John Njue

Cardinal Njue has been one of Kenya's most outspoken defenders of traditional moral teaching. He led a 2008 signature campaign against legalising abortion and opposed the 2010 constitution over its abortion clause, citing the commandment 'do not kill'. In 2013 he rejected calls for gay rights as un-African and unbiblical, and at the 2015 Synod on the family he opposed letting local bishops decide on Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, while saying gay people should not be criminalised.

No significant public statement by Cardinal Njue on the traditional Latin Mass, Traditionis custodes or liturgical style has been found. His generally classical theological profile suggests attachment to established practice, but there is no documented position on liturgical debates.

As head of the Kenyan bishops, Cardinal Njue signed appeals for dialogue and peace after the disputed 2007 election and spoke against corruption and vote-buying. He also led the bishops in opposing a WHO-backed tetanus vaccination drive in 2014 and calling for a polio vaccine boycott in 2015, voicing suspicion of programmes 'formulated from outside', and in 2019 he led them in rejecting policies discussed at the ICPD25 summit on reproductive health.

Created a cardinal by Benedict XVI, Cardinal Njue has not publicly criticised Pope Francis. He hosted the pope in Nairobi in 2015, was chosen as his special envoy to Tanzania's 150th jubilee of evangelisation in 2018 and commended Francis's Human Fraternity document in 2019. His conservative interventions at the 2015 Synod on the family show doctrinal caution rather than opposition to the pontificate.

Cardinal Njue supports interreligious dialogue grounded in sincerity: after the 2015 Garissa attack he urged religious leaders to stop stirring up hatred against people of other faiths, and in 2019 he commended the Abu Dhabi Document on Human Fraternity as a sound path for dialogue. In 2010, however, he opposed Kenya's new constitution partly because it entrenched Islamic Kadhi courts, arguing that no religion should receive preferential treatment.

Cardinal Njue's style is blunt, combative and doctrinally classical. He grounds his public statements in Scripture and the commandments, with lines such as 'either we are Christians or we are not' during the 2010 referendum campaign and 'let him forget, forget and forget' in reply to Barack Obama in 2013. He has been less present in the media since his retirement in 2021.