Italian nun killed in Haiti said she stayed there so poor could count on someone
"To be able to count on someone is important in order to live! And witnessing that you can count on the solidarity that comes from faith and love of God is the greatest gift we can offer.”
An Italian nun who dedicated her life to caring for poor children in Haiti was killed Saturday.
Her home diocese of Milan reported that the Lombardy native, Sister Luisa Dell’Orto, 64, was injured “during an armed aggression, probably with the aim of robbery,” in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital.
She died at the hospital shortly afterwards, just two days shy of her 65th birthday.
Pope Francis mentioned her heroic life on Sunday after he prayed the midday Angelus:
I would like to express my closeness to the relatives and fellow sisters of Sister Luisa Dell’Orto, a Little Sister of the Gospel of Saint Charles de Foucauld, who was killed yesterday in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. For twenty years, Sister Luisa lived there, dedicated above all to serving children on the streets.
I entrust her soul to God, and I pray for the Haitian people, especially for the least, so they might have a more serene future, without misery and without violence. Sister Luisa made a gift of her life to others even to martyrdom.
By referring to Sister Luisa as a martyr, the Pope brings to mind his 2017 teaching on the path to canonization.
While the Church has traditionally refers to martyrs only as those who lose their lives at the hands of an aggressor acting “in hatred of the faith,” in 2017, the Holy Father broadened the pathway to canonization to include those who give their lives in charity, as Jesus says no one has “greater love” than he who gives his life for another.
This new path resembles that of martyrdom inasmuch as it refers to giving one’s life, but not due to violence caused by “hate of the faith” (odium fidei), but rather, as an “heroic act of charity.”
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