From Father To Husband: Former Catholic Priest Marries Kenyan Woman In Traditional Ceremony

For years, the people of Kasiela and Mochongoi in Kenya’s Baringo County knew him as Father Sandro, the Italian-born Catholic missionary who stood at the altar, celebrated Mass and served the local community. This week, they saw him in a very different role: as a groom.

Former Catholic priest Sandro Ferretto has married Sharon Jepng’ok, a Tugen woman from Baringo South, in a traditional Koito ceremony in Seretion Village, Kasiela. In the same community, he once served as a parish priest.
Ferretto reportedly spent about 12 years serving as a missionary in Baringo before stepping away from active priestly ministry. His decision marked a dramatic change from a life defined by Catholic priesthood and celibacy to one centred on love, marriage and family.

The wedding has attracted attention not only because of Ferretto’s former religious status, but also because of the way he chose to formalise his new chapter.
Rather than simply marrying Sharon in a conventional ceremony, Ferretto embraced the cultural traditions of his bride, participating in the Tugen/Kalenjin Koito ceremony, a traditional marriage and family-union rite.

Images and videos from the celebration show the former priest immersed in the customs of the community he once served as a missionary. His transformation from the man once known for his clerical robes to a groom participating in traditional rites has made the ceremony particularly striking.
The location is also deeply symbolic.
Seretion is not an unfamiliar place to Ferretto. It is part of the community where he spent years building relationships through his missionary work. Returning there as a husband gives his story an unusual circularity, he first arrived as a foreign priest serving the community and has now returned as a man becoming part of a local family.

His marriage to Sharon also represents a meeting of cultures: an Italian-born former missionary and a Kenyan Tugen woman coming together through a ceremony rooted in her heritage.

For the community, therefore, the celebration is more than a wedding.
It is a story of faith, personal choice, love, cultural identity and a new beginning.
The man once addressed as Father Sandro has entered a new chapter, this time not behind a pulpit, but beside the woman he chose to build a family with.
And in Seretion Village, the community that once knew him as its priest gathered to celebrate him as a husband.