the Catholic Church we serve all who come to us. Each denomination has a chaplain and we work together but when it comes to the tenets and doctrines then I serve the Catholics.
How do you pick chaplains to work in the military ordinariate?
Because I don’t have a seminary I recruit from the dioceses in Kenya. Through the Episcopal conference, I table the request by the military to recruit chaplains and we call for names, they are then interviewed by the Catholic Secretariat and seconded to the military and they follow the sequence of recruitment.
Do they also go through the boot camp?
Yes, unknown to them. It is so sweet when they get there and
Photos by Lourine Oluoch The Seed 2013
are being trained. There are currently around 19 chaplains serving in Kenya
What does your retirement mean to the Church?
I continue serving as a bishop till I retire at 75. What I retire now is the uniform that I was given 25 years ago. According to the regulations of the military, at 55 you are considered kind of tired in the sense that now somebody else has to come in. In canon law I know I will serve the military from outside but how that will be contained has to belong to the Holy See, the nunciature and the Episcopal Conference. .
Bishop Rotich shows a bible he received upon installation as bishop of the military.
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THE SEED - VOL 25, No. 8 AUGUST 2013