Kay Chal's Angel

Kay Chal (the Charles House) is located in a very poor suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Sister Luisa Dell'Orto lived here, Little Sister of the Gospel of Charles de Foucauld, murdered for no reason a few weeks ago. In the Caribbean island, for twenty years, Sister Luisa had become an institution, thanks to the precious support work aimed at street children, welcomed precisely in Kay Chal at the Casa Carlo after its post-earthquake reconstruction of 2010. Born in the province of Lecco in 1957, the nun, with a degree in history, philosophy and theology, left for Cameroon at the age of 30 - to Salapoumbé, in the forest among the Baka pygmies - staying there for three years.

"She lived in a hut, she drank rainwater, she had malaria three times and she told me about her fear of carnivorous ants," says her sister. She then arrives in Madagascar to teach ethics to young postulants. She arrived in Haiti in 2002, she founded an embroidery cooperative to give work to women, but above all she was struck by the tragedy of the baby slaves, whom poor families send to the capital in the illusion of a future job. In Creole they call them resteavec.

She dedicates all of herself to them. Her murder remains without a reason: she was killed with four gunshots while driving through the forest, she was not stolen anything. Of course, she felt that the situation in Haiti was getting very difficult lately due to social unrest, but she didn't want to abandon her protégés. «A week ago – she wrote – a family asked the parish priest to celebrate a funeral mass for their son who was killed in an area controlled by one of the most organized groups of bandits in the country.
So why stay here and put yourself at risk? We cannot keep silent about what we have seen and heard.

Being able to count on someone is essential for living." The approximately 400 reste-avec guests of the center – Casa Carlo was rebuilt thanks to the funds raised by the Italian Caritas with the maxi-collect of 2010, promoted by the CEI – know it well, but now they hope that "their Italian mother" will continue to follow them from up there.

As she said to her sister shortly before she died, "the sun always comes back after the storm". In his message of condolence to the family, the archbishop of Milan Mario Delpini summarizes the mission of Sister Luisa and her sisters in this way: «They do not go looking for dangers, but for signs of the Kingdom of God which comes, among the poor, among those who they are important only to God and ignored by everyone.
They love life, they don't go looking for death where four pennies count more than a holy woman; they go to sow the words of the Gospel, so that even desperate countries may find a way of hope.

They do not go with plans and presumptions, with doctrines and pretensions, they go to offer friendship, in the name of the Lord, they go to express their impotence by persevering in prayer. They don't choose where to go, they go where they are called by the least heard moan, they go where they are sent to become prayer, offering, friends, a seed that dies to bear fruit. This is how many women go along the most dangerous roads in the world, who live in the most defenseless houses. They go and don't make the news." However, their gestures "capable of being sparks of love to illuminate the many wounded hearts of our country and of our society", as the Haitian bishops wrote after her death, will not remain fruitless.

Anna Maria Gobbato
NP August / September 2022