Annalena Tonelli
1943-2003 20th century
Following Christ in the poor, without title or safety net, when prayer becomes a life entirely given away.
Who was Annalena Tonelli?
An Italian law graduate who left at twenty-five for the Horn of Africa, she spent nearly thirty-five years serving tuberculosis patients, deaf children and the disabled, in Kenya and then Somalia. A laywoman with no congregation, no salary and no safety net, she lived poor among the Muslims she served. She was assassinated in 2003 at the hospital she had founded in Borama.
In their own words
I wanted only to follow Jesus Christ. Nothing else interested me so strongly: Him, and the poor in Him.
As a child already, I chose to be for others: the poor, the suffering, the abandoned, the unloved; so I have lived, and so I trust to be until the end of my life.
The poor are waiting for us. The ways of service are infinite, left to the imagination of each one of us.
I cry out the Gospel with my life alone, and I burn with the desire to go on crying it out like this until the end.