Cardinal Otunga Starts Long Road to Beatification
The process might take long, but Fr Bellagamba noted that “it takes several years at the diocesan level.” Born in central Italy, Fr Bellagamba first worked in Kenya 1958-63 but came to know Cardinal Otunga well from 1984-1994 while teaching at CUEA where the cardinal was chancellor.
Fr Bellagamba, who served as the Vice General Superior of the Consolata Missionaries in Rome from 1999 to 2005 and worked in formation at Allamano House, the Consolata theological seminary in Nairobi, said Cardinal Otunga had “a great sense of the Divine; a great sense of the Supernatural. His prayer life was exceptional. His gentleness, kindness, was very, very attractive. He would take time to talk to you. He was so simple – not simplistic, because he was shrewd but he was simple in the sense that he was not double-faced. What he believed, what he thought, he said.”
During the 7th anniversary of the death of Cardinal Otunga, while addressing journalists after the memorial service, the Postulator, Fr Bellagamba said the process was at its second stage, where the committee is studying written works of as well as on the late Cardinal Otunga. “We have covered the first stage, where the Vatican has accepted the late Cardinal Otunga as Servant of God,” he explained.