In Kenya, a Catholic Worker by and for the Mentally Ill
Plus: The Catholic Worker returns to Staten Island; protesting the death penalty in Alabama; Ash Wednesday actions; update on a beloved CW archivist; and Day's connection to St. Therese.
What Japheth Obare Teaches Us
This week, we’re bringing you the remarkable story of Japheth Obare, founder of Kenya’s only Catholic Worker, the Catholic Friends of (the) Mentally Ill. Although he earns his living as a bookkeeper and software developer, his lifelong passion has been ministry of one kind or another.
So, maybe it’s not surprising that ten years after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, he would gather other friends affected by mental illness into a communal household devoted to “making life better for the severely mentally ill.” This isn’t an inward-facing support group (my first thought when I saw their name), but a creative instance of radical personalism: every week, they visit the local psych unit, visit people living with mental illness in their homes, and educate students in area schools. More importantly, they build ongoing friendships with those affected by mental illness—an act of mercy that has been life-changing for some.
While Obare looks to Catholic Workers in the West for support and guidance, it seems to me he has a lot to offer the Movement in return.
Warmly,
Jerry Windley-Daoust
P.S. If you’ve been enjoying this newsletter, please support us in one of these ways:
Share this newsletter with friends by email and social media.
Take our reader survey; we read every response.
If you can, upgrade to a paid subscription. We hope that 1 in 10 readers will do so by April 15. Last week, six of you upgraded (thank you!); this week, we’re aiming for 12. Your subscription helps pay for original reporting on the Movement—and helps maintain and improve CatholicWorker.org.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
NEWS
In Kenya, a Catholic Worker by and for the Mentally Ill
Japheth Obare was twenty years old in 1995 when he had his first psychotic episode. He didn’t know it at the time, but it was the start of a long struggle with paranoid schizophrenia.
He wound up in the hospital, and eventually received a diagnosis: “They said I had cerebral malaria,” Obare said, “but they do that when they don’t know, because there are no professionals to diagnose you.”
It took ten years for him to receive the correct diagnosis. It was a turning point for him; finally, he could understand what was causing his symptoms and seek effective treatment. Analytical by nature—he has worked as a bookkeeper and software developer—he began to educate himself about his condition. In the course of that education, he also learned about the stigma and discrimination other people in his native Kenya experienced because of their mental illness.
Obare is a deeply spiritual person who has been involved in several different Christian ministries and has long wanted to devote himself to spreading the Gospel in a social context. He began to think about how he might connect his own illness and his faith to help others also suffering severe mental illness.
That’s how he eventually formed the Catholic Friends of (the) Mentally Ill, or CFOMI, with ten other people also experiencing mild to severe mental illness. Originally founded in 2016, the group decided to affiliate with the Catholic Worker Movement in 2021, becoming only the second Catholic Worker community in Africa–and the only Catholic Worker community anywhere run by and for people with mental illness and their allies.
The group runs programs that reach about 100 people every month in Siaya, Kenya, a town of about 33,000 people just east of the border with Uganda.
I spoke with Obare by Zoom in September 2023, shortly after finishing my interviews with Michael Sekitoleko of the Uganda Catholic Worker. Unlike Sekitoleko, Obare was soft-spoken and somewhat reserved. Still, he was happy to speak about the challenges of living with mental illness.
“There’s a real stigma around it, and it’s also a real struggle to access resources” in Kenya, he said. “It’s been a very intense life.”
Continue reading about Obare’s journey and the amazing work of the Kenya Catholic Worker at CatholicWorker.org.
Stepping Toward Mercy in Alabama
On January 25, members of Mary’s House Catholic Worker (Birmingham, Alabama) gathered in prayer and protest in Birmingham as the state of Alabama prepared to suffocate Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility.
The community has been holding these vigils for every execution since the 1990s, when community founders Shelley and Jim Douglass befriend a death row prisoner, Leroy White. The Douglasses witnessed his execution in 2011, an event that Shelley remembers being at once impersonal and barbaric.
“It’s thoroughly dehumanizing for everybody, including the people who do the killing,” she said. “It really is torture.”
Read more about their friendship with Leroy White and continued activism against the death penalty at CatholicWorker.org.
The Catholic Worker Returns to Staten Island
The Catholic Worker Movement has returned to Staten Island, 60 years after the Worker’s last house of hospitality on the island—Peter Maurin Farm—closed.
Staten Island was an important place for Dorothy Day, who lived there with her common-law husband, Forster Batterham; she and her daughter were baptized there, and she returned to the island’s shores again and again throughout her life.
Now Debbie Sucich, a native of the island, is organizing the Staten Island Catholic Worker. Sucich had previously spent two years with the New York Catholic Worker at St, Joseph House and then six months at the Catholic Worker House of Lancaster.
“It’s my hometown—and it was Dorothy’s—and so I really felt like the timing was right,” Sucich said, “Staten Island needs this.”
The nascent community held its first event, a holiday meal, on January 1, and is hoping to purchase two houses of hospitality. Read more about their plans in Renée Roden’s story on CatholicWorker.org.
Phil Runkle, Beloved CW Archivist, Recovering After Fall
Phil Runkel, the longtime Catholic Worker archivist at Marquette University (now retired), recently broke a hip in a fall. Rosalie Riegle took the news as an opportunity to reach out to him and write a fond tribute:
One of the times I remember from that first meeting in Las Vegas was his unforgettable “Catholic Worker Trivia” contest at the Saturday evening Talent Show, the often-hilarious performances which became a feature of many CW events….
For years, he held them at the Midwest CW fall gathering at Sugar Creek, and once he and his mother, Lydia Runkel, did a hilarious reading of both laudatory and scurrilous letters to Dorothy.
