By Paschal Norbert
MOGADISHU, OCTOBER 6, 2023 (CISA)– On October 5, 2003, Italian-born Catholic lay woman Annalena Tonelli was killed in Borama, the largest city of the northwestern Awdal region of Somaliland, then a separatist region of Somalia.
Annalena Tonelli dedicated over 33 years of her life working with the poorest of the poor in Africa. Her mission to the poor started in Wajir, Kenya, and then to Somalia in the early 1970s. In Kenya, she cared for the sick: tuberculosis and AIDS sufferers and the abandoned and disabled in the Muslim-dominated north who were regarded as outcasts of the community and built a rehabilitation centre, which is currently managed by Camillian sisters under the Catholic Diocese of Garissa.
At the height of the infamous Wagalla Massacre of ethnic Somalis by the Kenya Army on February 10, 1984, Annalena then an unknown figure with a group of helpers would pick up the wounded and survivors and take them to recovery centres. Her actions to make the world know of these atrocities committed by the army led her to be expelled from Kenya in 1985.
It is from here that she set up camp in Mogadishu, Somalia, before moving to Merca then Borama, where at the age of 61, one evening, upon returning after an evening visit to the sick, she was killed by two hitmen with two shots to the back of the head. In Borama, she founded a thriving health facility and a Sanitarian organization with the support of friends and well-wishers in Italy.
Born in Forli, Italy, on April 2, 1943, Annalena was the second of five children. Even when young, she was not afraid of leaving her hometown and at the age of 19, she got on a scholarship to America where she suspected her vocation was to serve the lowliest of the world. In Forli she spent most of her free time with the sick on the outskirts of the city: prostitutes, alcoholics and the mentally ill.
“Annalena helps us understand that great vision of the future that is Fratelli Tutti. Annalena is with us and with the whole Church. She helps us to spend our lives in service, to seek new paths, and to have a contemplative look at the world. A look that always seeks the other, especially the little ones,” eulogized Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), during a vigil organized in her honour at her home Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Forlì on October 5.
According to Rt. Rev Giorgio Bertin, OFM, Bishop of Djibouti and the Apostolic Administrator of Mogadishu, “The Church in Somalia remembers her today, October 5, and with a special celebration to be held on Sunday, October 8.”
“I only wanted to follow Jesus. I was not interested in anything else: Christ and the poor in Christ. For Him, I decided to live in radical poverty, even though I will never be able to be poor as a truly poor person – like those in whose presence I am all day long. I serve others without a name, without the security of a religious order, without belonging to any organization, without a salary, without any income, without a pension to assure my future for when I am old. I am not married because I chose so with joy when I was young. I wanted to belong completely to God. Not having my own family was a demand of my very being,” Annalena Tonelli.
