Fr Daniel Kivuw’a : A Priest of Consolation

Consolata Father Daniel Kivuw’a has served in South Africa for 15 years. He told Lucy Moll about how he found his vocation, his religious congregation, and his life as a missionary.

As Pope Francis canonised 14 new saints in October last year, a Pretoria-based priest sat in the front-row, witnessing the founder of his order being raised to the altars in St Peter’s Square.

For Fr Daniel Kivuw’a IMC it was a “a godly and golden opportunity” to see St Giuseppe Allemano, founder of the Consolata Missionaries, being recognised as a saint in the company of his fellow Consolatas, including Bishop José Luis Ponce de Leon of Manzini, Eswatini.

“As they raised up our founder’s image in St Peter’s Square, I felt him say to me: ‘I have formed you — be encouraged to continue in this charism that I have formed to bring Jesus to the nations.’”

Fr Daniel has been an ordained priest for the Consolata congregation since 2009. “Being a missionary is about being there, being present,” he said.

Born and raised in Kenya, Fr Daniel has been stationed in various places in South Africa. Swahili is his native language but in his missionary journey he has learned to speak Sesotho and French.

St Giuseppe Allemano founded the Consolata Missionaries in 1901 in Turin, Italy, where he was the rector of the sanctuary of Our Lady of Consolation (which featured in our “Marian Shrines Around the World” column last month).

He sent nearly all the young aspiring missionaries to Africa where they are now established in South Africa, Eswatini, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, DR Congo, Cote d’Ivoire and other countries. Some ventured as far afield as the Amazonian jungle of South America and have remained present there.

Priest cancelled Mass

As a boy in the rural Kenyan town of Mananja, Fr Daniel received Communion only every three months in the church of the Immaculate Conception, when the one priest serving 16 parishes would ride into the town in his car at 15:00.

But on one of these important Sundays, the priest rode in on a motorbike. The villagers, looking out for the cleric’s car, didn’t realise that the priest had arrived and so were late to attend Mass.

As they arrived at the church, the priest angrily sent them all home. Daniel saw the effect this had on the people, including his parents. Still only ten years old, the boy decided right then that he would become a priest and serve his people. He knew how they had been looking forward to the Mass — and he has never looked back.

Daniel was spotted by the Consolatas. “A letter arrived through my aunt’s door one day after school, and it was, if you like, God saying that this was the way for me to go.”

Console the people

The ethos of the Consolata Missionaries is based on the words of Isaiah 40: “Console! Console my people…let them know their sins are forgiven.” So the role of the missionary, Fr David said, is to “be present, no matter what. The Church needs to be that sign of consolation to all peoples. God is present, God is here, God cares.”

The missionary life demands sacrifices. “It is not easy to leave your family and your way of life to become a missionary, but there is much support from my confreres,” he said.

He has served in South Africa for 15 years, seven of them in Pretoria’s Queen of the Most Holy Rosary parish in Waverley, and as the director of discernment for vocations for the Consolata Missionaries. He is currently serving the parish of Christ the King in Queenswood, also in Pretoria.

In June he hopes to take a group of pilgrims to Turin for the great celebration of Our Lady of Consolation, and to Rome for the Jubilee Year.

Every three years, Fr David is able to return to Kenya. “Whenever I do, I visit my childhood parish.” And when he goes home, he is sure to say Mass in the church where as a ten-year-old he decided to be a priest.

Published in the March 2025 issue of The Southern Cross magazine