MISSION & WITNESS
Vol. XV
No. 11
December 2003
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The
Only Thing That Counts
It was the firm conviction that the only thing that counts is love - that led Annalena Tonelli to leave Italy for her mission 'ad gentes'. She dedicated 33 years of her life to helping Somalis before being assassinated last October in Borama, Somaliland. Dr Tonelli had been in Borama since 1996, using donations from friends and family to set up the 200-bed hospital for tuberculosis patients. "Everybody in Borama liked her for her Somaliness," said Dr. Abdisalan Jama Gahayr, a physician at the hospital. "I worked with her for seven years and her temper never changed, even during the difficult times."
Last year at a meeting in the Vatican on the occasion of the ‘International Day for Volunteers’ she had this to share:
"I was born in Forli in 1943. I have been working in the health sector for over 30 years, but I am not a doctor. I have an Italian law degree and I am qualified to teach English in high schools in Kenya. I hold certificates and diplomas in tuberculosis testing from Kenya, in tropical and community medicine from England, in leprology from Spain.
I left Italy in January 1969. Since then, I have been living in the service of Somalis. I wanted to follow Jesus and opted to be for the poor. For Him, I chose radical poverty, although I cannot ever become poor in the way that poor people are poor.
I live out my service without a name, without the security of a religious order, without belonging to an organization, without a salary, without paying social security for my old age. But I have friends who help me and my people, especially those on the 'Committee Against World Hunger' in Forlì.
I left Italy determined to "proclaim the Gospel with my life" in the footsteps of Charles de Foucauld. Thirty-three years on, I proclaim the Gospel with my life alone, and I burn with the desire to go on doing this until the very end. This is what motivates me deep down, along with an invincible passion for the suffering and downtrodden, over and above questions of race, culture or creed.
I have almost always lived with Somalis, in a strictly Muslim world. First in Kenya, and now here in Borama, I have no fellow Christians.
In the beginning, everything was against me. I was young, and so unworthy either of being listened to or of respect. I was white, and so despised by the race that considers itself superior to all others. I was Christian, and so outcast, rejected, feared. And I was unmarried, which is an absurdity in a world where celibacy does not exist and is not valued.
Only those people who know me well maintain that I am Somali like them, and that I am the real mother of all those I have saved. 'Ut unum sint' (that they may be one) has been, and remains, the deepest yearning of my soul. I have struggled with myself for a lifetime, poor creature that I am, to be good, truthful, gentle in thought, in word, in action.
Each day at the Tb Centre we work for peace, for reciprocal understanding, to learn together how to forgive. Oh, forgiveness, how hard it is to forgive. My Muslims have great difficulty appreciating it, wanting it for their lives… And yet life only has meaning if you love. Everything is meaningless without love.
I have experienced great danger, I have risked death time and again, I have spent years in the midst of war. Through my loved ones, and so through my own flesh, I have experienced man's wickedness, his perversity, his cruelty, his iniquity. And I have come to the firm conclusion that the only thing that counts is love. Only then is life worth living. I lose my head over scraps of suffering humanity; the greater the suffering, the more these people are mistreated, despised, voiceless, of no value in the eyes of the world, the more I love them. And this love is tenderness, understanding, tolerance, lack of fear, audacity. This is not a merit, but rather a requirement of my nature. What is certain is that in them I see Him, the Lamb of God who bears in his flesh the sins of the world.
But the most extraordinary gift, for which I will always give thanks to the Lord and to them, is that of my nomads in the desert. Muslims, they taught me faith, unconditional abandon, surrender to God, a surrender that is in no way fatalistic, but rather steadfast and rooted in God, a surrender that is trust and love. My nomads in the desert have taught me to do everything, to begin everything, to carry out all work in the name of God." <WM
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