National Catholic Register reports that before Sabastian Sawe traveled to London for the April 26, 2026, marathon in which he shattered the two-hour barrier with a time of 1:59:30, the Kenyan athlete attended Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church, an outstation of St. Josephine Bakhita Lower Moiben Parish in the Diocese of Eldoret. Julius Kemei, chairperson of the parish and Sawe’s former teacher, described the champion as a man of deep Catholic faith who “never misses Mass,” who asks for prayers before competitions, and who generously supports Church projects — including a donation of sheep to fund the construction of a new church building. Kemei emphasized that Sawe’s entire family forms one of the four pillars of the newly established parish, and that the young athlete serves as a role model and mentor to the youth of the community. This account of a world-class athlete whose Catholic identity is inseparable from his public life offers a striking counter-witness to the secularization that has consumed virtually every other sphere of modern existence — and yet even here, the careful observer must ask what kind of Catholicism is being practiced, and whether the structures within which it is practiced remain faithful to the unchanging deposit of faith.
The Virtue of Constancy in Worship
Let us begin with what is, by any measure, admirable. In an age when the vast majority of public figures — including those who profess the Catholic faith — treat Sunday obligation as an inconvenience to be dispensed with at the first scheduling conflict, Sabastian Sawe’s reported fidelity to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a genuine witness. Kemei states plainly: “He never misses any church service. The last time he was here, he told us that he was traveling the same day to London for a competition and asked us to pray for him.” The athlete’s request for prayers before his departure for the most important race of his career is an act of humility that stands in sharp contrast to the pride and self-reliance that characterize the modern sporting world, where athletes routinely credit their own discipline, their coaches, and their sponsors — but rarely God.
This is the language of supernatural faith, and it must be recognized as such. The Church has always taught that the Holy Mass is “the center of Christian worship” and that attendance at the Holy Sacrifice on Sundays and holy days of obligation is the minimum expression of a living Catholic life. Pope Pius X, in his Motu Proprio Sacra Tridentina Synodus (1910), urged the faithful to receive Holy Communion frequently and even daily, declaring that “the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit is the active participation of the faithful in the Holy Mysteries.” That Sawe reportedly attends Mass with his entire family — and that his wife and children attend even when he is absent — reflects the domestic Church that Catholic teaching has always upheld: the family as the first school of prayer, of sacrifice, and of virtue.
St. Paul’s admonition rings across the centuries with undiminished force: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). The athlete who asks for prayers before a race understands, however imperfectly, that his gifts come from God and that without divine assistance, all human effort is vanity. This is the Catholic understanding of grace — not a vague spiritual sentiment, but the supernatural elevation of human nature by God, without which no act of virtue, no athletic achievement, no human endeavor has any ultimate value. As the Council of Trent taught: “If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature or that of the law, without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema” (Session VI, Canon 1).
Generosity as Fruit of Faith
The account of Sawe’s material generosity to his parish is equally noteworthy. Kemei recounts that after a previous marathon victory, Sawe donated 100,000 Kenyan shillings (approximately $775) to the parish, and that he has offered to complete Church projects himself, saying “that God has already blessed him so much.” His most recent donation — a large flock of sheep — is helping to fund the construction of a new church building. His grandmother donated a cow before her death in 2022. These are not the actions of a man who treats his faith as a private hobby; they are the actions of a man who understands the Catholic principle of stewardship — that all goods come from God and must be returned to Him through the Church and the care of souls.
The Church has always taught that the faithful have a duty to support the material needs of the Church, not merely as an act of charity but as an act of justice. Pope Leo XIII, in Rerum Novarum (1891), affirmed that private property is a natural right, but he also insisted that the goods of the earth are given by God for the common good, and that those who have received much are obliged to give much. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that “the rich man who gives to the poor does not bestow a gift but pays a debt.” Sawe’s generosity, rooted in gratitude to God, reflects this Catholic understanding far more faithfully than the secular philanthropy that dominates the modern world, where donations are made for tax benefits, public relations, or the cultivation of a personal brand.
Moreover, the fact that Sawe’s family is described as one of the four pillars of the newly established parish speaks to a Catholic understanding of community that is increasingly rare in the atomized, individualistic West. The parish is not a voluntary association of like-minded individuals; it is a territorial jurisdiction established by the bishop, to which the faithful belong by divine right. The family that forms the pillar of a parish is fulfilling the role that Catholic ecclesiology has always assigned to the domestic Church: the family as the foundational cell of the Mystical Body of Christ.
The Question That Cannot Be Avoided: What Kind of Mass?
