Annalena Tonelli, witness to charity in Borama
In Borama, north-west Somalia, Italian Annalena Tonelli dedicated the last seven years of her life to tuberculosis patients, deaf children and the poorest. Catholic Laica without a religious order or salary, lived like those she served and was killed on 5 October 2003 at the doors of the hospital she had founded. His cause of beatification was initiated in 2020 by the dioceses of Forlà -Bertinoro and Djibouti.
🌹 Wonders and anecdotes
- Born on 2 April 1943 in Forlì, Italy, Annalena Tonelli arrived in Africa in 1969 and spent thirty-three years serving tuberculosis patients in Kenya and Somalia, a pioneer of the outpatient treatment model that WHO would adopt decades later as a DOTS protocol.
- In 1996 he was established in Borama, where he founded and directed a tuberculosis hospital with more than two hundred beds; at the time of his death he served three hundred and seventy-seven patients admitted, with a budget of twenty thousand dollars per month provided by Italian friends and relatives.
- It also founded the first school for deaf and disabled children in Somalia, which is still active today under the name Annalena Tonelli School for the Deaf and has been a model for similar centres in Djibouti and Hargueysa.
- In June 2003, four months before his death, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees awarded him the Nansen Prize, with $2,000, in recognition of his humanitarian work; she refused to keep the money for herself.
- On 5 October 2003, two gunmen killed her with two shots to the head as she left the hospital for her morning round with the sick. She was buried in Somalia, according to her will. I was sixty.
- Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi gave him the Gold Medal for Civil Merit in a posthumous capacity; the Italian Church pointed it out at the 2006 Ecclesial Congress of Verona as a witness of hope of the 20th century.
Servant of God (cause of ongoing beatification)
Borama has no Catholic temples or organized Christian community: Annalena Tonelli was the only Christian in the city. His spirituality, formed in the contemplation of Charles de Foucauld, led him to embody the Gospel in the silence of service to the most abandoned, without losing his faith and joy among a Muslim population who admired and respected it. The tribal chief came to declare that "she would go to Heaven." There is no specific Marian devotion documented in his life in the consulted sources; his testimony is directed towards Christ present in the poor and the sick. The diocese of Mogadishu, under whose nominal jurisdiction Somaliland falls, has been vacant since the murder of Bishop Salvatore Colombo in 1989.
"Lord, who made Annalena Tonelli a mirror of your mercy among the poorest of the earth, we ask that the glory of your Kingdom, which she sought in the face of the sick of Borama, be also recognized by your Church. Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the poor, give us the grace not to turn away the look of the suffering. Amen.
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