Former President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday, April 25, 2025, was among high-ranking top officials who attended the requiem mass of the late Pope Francis at the Holy Family Minor Basilica in Nairobi.
Speaking during the mass, Uhuru revealed the little-known details of what transpired behind closed doors immediately after the late Pope Francis touched down in Nairobi on November 25, 2015.
Addressing the handful of mourners and other top leaders, Uhuru disclosed that the 266th pontiff’s stay in Kenya saw him kicked out of his own office for the very first time as president.
What caused that
According to Uhuru, a person whose identity he did not reveal requested a private session with the Pope at his office, where he had hosted other top leaders, including former US President Barack Obama.
Moved by the request and how meek the person was, Uhuru asked Pope Francis to remain behind after their formal diplomatic introduction and formal welcome to Kenya. The pontiff obliged.
Uhuru then ushered the person into his office and proceeded to sit down. However, Uhuru told the congregants that he did know how to inform the Pope that the person seated was the one who wanted a private engagement with him.
He then recalled Pope Francis waking up, and what followed later was that he was thrown out of his office, and Pope Francis remained with the person to continue their talk.
“When he was here in Nairobi, those in diplomatic service would know that usually when we have a head of state, who he was, or a head of government, there would be a one-on-one session that you would exchange, a tete-a-tete, before you get into main meetings.
“So we were sitting in my office with his holiness and just talking about the things that we needed to talk about. This was an office where I had met very many different people, from Obama to leaders from all over the world. When we finished, we were now to go to other meetings. Somebody had really requested that they would like a moment with his holiness. I did not know how to put this, so I decided I was going to put the message across, and he said, no problem,” Uhuru recalled.
“So I invited the person over to my office before we moved out, sat, and I went back to my seat. Silence in the room, nobody is talking, and his holiness stood and looked at me and told me, I thought you said you wanted to talk to me.
“So, for the first time as president, another head of state threw me out of my own office, which I found to be quite incredible,” he revealed.
Kept communicating
Uhuru further told the faithful that Pope remained in contact with the said person after departing Nairobi following his visit to Kenya.
The retired president noted that he was moved by Pope’s gesture of humility and urged other Kenyans to emulate him as they mourned his demise.
“But the most important thing was not even that, the most important thing to me was that here was a man, a leader of a billion people across the world, but this person he choose to engage with, he followed up with them even after he left Kenya, communicating with the person, engaging with the person. What greater show of humility can you ask for a man than that?
“That he can lead a billion people but still remembers one lost sheep.That is a lesson for all of us, and definitely it is a lesson for me,” Uhuru concluded.