Celebration for Fr. Clement
On Sunday 13th August, there will be a Mass for Fr. Clement to mark the occasion of his 20years of Priesthood.
The Mass will commence at 11.00am and will be followed with a grand celebration including light refreshments from 12.30pm in the Church Hall.
On Wednesday 5th July, I met with Fr. Clement Orang’o and Tony Monteiro, the chairman of the church celebration committee to talk about his time in the Priesthood and his eight years here in Syston.
Fr. Clement began by asking me to thank everyone he has met inside and outside the church here in Syston for making him feel very welcome and he is very happy to be working here. He said that when he first arrived he was nervous about how he would be received within the community. Being African he anticipated a negative reaction, particularly following in the footsteps of Fr. Anthony, but found quite the opposite.
He has found that every service he has officiated at whether it is a funeral or a baptism people appreciate him and thank him.
Fr. Clement was ordained on 16/8/2003 in the parish of Kisii in Kenya into the Comboni Missionary and he worked in Egypt for two years, Sudan and South Sudan for a further three years. Then Bishop Malcolm invited him to come to Syston to take over from Fr. Anthony.
He has a profound need to serve people of the church across the world and found some cultural differences between here and other areas he had been, one was the length of Mass, in Kenya it is two hours whereas here it is an hour. He has a deep interest in all religions and likes to learn about them.
Since being at Syston he has taken part in three sponsored walks to raise funds for the church, the first was in 2016 when he walked 20 miles in Rutland and was joined by some parishioners for part of the way, he raised nearly £10,000 for the retired priest funds. His second and third walks were to raise £3,000/4,000 for roof repairs and then in 2023 he completed another 20 mile walk and helped raise a total of £45k with the aid of the wider community to enable a new roof to be put on the Church in May this year. Fr. Clement was so proud of the result of these fundraisers, he would like to thank everyone who sponsored or donated.
He explained that the church was built in 1948 and that it was a straight building, later the wings were added and this is the first time the whole roof has had to be replaced.
He feels privileged to be a part of the church and to have been able to enable the new roof to be put on that will out live us all.
He welcomes everyone to the sacraments whether they attend regularly or not. He also enjoys the social side of the church being involved with BBQs, Quiz nights, fairs, games and Bingo. During Covid he set up a live streaming from the church to the parishioners to help them through those difficult times, these have been appreciated by all.
He wanted to thank his neighbours for being so good and he finished by saying how inspired he is by people’s faith, being strong and dedicated.
