BARINGO, Kenya — An Italian former Catholic priest who spent 12 years serving communities in Kenya’s Baringo County has left the priesthood and married a local woman in a traditional ceremony that brought together two very different worlds: an Italian missionary background and Tugen family traditions.
Sandro Ferretto, 55, married Sharon Jepng’ok, a Tugen woman from Baringo South, during a Koito ceremony held on Sunday, September 6, at Seretion Village in Kasiela, the same area where he previously served as a parish priest.
Ferretto was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Padua in Italy and began missionary work in Kenya in 2008. He served Catholic communities in Kasiela and Mochongoi under the Diocese of Nyahururu for about 12 years.
His new wife, Jepng’ok, is the daughter of former councillor John Wendot. Reports say the couple met during Ferretto’s missionary work in the Baringo region, where their relationship eventually led him to reconsider his life in the priesthood and pursue family life.
The wedding was conducted according to Koito, a traditional Kalenjin marriage rite involving negotiations between families, dowry arrangements and blessings from relatives and elders. Family members, community elders, local leaders and friends attended the ceremony.
Images and videos from the ceremony circulating online showed Ferretto dressed in a suit and celebrating alongside his bride, attracting widespread interest because of his unusual transition from Catholic missionary to husband within the community where he once ministered.
The story has also generated debate, with some Kenyans celebrating the couple’s decision to build a family while others questioning Ferretto’s departure from the Catholic ministry.
The Catholic Church requires its Latin-rite priests to observe celibacy. Canon 277 of the Code of Canon Law states that clerics are bound to “celibacy” and perpetual continence. Church law also provides that a priest can lose the clerical state through specified legal procedures; however, Canon 291 says that losing clerical status does not automatically dispense a priest from the obligation of celibacy, which is granted by the Roman Pontiff.
It was not immediately clear from the available reports whether Ferretto had received a formal dispensation from celibacy or completed the full canonical process associated with leaving the clerical state. The Catholic Church had not publicly commented on his marriage in the reports reviewed.
Ferretto’s story is therefore more than an unusual wedding story. A man who arrived in rural Kenya as a European missionary has now entered one of the oldest institutions of African social life: marriage negotiated and blessed not merely by two individuals, but by families and elders.
The irony is difficult to miss. He came to Baringo carrying the authority of a foreign religious institution; he leaves the priesthood having become part of a local family through its own cultural rites.