Nairobi, Kenya, Oct 13, 2019 / 08:02 am (CNA).- On Saturday, Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge broke a finishing tape, and a barrier long-thought to be completely unbreakable. Kipchoge became the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours, finishing a 26.2 mile course in Vienna in 1 hour 59 minutes 40 seconds.
HISTORY! pic.twitter.com/qjLfofhL5s
— Eliud Kipchoge (@EliudKipchoge) October 12, 2019
Sometime after the run was over, away from the spotlight, Kipchoge did what he is reported to do after every race: he knelt down, bent his forehead to the ground, and made the sign of the cross, in thanksgiving for a good run.
In his hometown, his friends and family say that Kipchoge’s extraordinary accomplishment might have something to do with his deep Catholic faith.
Kipchoge’s cousin, Fr. Kennedy Kipchumba, told ACI Africa Saturday that the runner’s accomplishment was “a moment of joy and jubilation, with a summary of: God fulfills His promise.”
“I was part of the close to 3,000 people who were following the race from a big screen and with all of them, we ended up bowing to God to thank him for this much he offered to us,” Fr. Kipchumba said.
After Kipchoge’s feat, his family, included several priests, celebrated Mass in thanksgiving.
“Everybody came to Church, to say thank you to God. We celebrated Mass to thank God. We celebrated as a community; we had the family, Fr. Benjamin Oroiyo who is also a family member, Fr. Benedict Rono and we were also joined by the Deputy Governor of Nandi County, area Member of Parliament, among other local leaders,” Fr. Kipchumba said.
The Mass was celebrated in a small village chapel, St. Peter’s Kapsisiwa, an “outstation” of St. Joseph’s Sangalo Parish in the Diocese of Eldoret.
Kipchoge, 34, was raised in the small village of Kapsisiwa, 200 miles from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The area around Kapsisiwa is a highland of rolling green hills, where Kipchoge began running as a child. The runner now lives with his wife in the west Kenyan city of Eldoret, close to his hometown.
“The main person in the family is the mother, whom we brought from her house” for the Mass, Kipchumba explained.
Kipchoge’s mother, Janeth Rotich, is seen as a moral and spiritual supporter of her son.
“I wake up at 3 a.m. every day to pray for Kipchoge. I pray the rosary,” she has told local reporters.
Kipchoge left Kenya on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, Monday, Oct. 7 to attempt a sub-2 hour marathon in Vienna. But before he left, the parish he attends when in Nairobi offered Mass for him.
On the eve of his departure, special prayers were offered for him by the congregation of St. Paul’s University Catholic Church.
“Kipchoge is a friend of students’ choir at St. Paul’s University Chapel. Last Sunday we had Mass celebration for Eliud Kipchoge,” the chaplain of Nairobi University, Fr. Peter Kaigua told ACI Africa Saturday.
Kaigua described the historic marathoner, Kipchoge as “an inspiration to the youths, a mentor to the young people and a humble man; through him the young people get to know that their dreams can be met.”
“Before offering Mass for him last week, we used to talk about him in the university with students. We therefore opted to offer him Mass before going for the marathon race so that God can help him realize his dream,” Kaigua added.
“The day for Mass, young people had t-shirts printed in his name,” Kaigua told ACI Africa.
During the Mass, Kaigua said that Kipchoge’s run “will push his body and his mind to unknown levels and if he ever needed God, and Mother Mary and all the Saints, this is the time — that is why we are here, praying hard. As Eliud also famously said, ‘you cannot train alone and expect to make a fast time… 100 percent of me is nothing compared to one percent of the team.’ We are, therefore, going to be Eliud’s pacemakers in prayer.”
“The university acted as his ‘spiritual pacesetter.’ His winning is a sign that prayer for young people has been answered,” the priest told ACI Africa.
When Kipchoge crossed the finish line, he said that felt himself to be “the happiest man to run under two hours to inspire many people; to tell people that no human is limited, you can do it.”
“I am expecting more athletes from all over the world to run under two hours,” he added.
Priest, religious, and laity in his native Kenya have praised Kiphchoge as a man of great inspiration. Some interpreting his success in the context of the Church’s “Extraordinary Missionary Month,” whose theme is “Baptized and Sent.”
