EUROPE/ITALY - Sister Luisa Dall’Orto: "Her dedicated life speaks with facts, with an echo that generates hope and spreads charity"

Monday, 25 July 2022 martyrs   religious institutes   missionary animation  

Lecco (Agenzia Fides) - "She was murdered, 'the Angel of children', poor among the poor, without thinking of herself, but giving herself for the little ones, the most fragile, the weakest, the last on earth, in which Jesus himself always wants to recognize himself. This is the path of justice and peace for the human dignity of all. Our Sister Luisa belongs to the ranks of the prudent and wise virgins, worthy of listening not to the sound of weapons, but to the joyful cry 'Here is the bridegroom, go out to meet him' and the meeting is full life forever". This was underlined by Monsignor Luigi Stucchi, Auxiliary Bishop emeritus of Milan, in the homily at the funeral of Sister Luisa Dell'Orto, the missionary of the Little Sisters of the Gospel killed in Haiti on June 25 during an attack (see Fides, 26/6/2022). The funeral was held on Saturday, July 23, in Lomagna (Lecco), Sister Luisa's hometown, where she was buried. Quoting the words of the Apostle Paul, "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?", the Bishop recalled that "We are called to be witnesses of life with all our lives! With Sister Luisa, like Sister Luisa". Then he added: "Her life now belongs to us even more in her exemplary nature, it is a life that speaks to all peoples, to all humanity. Her life given speaks with facts, it has an echo that generates hope and spreads charity. Sister Luisa, little sister of the Gospel, belongs to the living risen Lord present because she loved him, like him and all those with whom Jesus identifies himself. She cries out with life and with death, silently and unarmed, that it is beautiful to give one's life for others, because this is life forever, for everyone".
Tertullian affirmed that martyrs were and are the seed of new Christians, therefore Sister Luisa "is the seed of goodness, of justice, of fraternity, of peace". "It will not be weapons that give us the future, and much less justice and peace", the bishop continued, "instead, it will be internally unarmed people who will stop violence in all its forms and its false or presumed reasons. Justice is not in the unstable balance of forces involved, but in the testimony of a truly new life in love without measure".
The Archbishop of Milan, Mario Delpini, also sent a message highlighting Sister Luisa's testimony: "Her life was a blessing in the gentle practice of charity, in the simple style of fraternity with the wounded, the lonely, the poor, in the intelligent search for truth along the tortuous, fascinating, sometimes interrupted and resigned paths of human wisdom, and in the docile following of the defenseless revelation of Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Her death was a blessing: in imitation of the Righteous unjustly killed, we must believe that she sowed in the murderers a word of forgiveness, an invitation to conversion, a testimony so that humanity is not led to despair of itself, noting the incomprehensible spectacle of unjustified evil, of irrational violence". (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 25/7/2022)


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