Idigbe, 22 Others Inducted as Knight of St Mulumba

Jude Igbanoi

The Order of the Knight of Saint Mulumba, Lagos Metropolitan Council recently admitted into its 3rd Degree fold 23 members, including Chief Anthony Idigbe (SAN).

At a solemn ceremony at the Catholic Church of the Transfiguration, Victoria Garden City, Lagos, the new inductees were elected into the 3rd Degree of the Order of KSM along after a concelebrated High Mass by the Parish Priest, Rev Fr., Michael-Christian Okonkwo and a visiting Chaplain of the Nigerian Army.

The Order of St. Mulumba was founded by a Nigerian Cistercian Monk, Rev. Fr. Abraham Anselm Isidahome Ojefua, in 1952, having received approval from the Catholic Bishops of Nigeria. The Order was formally inaugurated on June 14, 1953 at the Holy Ghost College Chapel in Owerri, Imo State with Bishop Whelan presiding.

The 23 founding members included three priests, two of whom later became bishops, Nwedo and Unegbu. According to the Lagos Metropolitan Grand Knight, Charles Mbelede, “A Knight of St. Mulumba is a practicing catholic with reasonable education and financial resources, who is willing to volunteer his talent and energies for the service of God, the Church and fellow men.

“He aspires towards a high sense of Christian discipline and cooperates with other Christian denominations without compromising catholic doctrines and principles. He lives an exemplary Catholic life making use of the Sacraments to grow in the Grace of God. He defends his Catholic faith and gives succor to the disadvantaged, the poor and the oppressed in the society. He is a man of prayer.”

The Order’s aims and objectives when it was founded were to counteract the harm done by many secret societies to the church and to stop the influx of Christians into those harmful secret groups totally opposed to the Catholic faith.
The Ladies of St. Mulumba are wives of the Knights and they were formed 25 years after the Order was founded by Fr. Ojeifua. The Order presently has a numerical strength of 10,000 members in 180 sub-councils across Nigeria and a sub council in Cameroun and Uganda.