And yet — and here we must speak with the uncompromising clarity that fidelity to the integral Catholic faith demands — the account presented in this article raises a question that the author, Agnes Aineah of EWTN News/ACI Africa, does not even consider, let alone answer. What kind of Mass does Sabastian Sawe attend?
This is not a trivial question. It is, in fact, the decisive question. For the Catholic Church — the true Church, the Church of all ages, the Church that has never changed and can never change — teaches that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, offered by a validly ordained priest using the matter and form prescribed by Christ Himself, for the propitiation of sins, the sanctification of the living, and the relief of the souls in Purgatory. This is the Mass codified by Pope St. Pius V in Quo Primum (1570), confirmed by the Council of Trent, and celebrated without essential alteration for four centuries.
What was introduced after the Second Vatican Council — the so-called “Mass of Paul VI,” promulgated in 1969 — is, by the admission of its own architect, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (a man whose Masonic connections have been extensively documented), a fundamental break with the theology of the traditional Mass. Bugnini himself stated that the new rite was designed to “protestantize” Catholic worship and to reflect a “new theology” of the Eucharist. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger — later the antipope Benedict XVI — acknowledged in his Memoirs that the new Mass was “a fabrication, a banal product of the moment.” The late Monsignor Gino Concetti, writing in L’Osservatore Romano (the official newspaper of the conciliar sect), stated that the new rite “represents, as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass.”
The question, then, is this: When Sawe attends “Holy Family Catholic Church” in Kenya’s “Diocese of Eldoret,” is he attending the Traditional Latin Mass — the Mass of the ages, the Mass that built Christendom, the Mass that every saint and martyr of the Church recognized as the true Sacrifice? Or is he attending the conciliar “Mass” — the rite that was fabricated by a commission infiltrated by Modernists and Freemasons, a rite that the Catholic theologian Fr. Anthony Cekovac has described as “defective in its expression of Catholic faith” and that the Society of St. Pius X has consistently refused to accept as a legitimate expression of Catholic worship?
The article gives no indication. The parish is described as part of the “Catholic Diocese of Eldoret” — that is, a diocese of the conciliar sect, subject to the authority of the antipope in Rome. The parish is dedicated to “Holy Family” and “St. Josephine Bakhita” — the latter a saint canonized by the conciliar apparatus (by the antipope John Paul II in 2000). There is no mention of the Traditional Latin Mass, no indication that the parish operates outside the conciliar structure, no reference to any priest of the Society of St. Pius X, the Institute of Christ the King, or any other community that maintains the unbroken liturgical tradition of the Church.
This silence is not neutral. In the present crisis of the Church — a crisis without precedent in history, a crisis that has seen the systematic destruction of every mark of the true Church (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic) — silence about the liturgy is complicity in the destruction. For the liturgy is not an accessory of the faith; it is the expression of the faith. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi — the law of prayer is the law of belief is the law of life. A “Catholic” who attends the conciliar “Mass” is, whether he knows it or not, participating in a rite that was designed to obscure the Catholic faith in the propitiatory sacrifice, the Real Presence, and the hierarchical nature of the Church. He is participating in a rite that was created to facilitate ecumenism with Protestants — that is, to blur the distinction between the true Church and the false sects that broke from her at the time of the so-called Reformation.
The Crisis of the Kenyan Church
The article’s reference to “Bishop Dominic Kimengich” — described as having “made us a parish before he was appointed archbishop of Mombasa” — places Sawe’s parish squarely within the conciliar hierarchy. The Archdiocese of Mombasa is a jurisdiction of the post-conciliar sect, subject to the antipope. Its bishops receive their mandate from the antipope, participate in the structures of the conciliar revolution, and are bound to implement the reforms of Vatican II — including the new “Mass,” the new catechism, the new ecumenism, and the new religious liberty that the Syllabus of Errors condemned as heresy.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80). The entire conciliar project — from John XXIII’s aggiornamento to the antipope Leo XIV’s current pontificate — is precisely this reconciliation with modernity that Pius IX declared incompatible with the Catholic faith. The “Diocese of Eldoret” is a jurisdiction of this conciliar project. Its “bishop” is a functionary of this project. Its “parishes” are outposts of this project. And its “Masses” — unless explicitly stated otherwise — are almost certainly the conciliar rite.
