Nun released nearly five years after kidnapping in Mali thanks God

Walter Sanchez Silva   By Walter Sanchez Silva for CNA

October 19, 2021 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 0 Print


Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez / CEC

Rome, Italy, Oct 19, 2021 / 16:39 pm (CNA).

Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argoti, a missionary who was abducted in Mali in February 2017 and held for nearly five years, posted Sunday on Twitter thanking God and all those who made possible her liberation.

In her Oct. 17 message, Sr. Gloria said, “I want to lift up my thanksgiving to God on this day because I have felt him close to me during this captivity.”

“My thanks to His Holiness Pope Francis, to the Italian government, to the Italian intelligence agencies, to the Malian authorities, to Cardinal Zerbo,” the nun said.

After she was released, Jean Cardinal Zerbo of Bamako told AFP, “We  prayed a lot for her release. I thank the Malian authorities and the people of goodwill which made this release possible.”

Sr. Gloria also thanked “Dr. Iván Duque, President of Colombia, and the entire Colombian government, the Colombian ambassador to Italy, Dr. Jorge Mario, GAULA, the Bishops’  Conference, the bishops and priests, the mean and women religious, parish groups, committed laity, prayer groups ”

The nun also thanked “the educational institutions, teaching and administrative staff, students and alumni, the congregation of Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate, my family, all those people who prayed for me and made my liberation possible, and those who have strengthened me and have welcomed me with their kind gestures of fraternity, a sincere ‘May God reward you.’”

Armed men kidnapped Sister Cecilia, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate and a Colombia native, in Karangasso, about 90 miles south of San, Feb. 7, 2017. The men forced Sister Cecilia to hand over the keys to the community’s ambulance. The vehicle was later found abandoned. Three other sisters were present at their house but escaped.

According to the Associated Press, a judge in the country charged four individuals in relation to the kidnapping in April 2017.

Sr. Cecilia had served in Mali for 12 years before her abduction. Her community administers a large health center in the country, as well as a home where they care for some 30 orphans between one and two years of age.

The religious sisters teach literacy to some 700 Muslim women. They are working on a barn project for times of food shortages, as many mothers in the region die from malnutrition.

In July Sr. Cecilia identified the group then holding her as Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, a militant Islamist group in West Africa and the Maghreb.

She was released Oct. 9.

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Visitation at Vatican’s liturgy office before Cardinal Sarah’s successor announced

March 16, 2021 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 16, 2021 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- An Italian bishop is carrying out a visitation at the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments less than a month after Cardinal Robert Sarah resigned as prefect.

According to media reports, Bishop Claudio Maniago of Castellaneta, president of the liturgy commission of the Italian bishops’ conference, began a visitation to the Vatican’s liturgy office March 15.

Maniago is also a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship, appointed in 2016.

Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Sarah’s resignation as prefect of the Divine Worship congregation Feb. 20. His successor to lead the office has not yet been named.

Information about Maniago’s visitation has not been made public, but the Italian newspaper La Stampa wrote March 16 that it had confirmed it was taking place and seen an internal email of the congregation announcing the visitation.

According to La Stampa, the March 12 email, from Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, said: “The Holy Father has decided, before making appointments to the Congregation, that there should be a visit to the Dicastery by one of his representatives.”

The email reportedly further said that Maniago would be learning about the congregation’s work and meeting with officials one by one.

“I have already expressed to the Holy Father our openness to this visit and our sure and sincere welcome to Msgr. Maniago,” Roche reportedly wrote.

“There is nothing to be alarmed about in this. As you know, this style of visit is now becoming a regular occurrence at the end of the mandate of the heads of the Dicastery or at the time of a significant change.”

La Stampa reported that internal consultations of the sort described in Roche’s email did not take place, however, in the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples or the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, which both received new prefects in recent years.

Since Sarah’s resignation was accepted in February, the question has been who might be chosen to replace the Guinean cardinal at the head of the liturgy congregation.

CNA reported last month that Pope Francis could be looking at three possible candidates, one of which is Maniago, the bishop carrying out this month’s visitation.

In his role at the Italian bishops’ conference, Maniago, 62, oversaw the new Italian translation of the Roman Missal.

Another possible option for prefect is Roche, currently the congregation’s number two.

Before being appointed to his Vatican position in 2012, Roche, 70, served as chairman of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy.

During the last eight years, the English archbishop has been a go-between for Pope Francis and Cardinal Sarah on liturgical issues.

Bishop Vittorio Viola of Tortona, Italy, is a third possible candidate. The 55-year-old is a member of the Order of Friars Minor.

His first appointment as a bishop, in 2014, was on the initiative of Pope Francis, who took him from a position as president of the Assisi-based branch of Caritas.

Viola was also formerly the Custodian of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels in Assisi. He got to know the pope during his 2013 visit to the city when they sat next to each other during a lunch with the poor.

Viola is also a good friend of Bishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi, who was secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship from 2003 to 2005.


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