NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug. 23 (UPI) -- Church officials secretly exhumed the body of Maurice Otunga, Kenya's first Roman Catholic cardinal, and plan to nominate Otunga for sainthood.
Otunga's body was quietly unearthed at night to avoid a confrontation with the Bukusu people, who had blocked an earlier exhumation fearing it would trigger a curse, the BBC reported.
The church plans to rebury Otunga in a suburban Nairobi mausoleum where Pope John Paul II held a mass.
Archbishop Mwana a'Nzeki said the cardinal should be reburied in a way fitting someone regarded as a saint by many Kenyan Catholics. The archbishop said efforts would begin soon to win Vatican approval of sainthood investigations.
Otunga, appointed Kenya's first cardinal in 1973 by Pope Paul VI, died in September 2003 at the age of 80.