“Eliud Kipchoge, baptized and sent! I saw his mother with a white Rosary on her neck. This is just how faith is handed on in the family set up. The mother passes it on to the child,” Fr. Samuel Nyattaya of Kenya’s Kisumu Archdiocese told ACI Africa.
The priest said he felt “so happily surprised at the demonstration of his Catholic faith!”
“I believe that God is happy to see us putting efforts to maximize our potential. God must have been so happy to see this courageous Kenyan encouraging the entire world with his belief,” Sr. Sr. Margaret Mutiso, a member of the Daughters of Sacred Heart, told ACI Africa.
Kipchoge “is advocating for a peaceful world where all live together in harmony and we’re not limited to do that,” she added.
For his part, Kaigua said that the university parish in Nairobi is already “planning to celebrate another Mass for him in his presence immediately, as soon as he is back in the country.”
The priest, and the marathoner, surely have something to thank God for.
A version of this story was first published by ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner. It has been adapted by CNA.
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A disaster, and a disgrace for the West. The conservatives about to take control in Washington are, if anything, worse than Biden on this issue of protecting Christians and our Christian sacred sites in the Middle East. Compare Trump’s callous disregard for these our true interests with his brutal support for the ethnic cleansing and imperialist expansionism of Tel Aviv. The West has nothing to say. And Trump’s priorities for the U.S.? Deport Catholics by the million and replace them with Hindus and Sikhs. The West has nothing to say.
Rubbish.
Israel is the reason we can visit Christian Holy Land shrines in the first place. How likely might that be under a caliphate and how many would still be standing?
God bless Israel and may He protect and guide Donald Trump. 🙏
Well said, Mrscracker. You are very correct. Thank you.
Wow, the pure garbage about “ethnic cleansing and imperialist expansionism” pretty much tells us anything you have to say is worthless.
You did hear about the muslim attacks on civilians, women and babies on October 7th, didnt you? Muslim countries 20 times the size of Israel surround them so how you assert the Jews are imperialists is totally delusional.
There’s no excuse to so clueless in the year 2025.
The propaganda horror stories about October 27th have been debunked many times.
Very easily. They have been colonising the lands occupied since 1967, which even the United States recognises are integral parts of other countries. This colonising involves the expulsion of those not assimilable: ethnic cleansing of Christians (as well as Muslims), just like that occurring in Europe so many times. Nineteenth-century European nationalism is the model for this stuff.
Christians have been leaving the Holy Land in droves under Tel Aviv’s rule. They had put up with centuries of Muslim rule (a quarter of the Middle East’s population was still Christian in 1918), but the last couple of generations of Tel Aviv domination has been the last straw. Bethlehem in 1947: majority Christian. Bethlehem today: 5% Christian. A disaster for our interests. Priests living in Jerusalem get spat on every day (not by Muslims), and Israeli police look the other way. What a wonderful place.
Israel is indeed a wonderful place and the great majority of Israelis are just as disgusted by the actions of an extreme splinter group as we are by the actions of the Westminister Baptists.
I have a family member who visited Israel last year and trust me, if you walk through the wrong ultra orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem on the Sabbath you don’t have to be a member of the Catholic clergy or even a non Jew to have shoes hurled at you. Most Israelis find that extremely obnoxious behavior.
You are right Miguel, but you know is not easy.
Going back to the past no longer make sense. The october 7th seems, without doubt, induced zionist government did by desesperated mad (the 50,000 dead in gaza a truth induced by the genocide zionist government. Among them many Christians. But Muslims don’t make it easy if they don’t soften their positions).
How about a Jerusalem open to all three religions? It cannot be other thing, not belonging to any one. Remember, whoever holds the crown of Spain, holds the crown of Jerusalem. Catholic. Friend of all. Never with extremists. Two states solution now! or freedom and justice for arabs in Israel, in any case end or askenazi apartheid!
There are no conservatives in Washington, and nobody is going to risk their career to protect Christians.
True. No brave christians. I don’t know why the Western (USA and Europe) elites don’t defend the descendants of Jesus friends, Apostles, that are the Catholic Palestinians… Maybe because what you say.
