AMERICA/COLOMBIA - Four years after the kidnapping of Sister Gloria, "the Church continues to pray for her health and her prompt release"

Monday, 8 February 2021 missionary institutes   kidnapping   episcopal conferences  

Bogotà (Agenzia Fides) - On February 7, four years have passed since the kidnapping of the Colombian nun Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argoty, who served as a missionary in Mali (see Fides 6/2/2021). "The Church continues to pray for her health and her prompt release", said Archbishop Francisco Javier Múnera Correa, Bishop of San Vicente del Caguán and President of the Commission on Missions of the Colombian Bishops' Conference. According to a note from the Colombian Bishops' Conference, the Bishop again calls for the religious woman to be released, for her human dignity and status as a religious sister to be respected, who devoted herself exclusively to serving the neediest in missionary countries.
Archbishop Múnera also found words of encouragement and solidarity with the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate, to which Sister Gloria Cecilia belongs, and reminded them that the Bishops will not forget Sister Gloria Cecilia and will continue to pray for her immediate return. In this context he also remembered Rosita Argoty de Narváez, the mother of the kidnapped nun who died last year without her wish to see her daughter free again. Finally, he praised the efforts of the Section for Relations with States of the Vatican, which continues to work for the release of the religious.
Sister Gloria Cecilia was abducted on February 7, 2017 from the village of Karangasso near Koutiala, about 400 kilometers east of Bamako, the capital of Mali, in West Africa, where Sister Gloria worked among the poorest. She was a great advocate for the protection of life and took special care of the children, who are often neglected in the local culture. She had set up an orphanage in which she tried to enable the little guests to have a good life, who she treated like a mother and provided with love and care.
A year ago, on 6 February 2020, during the works of the Plenary Assembly of the Colombian Episcopal Conference, three years after the kidnapping, Mgr.Mario de Jesús Álvarez Gómez, Bishop of Istmina-Tadó and member of the Commission for missionary animation, said: "No, we have not forgotten Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez. We are united in prayer to God so that the Lord may touch the hearts of these people and that the nun may find freedom". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 8/2/2021)


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