BARINGO, Kenya — Italian former Catholic priest Sandro Ferretto has married Sharon Jepng’ok, a Kenyan woman from the Tugen community, in a traditional ceremony in Baringo County after leaving active priestly ministry. The couple celebrated their union Sept. 6 at Seretion Village in Kasiela, Baringo South, an area where Ferretto previously served as a missionary priest.
The ceremony followed Koito, a Kalenjin customary marriage tradition involving the couple’s families, negotiations over customary marriage gifts and blessings from relatives and elders. Family members, community elders, local leaders and friends attended, while photographs and videos showing Ferretto celebrating with Jepng’ok quickly circulated on Kenyan social media.
Ferretto has deep ties to Kenya. Official records from the Diocese of Padua identify him as a priest ordained in 1999 who later served as a fidei donum missionary a diocesan priest temporarily sent to another diocese in Kenya. The diocese said in 2016 that he had begun his Kenyan mission in September 2007 and served in Mochongoi, an area inhabited by Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities. Diocesan records later listed him among missionaries who returned permanently to Italy in 2020.
After returning to Italy, Ferretto was appointed to lead a group of parishes in the Diocese of Padua, according to an official diocesan announcement. Kenyan reports say he later stepped away from active ministry and returned to Kenya, where his relationship with Jepng’ok developed into plans for marriage. Neither Ferretto nor Jepng’ok appeared to have issued a detailed public statement about their relationship or the circumstances of his departure from ministry as of Tuesday.
The marriage has attracted attention because priests in the Latin Church are ordinarily required to remain celibate. Catholic canon law says clerics are bound to celibacy, while separate Vatican procedures govern requests by priests seeking release from clerical obligations, including celibacy. Public reporting on Ferretto’s wedding has not established whether he formally received such a dispensation, and neither the Diocese of Padua nor the Diocese of Nyahururu had been widely reported as issuing a statement on his canonical status.
The case also highlights the long missionary relationship between Italy and Kenya. The Diocese of Padua says its priests served for decades in Kenya, including in the Diocese of Nyahururu, working in parishes, hospitals and community programs. Ferretto was among several Padua missionaries assigned there before the Italian diocese gradually concluded that phase of its missionary presence and redirected resources elsewhere in Africa.
For residents of Baringo, however, the ceremony was also a local family celebration rooted in Tugen and broader Kalenjin traditions. The international attention surrounding Ferretto’s former clerical role has turned the marriage into a wider discussion about Catholic celibacy, cultural integration and personal choices after religious ministry, while the couple’s Koito ceremony underscored the continuing importance of family and customary rites in Kenyan marriages.