My guess, Miguel is a a leftist plant who enjoys spewing ridiculous comments. Frankly it is sad, but that is the world we live in.
Regarding Christians in Syria, we in need to pray them, for both their physical protection and spiritual courage.
Rubbish guess ad rubbish if no guess.
The facts are undeniable and the “October 7” missive doesn’t straighten out anything.
Very well put LJ. Thank you.
Correction: The 2003 invasion was only a “coalition of the willing” and was not the occasion of a 15-0 U.N. vote, probably a later vote to lift sanctions. I am mistaken.
Somewhere on CWR a reader repeated that the second Iraq war was patently unjust, and opined that the new regime in Syria is simply biding its time before persecuting the Christians. Hussein was said to tolerate Christians. To which, my earlier comment somewhere, as here corrected:
Yours truly does not know enough to conclude whether or not “this new regime in Syria is biding its time to eradicate the remnants of Syrian Christianity,” nor whether we should revere Iraq’s Hussein because he tolerated/protected Christians—while also eradicating 182,000 Kurds and deporting even more, including the use of weapons of mass destruction (the 1988 Halabja attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre).
Three points and a Question:
FIRST, as an amateur from the back bleachers, my focus often turns too much on apparent details that, as possible pivot points, tend to get lost in later hindsight. “For want of a nail a shoe was lost, etc.” Example: a few altered details in Muhammad’s personal life in the 7th Century, and sectarian Islam in the 21st-century Middle East, would not even exist. Nor would ISIS.
SECOND, following are a few nails and horseshoes…
My recollection from sparse news accounts at the time are that the Iraqi scientific community had destroyed the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because they feared Western actions, but they also feared to inform Hussein whose recent history and uninformed bluster seemed to confirm the continued existence of WMD. A commitment by a “coalition of the willing” that was discounted by Hussein because of probably a dozen earlier U.N. proclamations that were followed by inaction. And, later that a key Iraqi informant, claiming the WMDs existed, was simply gaming the United States into supporting his side in local an regional intersectarian strife. And, that the overall strategy to invade Iraq was designed to conclude quickly—to prevent intersectarian eruptions and what eventually became ISIS….But, the strategy was crippled by removal of the northern half of the pincer attack, by President Erdogan who only a week before the invasion withdrew his permission to cross through Turkish airspace (internal Muslim/sectarian politics?).
THIRD, in retrospect we see an unjust “preventive war,” rather than what might have been (yes, no, maybe?) a more defensible but deceived and overly complex “first strike”. The horror of it all, especially for little people in huge numbers who are always the collateral damage to the Law of Unforeseen Consequences.
The Honore de Balzac got it just about right, “bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.” Likewise, the compact, technocratic, tripwire, and modern geopolitical world. Missing is sound prudential judgment (a principle of the Catholic Social Teaching) which can be a bit less certain in practice than quoting the Gospel as policy.
QUESTION: As has been said, “while one does have the right to offer non-resistance to the knife, one does not have the right to offer the necks of one’s family and others to the assailant.” With imperfect information and in an imperfect world, how are overly-weaponized nations to navigate better between moral absolutes, and the calculus of consequences for their actions and for their inactions, both?
ISIS/ISIL/Al Sham -promise to conquer Rome. By some arrangement they went and got a sort of national legitimization in Syria. Who did that?
‘ Bin Laden viewed his terrorism as a prologue to a caliphate he did not expect to see in his lifetime. His organization was flexible, operating as a geographically diffuse network of autonomous cells. The Islamic State, by contrast, requires territory to remain legitimate, and a top-down structure to rule it. (Its bureaucracy is divided into civil and military arms, and its territory into provinces.)
We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature. … There is a temptation to rehearse this observation—that jihadists are modern secular people, with modern political concerns, wearing medieval religious disguise—and make it fit the Islamic State. In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.
And …..
And …..
And ….. ‘
See the CWR report by Carl Olson.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2015/02/17/the-atlantic-magazine-isis-is-very-islamic-apocalyptic-and-avowedly-genocidal/
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/15/isis-beheads-21-christians-promises-to-conquer-rome-by-allahs-permission/