In a modest, candlelit room in western Kenya, worshippers dressed in white gathered on Christmas Day to celebrate what they believe is the birth of the “Black Messiah.”
Members of the religious movement, Legion Maria, prayed before a photograph of Mama Maria, the African woman who co-founded the church and is revered by followers.
A video obtained by First Daily captured the moment a man who identified himself as Prophet Nendu appeared holding a framed photograph of Baba Simeo Melchior — whom followers describe as the “Black Messiah.” In the image, Melchior is seen gazing into the camera with his hands clasped, wearing a large medallion around his neck.
“Today is a great day, because the Virgin Mary gave birth to King Jesus in the world of Black people,” he said.
Legion Maria — or Legio Maria in the language of the Luo, an ethnic group to which many of its members belong — was founded in 1966.
On its website, it traces its roots to around 1938, when a “mystic woman” appeared to several Roman Catholics to deliver messages about “the incarnation of the son of God as a black man.”
One of its co-founders, Simeo Ondetto — later known as Baba Simeo Melchior — is described as the “returned son of God” and Legion Maria’s “eternal spiritual leader.”
The religious movement now claims millions of followers in Kenya and across eight other African countries, including Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Timothy Lucas Abawao, deputy head of the church, said the movement “is not a cult.”
“A cult essentially is an organisation that… believes in the leader. But we believe in Jesus Christ, and we believe in God,” he told journalists.
Abawao in a an interview with newsmen said, “Baba Messiah came for Africans,” and his followers believe he is “truly Jesus Christ”.
religious movement to feature a Black supreme being.
In South Africa, Isaiah Shembe’s followers say he received orders from God in 1913 to found the Nazareth Baptist Church, and many view him as a messianic figure.
He died in 1935, but his church still claims several million followers.
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In the former Belgian Congo, Simon Kimbangu is believed to have miraculously healed a sick woman in 1921, marking the early beginnings of the Kimbanguist church.
Convicted of endangering state security and Belgian colonial order, Kimbangu spent thirty years in prison until his death in 1951.
Nigeria’s Brotherhood of the Cross and Star sees in its founder, the late Olumba Olumba Obu, “the Holy Spirit” and “the Triune God”, according to its website.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Legion Maria gathering, Odhiambo Ayanga stressed that God, “as he came for the white, he also came for the black.”
“He went for the Asian, as he went for other races; God came for us all. That’s why in Africa, he has to be Black.”