Archbishop Anthony Muheria now wants Gov't to audit wealth of all religious leaders

Nyeri Catholic Archbishop Anthony Muheria now wants all religious leaders to publicly declare their financial wealth, coming on the back of news of the Shakahola cult massacre that has drawn the ire of many after at least 90 people were reported dead.

Addressing the press on Wednesday, Archbishop Muheria raised concerns over the emergence of many spiritual leaders purporting to be religious teachers when they really just want to defraud unsuspecting and vulnerable people.

Muheria, therefore, opined that the government should come in and audit the income of spiritual leaders in a bid to create more accountability and avert similar scenarios.

“It is important that we audit the wealth of all religious leaders; all of us including myself should be able to declare what I have in my account,” he said.

“And it should be something public for all the Christians who follow my church. They should know how much I have and how much I own. That is the only way the congregation can be defended from the greed of any rogue religious leaders.”

The Archbishop chimed in on the Shakahola incident, refuting the term ‘brainwashing’ that has become so synonymous with it, instead referring to the present goings-on as an act of deception and manipulation of the vulnerable groups in society by church leaders.

According to Muheria, the government should come up with laws to tame pseudo-religions in order to root out fake leaders who are merely out to mislead their followers.

“We insist that there must be laws to tame pseudo-religions, denominations and gatherings...they’re just human creations of a person who wants to deceive,” he explained.

“I don’t think it is called brainwashing, this is a deception of the highest order where very simple, gullible people...because they’re poor and miserable...that we can cheat and enslave them where they give all their goods for the good of the religious leader.”

He added: “We must be bold; this is not a question of doing a simple sanitization. We’ve seen this is deep, it is evil, and should not be repeated.”