About the parish
Our Story
PLACEHOLDER — St. Paul’s is a Catholic parish serving Kibingoti and the villages along the Sagana–Karatina road. Replace this with the parish’s own words.
How the parish began
PLACEHOLDER — the parish still needs to write its history. What follows shows the shape it might take.
The first Catholics at Kibingoti gathered under a tree, then in a temporary structure of timber and iron sheets, long before there was a resident priest. Mass was celebrated once a month by a priest riding out from the mother parish.
As the community grew, the faithful contributed labour, sand and stone to raise a permanent church. It was dedicated to St. Paul the Apostle, whose missionary journeys seemed fitting for a community strung along a road.
Today the parish serves several outstations and Jumuiya across Kiine Ward, and remains — as it began — a church built by the hands of the people who worship in it.
Milestones
Our journey
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First Mass celebrated at Kibingoti
Under a tree, by a visiting priest from the mother parish.
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Foundation stone laid
The community contributed labour, sand and stone.
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Church dedicated to St. Paul the Apostle
Blessed by the Bishop.
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Raised to a full parish
With a resident parish priest.
Our culture
How we worship together
PLACEHOLDER — describe what it is actually like to worship here. Some prompts:
The languages of our Masses — Kikuyu, Kiswahili and English — and what each congregation is like. The choirs, the drums, the way the offertory procession is danced up the aisle.
The Jumuiya, meeting in one another’s homes through the week, so that the parish is not only a place people go on Sunday but a network of neighbours.
Our customs around funerals and weddings, the harambee that funds a roof or a student’s fees, and the quiet work of the CWA in homes where someone is sick.
Our mission
PLACEHOLDER — To gather the people of Kibingoti around the Eucharist, to form disciples through the Word, and to serve our neighbours, especially the poorest among us.
Our vision
PLACEHOLDER — A parish where every household belongs to a Jumuiya, every young person finds a place to serve, and no one in need goes unnoticed.
What we hold to
Eucharist at the centre
Everything else in the parish flows from and returns to the altar.
Jumuiya
Faith is lived among neighbours, not only in the church building.
Service to the poor
What we do for the least of these, we do for Christ.
Formation
Catechesis for children, young people and adults — faith that grows up with us.
Stewardship
Honest, transparent care of what the faithful entrust to the parish.
Welcome
The stranger at the back of the church is treated as a guest, not a spectator.
Our patron
St. Paul the Apostle
Feast day: 29 June (with St. Peter) · 25 January, the Conversion of St. Paul
Saul of Tarsus persecuted the first Christians until, on the road to Damascus, he was struck down and met the Risen Christ. He rose a different man, and took the name Paul.
He spent the rest of his life on the road — Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome — founding communities much like this one and writing letters back to them when he could not visit. Many of those letters are read at our Masses still.
A parish on a road between two towns could hardly ask for a better patron: one who understood that the Gospel travels, and that a church is the people who carry it.
How the parish is organised
Clergy, the Parish Pastoral Council, the committees and the Jumuiya — who does what, and who to talk to.
See our structure