The image of Phil Runkel that will remain forever in my heart, though, was out at the Nevada Test Site during the 1987 gathering, where many of us were ritually arrested for crossing a line in the sand that forbids entry into the center of the test site. There in the blazing sun knelt Phil, in his signature suit and tie, patiently waiting with others to be handcuffed and walked to the temporary enclosure.
Riegle spoke with Runkel and reports he is recovering at an extended-stay hotel due to winter-related damage to his home. (When it rains, it pours.) You can read her entire remembrance, get Runkel’s contact information, and even play a little Catholic Worker trivia at her story on CatholicWorker.org.
Creative Energy at Strangers and Guests
On Tent Encampments in a Catholic City
Theo Kayser, the longtime Catholic Worker and podcast host, recently wrote about the relatively new phenomenon of permanent tent encampments across the United States—including in his native St. Louis, where some 19 percent of the population identifies as Catholic:
In our city, the Mississippi Riverfront is one place you will find permanent encampments. I was down there one night recently passing out hot food and supplies when a fellow abruptly redirected our chit chat asking me and my friend, “What are Catholics known for?” Startled by the turn and unsure of where he was going, “Well, I guess that depends on who you ask,” is how I answered honestly. It turned out that “charity,” was the response he was looking for. “Catholics are known for charity.” “Yet St. Louis is a very Catholic city and look at how many people are sleeping out here?” he continued. “I saw a mother and her baby sleeping out here the other night. What will it take? Will a baby have to die from cold on these streets? Where are all the Catholics?” “We could make a start here in St. Louis. We could show the rest of the country that if you care these problems can be fixed,” he concluded before heading off into the night among the blocked off streets and elevated railway lines.
Read the entire piece—and then consider a donation to help the St. Louis Catholic Worker get up and running.
BRIEFLY
Catholic Workers around the world held vigils or services on Ash Wednesday. The London Catholic Worker participated in a service of repentance with Pax Christi England outside the Ministry of Defence in London; members also joined the beginning of Christian Climate Action’s 240-hour vigil outside Parliament. In Scotland, Catholic Workers held vigil at Faslane nuclear submarine base. Meanwhile, members of Dorothy Day Catholic Worker were among those participating in an Ash Wednesday Mass in front of the White House as part of the coalition calling itself the Lenten Ceasefire Campaign. Read more at Religion News Service. Meanwhile, 13 immigrant youth and allies were arrested by Capitol Police during a civil disobedience action demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and permanent protections for immigrants, according to United We Dream.
Romero House (Ames, Iowa) recently hosted a retreat for eight men to discern life in the Ames Romero House community. Over the next two months, the house will be full again with four new live-in volunteers. Also, the community has installed new washing machines and refurbished the bathroom; Rueben the cat is already exploring the changes. And the community invites everyone to its annual block party on the feast of St. Oscar Romero (March 24). Get details in its February newsletter.
A new academic paper seeks to shed light on the connection between the spirituality of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the very public social activism of Dorothy Day. In his master’s thesis, Noel E. Bordador of Nazareth House (Meycauyan, Philippines) proposes that Day saw the Little Way as a path to inner spiritual transformation and social change. “Day’s anarchist Catholic Worker houses of hospitality are but a concrete expression of her vision of decentralized and distributist communities of love which, she believed, find consonance with the spirituality of the Thérèsian Little Way,” Bordador writes. Read “Saint Thérèse of Lisieux's Little Way of Love in the Spirituality of Dorothy Day" online.
APPEALS
Mustard Seed Community Farm & Catholic Worker Seeks Interns, Community Members
New Kansas City CW Will Nurture Creativity and ‘a Listening Society’
Newly Formed CW Farm Seeks Gifts & Loans to Purchase Property in Wisconsin
CALENDAR
February 16 – February 18 | Platteville, Wisconsin
National Biennial Catholic Worker Farmer Gathering
February 20 | Virtual event sponsored by Maurin Academy
Growing, Fermenting, Canning & Why
February 22 | Virtual event sponsored by Simone Weil House
Agronomic University Online: The Order and Beauty of the World
March 3 | Virtual event sponsored by the Dorothy Day Guild
Dorothy Day Guild Book Study
March 13 - March 24 | Scotland
Martha Hennessy Events in Scotland
March 23 - March 29 | Nevada
Sacred Peace Walk (Nevada Desert Experience)
April 12 - April 15 | Kansas City, Missouri
Midwest Catholic Worker Faith & Resistance Retreat
A FEW GOOD WORDS
Quiet Beauty and Happiness on Staten Island
Excerpt From Union Square to Rome, Chapter 10: Peace.
by Dorothy Day, 1938
Day reflects on the quiet satisfaction of her life on Staten Island with Forster:
I have been passing through some years of fret and strife, beauty and ugliness, days and even weeks of sadness and despair, but seldom has there been the quiet beauty and happiness I have now. I thought all those years I had freedom, but now I feel that I had neither real freedom nor even a sense of freedom.
And now, just as in my childhood, I am enchained, tied to one spot, unable to pick up and travel from one part of the country to another, from one job to another. I am enchained because I am going to have a baby. No matter how much I may wish to flee from my quiet existence sometimes, I cannot, nor will be able to for several years. I have to accept my quiet and stillness, and accepting it, I rejoice in it.
Miss an issue? Get it in the archives!
Thanks to Renee Roden (see her Substack, Sweet Unrest) and Rosalie Riegle for their help with this week’s newsletter; Zak Sather is traveling this week. Thanks also to the National Catholic Worker E-mail List team, whose work provides the leads for many of our items.
And a special thanks to our paid subscribers, who make this newsletter possible; shouting out this week to Ellen H., Fr. Joe, and Angela W.