Legio Maria
Legio Maria ( Latin , Legion Maria - not to be confused with the Catholic lay organization Legio Mariae ) is a new religious movement among the Luo , an ethnic group in West Kenya . The religious movement incorporates Luo rites into a basic Christian structure. It is a kind of syncretic - ethnic- Christian cult , which was originally only able to establish itself in Luoland, but which has been able to spread widely in East Africa to this day. It arose from a schism from the Roman Catholic Church , proclaimed its own Pope and claimed to have replaced the Roman Catholic Church as the “true” Church of Jesus Christ . Due to the claim to absoluteness as well as the deification and adoration of living people as Jesus or the Virgin Mary , Legio Maria is considered a new religious community . The current leader of the faith is Pope Raphael Titus Otieno.
history
The Legio Maria was founded by two Roman Catholic catechists in the diocese of Kisii in western Kenya. In 1962, Blasio Simeo Malkio Ondetto - known as "Baba Messiah" ( German : Father Messiah), "Black Messiah" (German: Schwarzer Messias) or "Black Jesus" (German: Black Jesus) - with 90,000 followers separated from the Roman Catholic Church. Gaudencia Aoko, the woman “on his left”, was known as “Mother Maria” and is now worshiped as the Mother of God. Both were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1960s .
distribution
Today the Legio Maria finds believers in all three countries of East Africa ( Kenya , Tanzania , Uganda ) and beyond. At the time of the split in 1962 by Ondetto, it had 90,000 followers. By 1980 that number had increased to 248,000. At the beginning of the 21st century , the number of members is estimated at over 3 million.
Got Kwer
The Legio Maria headquarters and center of the expansion is the village of Got Kwer , a community that invokes its orthodoxy on “Jerusalem”. This village with about 600 inhabitants is about 15 kilometers from the southwest Kenyan city of Migori . Here you will find the home of the old Ondettos family as well as the tomb of the "Messiah" itself, which is visible as a long plinth covered with cloth and is strewn with a multitude of devotional objects.
Popes
Baba Messiah , despite his actual position as Pope, was practically regarded as God. To date, three popes have followed in his succession:
- Pope Timothy Blasio Ahitilia (1991-1998)
- Pope Maria Pius Lawrence Chiaji Adera (1998-2004)
- Pope Raphael Titus Otieno (2004 to date)
Other holy places
Kit-Mikayi , a rock formation about 18 miles from Kisumu , became a popular pilgrimage site for members of the Legio Maria who come to the rock to pray and to fast for several weeks at a given time.
Web links
- Legio Maria (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ The Wordsworth Encyclopedia of World Religions , 675. Hertfordshire 1999
- ↑ Barrett, David and John Padwick (1989), Rise Up and Walk !: Conciliarism and the African Indigenous Churches, 1815-1987 , Nairobi : Oxford University Press , 199, 66
- ↑ Rambaya, Samwel, “Legio Pope Blasts Leaders”, business.highbeam.com, Monday, October 25, 2004 ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
