Rome, Oct 13, 2021: After almost 5 years as a captive of an Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in Mali in West Africa, a Colombian nun has been freed.
Sister Gloria Cecilia Narvaez Argoti was flown from Bamako, Mali’s capital, to Rome where Vatican Media posted photos of her being greeted by the Pope at Mass.in St Peter’s Basilica.
Despite earlier fears for her health, her brother told AFP that photos showed her to look well, though extremely brown from the Malian sun. She herself told AFP “I’m very happy; I stayed healthy for five years, thank God.”
She was kidnapped on February 7, 2017, in southern Mali, a relatively safe part of the country, which had till then been mainly unaffected by the Islamist attacks which had come in the wake of the Tuareg rebellion and subsequent coup in 2012; a coup which had later been put down by French troops.
During her long captivity, Sister Argoti had also survived the vagaries of another coup in Mali in summer 2020.Now France is reducing its troops by half; and there are tensions between it and the coup’s leaders who are now in government.
The nun’s personal circumstances included the killing of her fellow hostage and devout Christian, Beatrice Stockli, probably in late summer 2020; Stockli, from Switzerland had been kidnapped from Timbuktu in northern Mali 13 months before Argoti.
The nun, now in her early sixties, had also endured the freeing of her camp-mate, French aid worker Sophie Petronin, exactly a year before the nun herself was finally freed on October 8.
It was Petronin who confirmed that the Colombian nun was still alive as the captive of Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslim (JNIM), Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims.
Sadly, Gloria Argoti’s mother had died just weeks before Petronin was able to tell of how the two women had shared a tent. (Edgar Narvaez later told his sister in a note via the Red Cross that their mother had been “unable to endure the sadness and despair any longer.”)
To read more click