Cardinal secretly exhumed

Nairobi, Kenya - Members of the clan of Kenya's first Catholic cardinal expressed shock at his exhumation and reburial in a statement issued on Thursday.

Church officials reburied the body of the late cardinal Maurice Otunga to strengthen a bid to have him beatified.

Otunga's reburial in a mausoleum in a Nairobi suburb, where former Pope John Paul 2 once held a Mass, came barely a week after the body was removed at night from its original grave.

Church leaders exhumed the cardinal's remains quietly to avoid opposition from his ethnic Bukusu community which had resisted a similar attempt last year, saying the exhumation would be a curse.

Senior church clergy believe the reburial is the first step towards its application for the late cardinal Otunga to be declared a saint.

The church said it would have been difficult to manage the crowds if the reburial had been announced.

Otunga became Kenya's first cardinal in 1973 under the papacy of Pope Paul VI. He died aged 80 in September 2003.