{Tens of thousands of Catholics prayed in the Kenyan town of Nyeri on Saturday at a beatification ceremony of an Italian nun, the first person to undergo the key step toward sainthood in the east African country.}<\/p>\n
Irene Stefani was an Italian member of the Consolata Missionary Sisters who helped the wounded in Kenya and Tanzania during World War I before shed died of the plague in 1930.<\/p>\n
A trained nurse, she was much loved by the people of the Nyeri district, who called her “Nyaatha”, or “Mother of All Mercy” in the Kikuyu language.<\/p>\n
The streets of Nyeri were packed for the Roman Catholic beatification ceremony in the town, some 150 kilometres (90 miles) north of the capital Nairobi.<\/p>\n
Thousands had also held a night vigil that began on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Stefani, who was born in 1891 near Brescia in Italy and was 39 when she died in Kenya.<\/p>\n
Roman Catholics say she performed a miracle after her death, in 1989 when people fleeing Mozambique’s 1977-1992 civil war prayed in her name.<\/p>\n
Running from rebel battles, the faithful sheltered in a church at Nipepe, in Mozambique’s northern Niassa region, and said that their prayer to Stefani caused the water in the church font to flow, keeping the thirsty alive.<\/p>\n
‘Miracle in Mozambique’<\/p>\n
Relatives of Stefani travelled from Italy for the ceremony.<\/p>\n
“I am very happy to be here, the hospitality of the Nyeri people is great,” Giovanni Zecchini, 51, whose grandmother was Stefani’s sister, told The Standard newspaper.<\/p>\n
Over a thousand police officers have been deployed to provide security at the ceremony, held at a university compound in the highland town.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, her remains will be transferred to the cathedral in Nyeri.<\/p>\n
President Uhuru Kenyatta praised her “selfless service to ordinary Kenyans”, saying that “her compassion knew no bounds of race or class, and she spared nothing of herself,” a statement read.<\/p>\n
In the Friday night vigil, 95-year old John Mbuthia recalled how the nun “held his palm and prophesied to him that he would live long,” the Nation newspaper reported.<\/p>\n
“On one of Nyaatha\u2019s visits to our home, she stretched out her arm and held my palm, she looked at it and told me I would live long,” Mbuthi said, called Stefani by her Kenyan name. “True to her words I am still alive, she is a true prophetess.”<\/p>\n
Newspapers in Kenya on Saturday displayed the nun’s face on their front pages. After beatification she will be known as “Blessed Irene.”<\/p>\n
“The making of a saint,” the Nation newspaper’s headline read.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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