Kolkata: The Missionaries of Charity nuns say the murder of four of their members in Yemen will not deter their work in that West Asian Arab country.
Sources close to the congregation’s headquarters in Kolkata say the nuns will not abandon their blue-bordered white sari to work in areas where animosity toward Christians prevails. They will continue to visit the trouble-torn areas of the world to serve the poor and the needy.
“Mother Teresa had always been to the remote corners of the world irrespective of the situation prevailing there. She visited Palestine when it was on the boil,” Sunil Lucas, working president of the World Catholic Association for Communication, told The Times of India.
According to him, the Mother Teresa nuns follow their founder’s principles and teaching and “will never shed their responsibilities due to risks. Their job is to reach out to the helpless in the name of God. The Yemen killings will have no impact on the itinerary of the sisters.”
The nuns, one of them Indian, were among 16 people gunned down by unidentified men on Friday morning in Yemen’s southern city of Aden.
The Indian nun, Sister M Anselm hailed from Gumla district in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. Other slain nuns were Sisters Margarita and Reginette from Rwanda and Sister M Judith from Kenya.
A special Mass was offered at the nuns’ headquarters on Saturday morning for their martyred colleagues. While sketchy details of the incident have reached Kolkata, there has not been any official response from the Mother House.
Painter Sunita Kumar, a long-time associate of Mother Teresa, said, “Nothing like has ever happened in the past. This is unfortunate since MC Sisters tour the world to help the poor and the ailing.” said Kumar. The assassins, she added, had apparently broken into the chapel where the sisters were staying, looking for a Christian missionary. They shot the sisters after failing to find him. “They destroyed the entire chapel including the crucifix,” she said.
Setbacks like this were not new for missionaries, though, said Lucas.
“Hundreds of Christians lost their lives and property during the Kandhamal riots in Odisha a few years ago. Villages were burnt down and people massacred. But that didn’t deter the missionaries,” he said.
Many missionaries donned civilian clothes to merge with the local people so that they could continue to serve people, he added. “But MC sisters are not going to shed their saris and will continue to work in the same way they have been doing so far,” said Lucas.
He added that MC Sisters were strong enough to take such hazards in their stride. “They are aware of the threat that prevails in some parts of the world. But they are on a mission to serve and won’t be stepping back fearing such attacks,” the Catholic lay leader added.