SERAFINA CINQUE ASC

 

 

Serafina Cinque, given the name Noemi at baptism, was born January 31, 1913 in Boca das Garças, a village on the Amazon River (Brazil) to parents of Italian descent (from Sapri in the Salerno region).

She was the second of twelve children and was very protected and a bit “spoiled” because of her precarious health. 

When she was eleven her strict father entrusted her to the Dorthean sisters in Manaus to teach and educate her.  The sisters prepared her for her First Communion and on this day she unexpectedly decided she would giver her life completely to Jesus. Her parents would not allow her to join the convent immediately.

Instead, she worked hard as a catechist of children, youth and adults in her parish in Manaus. In order to help the sick poor people, she also earned her diploma in nursing.  In 1946, at the age of 33, Noemi joined the Sisters Adorers of the Blood of Christ who, having come from the United States, had opened a mission in the Amazon.

 The poverty surrounding her deeply touched her heart and would not allow her to close her eyes to it. Rather, she worked tirelessly for the poor.  She urged the young boys and girls to study in order to have a better future.  She rushed to the bedsides of mothers in childbirth to save both mothers and the babies. She welcomed all kinds of sick people and took care of them with medicines that she often prepared herself. And, above all, she prepared other people to help and continue her work.

In 1972, the year the Transamazonian highway was begun and many of Brazil’s poor were attracted to the area. Sr. Serafina was sent to Altamira, a town in the heart of the forest, to teach in the evening section of the Maria De Mattias Institute and to direct the diocesan clinic. Here Sr. Serafina came into even more direct contact with the great plight of the people as a result of the difficulties the Transamazonian highway added to their pre-existing poverty.  She did everything she could to help the pregnant women, coming from the forests to the city, to give birth to their children. Many had no place to stay and no one to help them.  She also welcomed to the clinic the sick coming from the interior.  Her gentle insistence with Bishop Erick Kraűtler, already sensitive to the problems of these women, brought about the construction of a home to meet their needs.  Sr. Serafina called it the Divine Providence Home because it would have to be maintained by the generosity of the people of the city of Altamira and the peasants of the forest.  In 1984 the Divine Providence Home for the pregnant women was built and the St. Gaspar Refuge for the sick was built shortly after.  Soon there were 100 patients in the two.  And Sr. Serafina would go begging for them every day, going door to door. She experienced “how good God is,” an expression that became her motto.  She was called “Mother Teresa of Altamira.” Because of this, the national press also called her the “White Angel of the Transamazonian Highway.”  However, the purpose of Sr. Serafina’s work was not only health care assistance but also the psychological, social, cultural and religious formation of the guests in the Divine Providence House.  She helped with their immediate needs but she was also concerned about the future of the people. She helped them to have life of dignity and to become self-supporting.  Sr. Serafina was diagnosed with lymphoma and died in Manaus on October 21, 1988.  A thorough study of Sister Serafina’s life has been completed and she is currently being considered as a formal candidate for the process of beatification.

THE FIVE

MARTYRS OF LIBERIA

This is the story of Sisters M. Joel and Shirley Kolmer, Agnes Mueller, Barbara Ann Muttra, Kathleen McGuire, “martyrs of charity” in Liberia, Africa.  These Adorers from the United States Ruma Province showed to the very end what it means to be attentive to the “dear neighbor.”

Through the years in Liberia, the “dear neighbor” made his/her appearance in the students asking questions, in the refugees who were victims of terror, in the suffering patients and in the rejected orphans. The Sisters took care of everyone in the school classrooms and in the distribution centers for various types of assistance. As the civil way in Liberia continued out of control, they comforted and distributed cups of fresh water to the “dear neighbor” who painfully walked and stumbled by their home in Gardnersville outside Monrovia, a procession of refugees fleeing the conflict.

In one of the smallest and most developmentally-challenged African nations, the Sisters had opened parochial schools to educate the poor children. The established clinics to take care of emergencies treat malaria and other diseases and eliminate malnutrition. They had not hesitated to go to the very poor villages to treat the sick and to provide medications and to begin schools.

The beginnings had not been easy. They had to face the lack of potable water, the annoyance created by many tropical insects, the phenomenon of “thieves” who engaged in continual and systematic raids on their houses, school and clinics. They had had to fight malaria and hepatitis which weakened their physical health.

But nothing had stopped them. Moreover, it seemed that the difficulties stimulated enthusiasm and creativity. When they found themselves in the middle of the civil war whirlwind, with its hatred, thefts and killings, they did not think of themselves or their safety. Rather these five committed women, though very different among themselves, were united by the one same “readiness” to serve the broken people and to give themselves totally.

Between the dates of October 20 and 23 of 1992, the Sisters themselves were killed as a result of their lives completely given on behalf of the refugees and victims of the civil war.