Our History

The history of the Diocese of Ngong dates back to 1913 when the first Mill Hill Missionaries used to visit, during their home visitation from Kisumu.

The Catholic Diocese of Ngong (CDON) was a prefecture of the larger Kisumu Diocese. It was solely created to serve the interests of the pastoralist community the Maasai in 1959. under the first prefect apostolic the late Bishop John De Reeper, Mill Hill Missionary (MHM) until 1964, when he was named Bishop of Kisumu Diocese and handed over to Fr. Colin C. Davies.

The prefecture of Ngong became a diocese in 1976 and Bishop Colin Davies became the shepherd up to year 2002, when (MHM) Bishop Emeritus Cornelius Schilder took over, the reign of the Diocese until year 2009, when he retired on health grounds. The current Shepherd of the diocese is Bishop John Oballa Owaa who was consecrated Bishop on 14th April 2012. The diocese is divided into seven deaneries Kilgoris, Ololulunga, Narok, Ngong, Kiserian, Kajiado and Oloitokitok and further divided into 41 parishes; it covers two counties of Kajiado and Narok in the former expansive Rift Valley Province in Kenya.

Geographical & Administrative Background

It operates in the southern part of Rift-Valley serving the counties of Kajiado and Narok. It cocers an approximate area of 39,619km. The population being served in the two counties is Kajiado County 1,117, 840 (Census 2019) while Narok County is 1,157, 873 (Census 2019) of this population according to Census 2019 356,693 are Catholics-Narok 152,607 and Kajiado 204,086.

The inhabitants are largely cosmopolitan with the Maasai constituting over 60% of the total population. The area has a rich geographical and climatic diversity with arid, semi-arid and highland conditions. Over 70% of the total area is semi-arid, receiving minimum rainfall of 750 mm per year. Only 30% of the area receive adequate rains of over 1500 mm per annum and support arable and commercial farming.

The main economic activity is nomadic pastoralists, wheat farming and tourism. The area has high illiteracy levels and most of the people living in the area hold strongly to their traditional cultural values. Poverty and apathy have grown wide and resulted in the area lagging behind in general development and Christianity. The area has poor infrastructure network, thus aggravating the situation.

Evangelizing the Maasai

When the diocese was created it was a missionary diocese evangelizing the Maasai Community who reside in the two Counties. With time different communities bought land and made areas within the two counties their homes, this has made the two counties become cosmopolitan.

In the thirty-five parishes, we have areas with an aspect of primary evangelization, where the Maasai people are still being persuaded through home visitation, to encourage them to embrace the faith and come to church, where there is a church or gather under a tree where there is no structure. There are areas too where the Catholic face has not penetrated.

The diocese through Priests and Catechists is still carrying on primary evangelization in this areas, through Caritas Ngong, the diocese continues to build schools, health facilities and empower the communities in social economic development. The diocese has over seventy diocesan priests, over 60 religious priests and brothers, over 200 women religious and over 700 Catechists both trained and untrained. There are also over twenty diocesan seminarians in various seminaries in the country.