Blessed Marie-Clementine Anuarite Nengapeta

Have you ever heard of Anuarite Nengapeta? I only recently heard about her as I was preparing this reflection for today, Thursday of the first week of Advent. It is also December 1 - the feast day of Marie-Clementine Anuarite Nengapeta. Hers is a remarkable story. She was born in Wamba, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1939 to the Wabudu tribe. Her father left her mother when she was young. Nengapeta and her mother were baptised in 1945. Because her mother was opposed to her becoming a nun, she went off to the convent by herself. Both her parents were there when she was professed, assuming the name “Marie-Clementine”, in 1959. A rebellion broke out across the Congo in 1964. The Simla rebels not only attacked Westerners but also local religious because they were suspected of supporting the foreigners. The rebels stormed the convent where Marie-Clementine lived and she and the rest of the nuns were taken to Isiro where the rebel leader had his headquarters. There a Colonel Olombe tried to force himself on her. When she refused, she was brutally beaten to death by the soldiers. As she lay dying she said, “I forgive you, for you know not what you are doing.” Her body was later exhumed from a common grave and buried in Isiro Cathedral. Pope John Paul II beatified her during a visit to Zaire in 1985. As I reflect upon today’s gospel reading about the one who built his house on rock (Matthew 7:21,24-27), Blessed Marie-Clementine Anuarite Nengapeta stands as one whose faith was rock-solid even in the face of brutality and death. She is a saint for our times, indeed a saint of our times. Let us pray for all, especially women, who are victims of wars that wage across our world today. Let us pray also for women who are victims are human trafficking, here in Aotearoa-New Zealand and across the world.