What remains of Sister Luisa (which is so much)

Two years ago, on June 25, 2022, in Port-au-Prince, Sister Luisa Dell’Orto was killed, two days before her 65th birthday. This woman of faith and mission was many things: a Little Sister of the Gospel of Charles de Foucauld, a teacher of the History of Philosophy and Social Doctrine of the Church, and a teacher of future priests. She was born in Lomagna, in the rich Lombardy region, which is Europe’s most important industrial region, and became a missionary among the world’s poorest. She commenced in Cameroon and Madagascar, and then twenty years in Haiti where she mainly cared for the children of that tormented country. As we know, Haiti “is not only the poorest state in the West” as Lucia Capuzzi writes in her book Sorella universale [Universal Sister] (ed. San Paolo), but “an icon of the conflicts that characterize contemporary times and whose protagonists are illegal armed groups”. A woman who dedicated her life to others, then gave it to become martyred, emphasized Pope Francis. Two years after her violent death to four gunshots in the street, the “Kay-Chal” Center, founded in a slum after the dramatic earthquake of 2010 by the Little Sisters of the Gospel, welcomes 300 “Restavek”: children and teenagers from the countryside who arrive alone in the city to work as domestics, who are not educated and at risk of social exclusion.

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