This is not a matter of personal opinion. It is a matter of doctrinal fact. The Council of Trent taught: “If anyone says that the Masses in which the priest alone communicates sacramentally are illicit and should be abolished, let him be anathema” (Session XXII, Canon 6). The new “Mass” was designed, from its inception, to be a communal meal in which the entire assembly participates — a conception that is fundamentally Protestant and fundamentally opposed to the Catholic understanding of the Mass as a sacrifice offered by the priest in persona Christi on behalf of the faithful.
The Witness of the Athlete: Genuine but Incomplete
None of this negates the genuine virtue that Sabastian Sawe appears to display. His fidelity to Sunday worship, his request for prayers, his generosity to his parish, his role as a mentor to youth — these are real goods, and they reflect a real, if imperfect, Catholic formation. The athlete’s shyness, his humility, his gratitude to God — these are the marks of a soul that has not been entirely corrupted by the spirit of the age.
But virtue that is not grounded in the fullness of the Catholic faith is, in the final analysis, incomplete — and in the present crisis, incompleteness is dangerous. The Church has never taught that natural virtue is sufficient for salvation. Supernatural faith, the sacraments, and membership in the true Church are necessary means of grace, not optional additions to a life of moral decency. As the Fourth Lateran Council taught: “There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved.” And as Pope Pius XI declared in Mortalium Animos (1928): “The union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it.”
The tragedy of the present age is that millions of Catholics — including, it appears, a world-class athlete of genuine faith — are practicing their religion within structures that have been captured by the enemies of the Church. The conciliar sect is not the Catholic Church. It is a counterfeit — a structure that retains the external forms of Catholicism while emptying them of their supernatural content. It is, as the Defense of Sedevacantism document argues, a structure whose leaders have, by their public and manifest heresy, ceased to be members of the Church and therefore ceased to hold any authority within it.
St. Robert Bellarmine taught: “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church.” The antipopes who have occupied the Vatican since the death of Pope Pius XII have, by their public promotion of the heresies of Vatican II (religious liberty, ecumenism, the evolution of dogma, the democratization of the Church), rendered themselves manifest heretics — and therefore incapable of holding any office or exercising any authority in the Church. The structures they govern — including the “Diocese of Eldoret” and “Holy Family Catholic Church” — are structures of a sect, not of the Church.
A Call to Full Fidelity
What, then, is the faithful Catholic to make of Sabastian Sawe’s witness? First, to recognize and admire the natural and supernatural virtues that are evident in his life: his fidelity to worship, his humility, his generosity, his gratitude to God. These are real goods, and they are the fruit of a Catholic upbringing that, however imperfect, has preserved something of the faith of his ancestors.
Second, to pray for Sawe — that God may grant him the grace to seek out the true Mass, the true sacraments, and the true Church. The Traditional Latin Mass is celebrated in Kenya, as it is throughout the world, by priests of the Society of St. Pius X and other traditional communities. It is Sawe’s right — and his duty — to seek out these celebrations and to ensure that his family is formed in the unchanging faith of the Church, not in the novelties of the conciliar revolution.
Third, to recognize that the article itself — published by the National Catholic Register and distributed by EWTN News/ACI Africa — is a product of the conciar media apparatus. EWTN, despite its occasional use of traditional imagery, is a conciliar institution that recognizes the authority of the antipope and promotes the conciliar reforms. The National Catholic Register is a publication that, while sometimes critical of the more extreme manifestations of the conciar revolution, never questions the legitimacy of the antipopes or the validity of the conciar “Mass.” The article’s silence about the liturgy is not accidental; it is structural. The conciar media does not ask the question that matters most, because to ask it would be to expose the entire edifice as a fraud.
Pope St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), warned that the Modernists — the enemies within the Church — would use every means at their disposal to conceal their errors behind orthodox language and pious appearances. He wrote: “They exercise all their ingenuity on the task of persuading the public that they agree with the teaching of the Church.” The conciar media is the fulfillment of this warning. It speaks of “Mass,” of “parish,” of “bishop,” of “Catholic” — but it means something entirely different from what the Church has always meant by these terms.
Sabastian Sawe has shown the world that it is possible to be a champion athlete and a faithful Catholic. Let him — and all who admire his example — take the final, decisive step: to seek the true Mass, the true Church, and the true faith that has been handed down from the Apostles without change or diminution. “Stand firm, and hold the traditions which you have been taught” (2 Thess. 2:15). The traditions of the Church are not the novelties of Vatican II. They are the Mass of the ages, the sacraments of the ages, and the faith of the ages — the faith for which the martyrs died, the faith that built Christendom, the faith that alone leads to eternal life.
Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Source:
London Marathon Winner Sabastian Sawe ‘Never Misses Mass’ (ncregister.com)
Date: 01.05.2026