When Shepherds Are Hunted: The Killing of Priests in Kenya’s Kerio Valley
(ANALYSIS) On the morning of May 22, the road to Chemwochoi in Kenya’s Kerio Valley looked much like any other — distant hills wreathed in haze, cattle moving in slow rhythm and the air thick with early sun and dust.
For the Rev. Allois Cheruiyot Bett, a priest of the Tot Parish under St. Lumumba Catholic Church, the journey would end in gunfire.
He was ambushed and shot dead in the valley’s rugged terrain, marked as much by its stark beauty as by the simmering conflict that pulses through it. The 47-year-old priest, well loved and widely respected, was mistaken for something he was not. Local news reports said bandits, skittish and fueled by suspicion, believed he was a spy. He had been seen speaking to authorities.
Just a few days earlier, another priest named John Maina had met a similar fate in Nakuru. His death remains under investigation. The murders of both clergymen conveyed a chilling message to the faithful: Their shepherds are not safe.
In response, the Catholic Church shut down its missionary operations in Kerio Valley. The decision was swift in the wake of the murders. The Chesongoch Mission Hospital, one of the region’s few reliable health facilities, ceased operations. Mission staff, gripped by fear and trauma, fled. The Missionary Benedictine Sisters, who had long held ground there, said plainly in a statement: “If the community does not consider our mission essential, then there is no need for our presence.”
It was a moment heavy with symbolism — a retreat not only from danger but from a place that seemed no longer willing or able to protect its own healers.
Bishop Dominic Kimengich, under whose ecclesiastical watch Bett had served, called him a spiritual son. In an interview, he struggled to frame the loss. He said it was the first time in all his years serving volatile, conflict-affected zones that he had witnessed a priest being killed. Even in the darkest moments of Kenya’s past, the clergy had largely remained protected.
Many others have been killed in the Kerio Valley over the years. A stew of cattle rustling, ethnic tension and long-standing disputes over land and identity has made the region combustible. Bett, an outsider in the eyes of some, may have simply become a symbol of everything unwelcome.
There is a pattern here, and it stretches well beyond Kenya’s borders.
Bett’s death was not an isolated event, not was Maina’s. Their killings reflect a global context in which clergy, who have always lived among the poor and on the peripheries, are now being hunted in those very places. In areas around the world where the state has receded, faith often becomes the last visible institution — and the first to be attacked. From the Americas to Africa, religious workers are marked men and women.
In Myanmar, Christian clergy endured airstrikes, arbitrary arrests and the destruction of churches in conflict-ravaged Chin and Kayah states. In Syria, religious leaders operating outside government-held areas faced abduction, targeted killings and constant intimidation by armed groups. And in Nicaragua, priests were imprisoned, exiled or silenced under a regime that treated dissent from the pulpit as a national threat.
In Mexico, meanwhile, at least 26 Catholic priests were murdered in the six years since 2018. Drug cartels target them not for what they do, but for what they represent: Moral order, stability and courage in the face of terror. Colombia’s rural dioceses have also mourned Christian leaders silenced by armed groups who viewed their faith and community work as threats, as underscored by the recent discovery of eight murdered church leaders in a mass grave.
Elsewhere in Africa, a report by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has detailed kidnappings and killings orchestrated in Nigeria by Boko Haram and Fulani terrorists, targeting priests and nuns to weaken Christian communities in the region.
In Kerio Valley, the emotional toll is mounting. The Chesongoch Mission Hospital had served thousands. It now stands quiet. For many residents, the hospital’s closure was not just a loss of healthcare but a sign of abandonment.
The Catholic Church in Kenya has taken a stand. The Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) condemned the killings and demanded justice.
But justice has remained elusive.
The church’s retreat may be both tactical and spiritual, evoking Matthew 10:14: “And whosoever shall not receive you ... shake off the dust of your feet.”
It is a painful metaphor. The faithful of Kerio Valley did not drive the priests away. But neither could they keep them safe.
The government’s absence is felt here. Roads go unrepaired. Security patrols come late or never. Rumors move faster than radio. And in that vacuum, a priest’s cassock becomes a bullseye — especially if he is not from the right ethnic group or is seen too often with police.
In many ways, religious leaders now stand where aid workers once did. Their role — spiritual, social and humanitarian — is expansive. Their visibility makes them vulnerable.
What happens now? The Catholic Church will not abandon its mission, but it is rethinking how that mission unfolds in fragile states. Without stronger government protection or new models of engagement, there is only so much that faith alone can carry.
The story of these two priests does not end with their funerals. It continues in the empty corridors of Chesongoch Mission Hospital. In the silence after Sunday Mass. In the confusion of children who once looked up to men in white collars for answers and who now find no one there. To serve the poor has always been a costly calling.
For some, it now comes with the price of life itself.
Joseph Maina is a Kenyan journalist. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and media studies from the University of Nairobi. For the past decade, he has served as a correspondent for various print and digital publications in his native Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa.