A Pastoral Engagement with the New CUEA Vice Chancellor

By Fr. Dunstan Peter Epaalat, CUEA Gaba Campus Chaplain

The Chaplaincy, CUEA Eldoret Gaba Campus, was honoured to host the new Vice Chancellor/Rector, Very Rev. Prof. Elias Omondi Opongo, SJ in celebrating Sunday Mass on 6th September 2026. This was in the course of the VC’s 5-day official visit to CUEA Eldoret Gaba Campus.

At the Mass, Very Rev. Prof. Opongo also presided over the Commissioning of new members of our CUEA Gaba Chaplaincy, Catholic Women Association (CWA), consisting of members of our Campus Staff, and Christians from the surrounding community who have historically worshipped at the Gaba Chapel.

The relationship these “outsider Christians” have with the CUEA Eldoret Gaba Campus Chapel stretches far back into the early 1950s when the Chapel served the Loreto Sisters’ School and was open to worshippers from the surrounding community for whom other places of worship were at that time too far away.

After Mass, the VC joined the whole Chaplaincy Community, including the Campus staff and students, Staff and students of AMECEA Pastoral Institute, and the Christians who worship at the Chaplaincy, for a luncheon at the Gaba Campus St. Joseph’s Cafeteria, hosted by members of Gaba Chaplaincy CWA members.

This very joyful event marked an important recognition of the uniqueness of CUEA Eldoret Gaba Campus and Chaplaincy, which brings together and mutually blends the three distinctive parts of the CUEA Gaba Chaplaincy Community: The CUEA Eldoret Gaba Campus, the AMECEA Pastoral Institute, and members of the surrounding community as mentioned above.