杏MAP导航

By Dorota Abdelmoula-Viet

Sister Rosemary began narrating the history of her work by talking about her congregation.

Although she is known as “Ugandan Mother Teresa” and Time magazine recognized her years ago as one of the 100 most influential women in the world, she stresses that she owes her strength and courage to God, prayer and her fellow religious sisters.

Refugees ‘like the Holy Family’

As Sister Rosemary highlights, facing challenges has been a part of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus’ history since the beginning.

It was founded in 1954 in what is now South Sudan. A mere 10 years later, it became a community of refugees; because of the escalation of the conflict in the country, the sisters made the difficult decision to flee to Uganda, taking with them the people they cared for daily, primarily women and children.

This dramatic move, which is still compared to the biblical episode of the Holy Family’s escape to Egypt, gave rise to many vocations. Among them was that of Sister Rosemary, a young girl who at the age of 14 decided to dedicate her life to God.

‘God calls us to do what we can’

“I heard what some of the sisters who cared for the children said and I thought it would be the right place for me because I love children and I was a babysitter for my sister’s children”, the sister briefly explained.

She was convinced that God calls one “to what he knows we can do”. And the things she could do would soon be revealed: with her sister, she decided to care for young women who had been kidnapped by rebels, sexually abused by them and trained to kill, only to later be rejected by their own communities.

“People were afraid of them, because many of them had their loved ones’ blood on their hands. So I opened the door and said: Come to us,” recalled Sister Rosemary, as if she were inviting welcome guests. “I also sent a message to the local radio – a risky move, as the rebels might hear it. But it was worth it: many women, young women came, often with their children, unloved and conceived as a result of rape.”

Sr. Rosemary oversees the sewing work of young women

A sewing machine, not a killing machine

Asked if she had been afraid to care for women who asked not only for psychological assistance but for medical care as well (some of them were pregnant), Sister Rosemary responded without hesitation: “I was not afraid; I’m a professional obstetrician.”

She is not, however, a seamstress, but that didn’t stop her from “sewing” the women’s lives back together or from planting seeds of hope in them.

Her idea was simple: to transform machine guns into sewing machines and show the formerly enslaved women that a life which has been torn apart can be reassembled into something beautiful and precious, like fragments of materials that are transformed into beautiful handbags.

“Oh, look, this is made of Coca-Cola caps,” Sister Rosemary said, showing off a small, finely sewn bag she never parts with. “I tell the women: ‘Look how beautiful these bags are. You made them by carefully stitching together what people have thrown away. And you, too, can be this beautiful!’”

Seeing God in a rebel’s face

From the beginning, the sisters have faced serious threats for helping these women. Sister Rosemary even knew many of the rebels from her time working in the city as an obstetrician.

“My biggest fear was the fact that they knew me and that they would one day kill us,” she said.

She looked for help through a prayer she wrote herself: “I continued to say, ‘God, if I should one day come across these rebels, help me to see your face in them and let them see your face in me’”.

Her prayer did not go unanswered. One day an armed man showed up at the sisters’ house a little before they started preparing a meal. Sister Rosemary found herself face-to-face with him. The potential killer however, didn’t raise a hand against her but asked for medicine and food.

“I gave him what we had, and I stopped to watch him walk away on the other side of the road,” she recalled, as if the scene were still playing out before her. “Suddenly I see him walking back. And he says, ‘You were so kind to me that I don’t want you to get hurt’. Then he goes to the kitchen and from the oven we were about to turn on, he pulls out the explosives he had hidden there! His act of kindness saved us all.”

Her name was Susan

“There were thousands,” answered Sister Rosemary when asked how many women they have helped. There is one story she remembers especially vividly.

“Her name was Susan. She was kidnapped by rebels together with her youngest sister, whom she was carrying on her back. When they were about to cross the river, she asked the kidnappers to help her, because she couldn’t cross the river while carrying her sister on her back. They told her to choose: her own life or her sister’s. Then they told her to kill her sister. She killed her, and left her there, and they moved on.”

The sister explained that she had been helping Susan for years. “I befriended her, I was always close to her. And I kept telling her, Susan, forgive yourself. They made you do it. And God has forgiven you. This story will stay with me forever,” she affirmed, stressing that her role has always been that of “sowing hope”.

‘I do not talk about God’

The Santa Monica Centre is not the Ugandan missionary’s only activity. “In December of last year, I launched a new project in South Sudan geared towards nurturing internally displaced children who live on the streets. We have 450 children there. We teach them to read and write, and we give them a place where they can play,” she explained.

Asked if she talks about God with the people she serves, she said no. “Do you know why I don’t talk about him?” she asked with a smile. “Because my presence is enough to tell them that I am with them, because I believe in God. I proclaim him with my presence. To accompany them day and night, seven days a week, you need to have God in your heart.”