Many readers of Spirituality will recall the accounts by Fr Martin McGee, a Benedictine monk of Worth Abbey, about the Cistercian monks from the monastery of Tibhirine, Algeria, all except one of whom were abducted and then beheaded by an extreme Nationalist group โ the Armed Islamic Group โ in Algeria, in The s was a time of great violence and unrest in this, the second largest country on the African continent.
Algeria, ruthlessly colonised by the French in the late s, waged a bitter war of liberation to gain independence, and then a civil war, as many groups formed with various objectives. Spirituality more recently carried another article, also by McGee, about the Dominican Bishop of Oran, Blessed Paul Claverie, who, with his faithful Muslim driver, was killed by the same group in Ironically, a march for peace was taking place in Algiers at the same time. The Marist Brothers had responsibility for a library, where up to one thousand disadvantaged young people would come to study and do their homework.
But if the police are knocking at the front door, what should one do? After graduating from the college of Sainte-Marie de Neuilly, she studied physics and chemistry at the Sorbonne and graduated as an engineer, one of the few women in that profession at the time. One of her friends at university invited her to her religious profession as a Little Sister of the Assumption, and so she became acquainted with the Order, well known in France for their work among poor families in working class areas of larger cities in France and abroad.
She decided to join them. After a ten minute conversation she was certain that this is where the Lord was waiting for her, and she entered in But first, in a way that seems characteristic, she got employment in a factory so as to become more familiar with the life and culture of factory workers. St Paul, the great missionary and bridge-builder, was her inspiration, and she wished to respond to the call of Christ perceived at Calvary.
After profession she qualified as a nurse, and moved to the community at Creil, a town a little to the north of Paris, where at that time, not very long after World War II, she encountered extreme poverty and deprivation. From there she sailed to Algeria in to work at a medico-social centre in the working- class district of Belcourt in Algiers.
