Towards the end of the sixties, Annalena Tonelli would leave her native Italy to “bow down before the testimonies of wounded humanity.” She silently lived the radicality of the Gospel for 35 years on Somalian land in the midst of a Muslim culture. The last seven years of her life were spent in Borama. On October 5, 2003 she was assassinated upon the sands of the Somalian desert.

My name is Annalena Tonelli. I was born in Forli, Italy. I have worked in the sanitarian field for over 30 years , but am not a doctor. When I was little, I decided to live for others: for the poor, those who suffer, the abandoned, those whom no one loves. I hope to continue doing so until the end of my life. I only wanted to follow Jesus. I was not interested in anything else: Christ and the poor in Christ. For Him I decided to live in radical poverty, even though I will never be able to be poor as a true poor person – like those in whose presence I am all day long. I serve others without a name, without the security of a religious order, without belonging to any organization, without a salary, without any income, without a pension to assure my future for when I am old. I am not married because I chose so with joy when I was young. I wanted to belong completely to God. Not having my own family was a demand of my very being.”

With these words Annalena Tonelli, a lay missionary in Somalia, introduced herself to the Vatican on December 1, 2001 in a Congress organized by the Pontifical Council for sanitary pastoral work. They called her “Mother Teresa of Somalia,” a woman who worked without rest for the poorest of the poor, who founded several hospitals, and who after 30 years of service amongst the poor and needy could say, “I announce the Gospel with my life and I am burning with the desire to continue doing so until the end of my life.” A tireless woman, free from fear, and seemingly not knowing discouragement or disheartenment. A women who throughout her life faced physical aggressions, kidnappings, and threats against her life. She, a lay woman, fought courageously on her own against tuberculosis, aids, illiteracy, blindness and feminine mutilation.

Annalena Tonelli is born in Forli on April 2, 1943. Her father is an economist and the director of a cooperate movement. Her mother takes care of the house. She is the second of five children. To please her family, Annalena studies law. Even while young she is not afraid of leaving her hometown and at 19 years of age she goes on a scholarship to America where she begins to suspect her vocation to serve the lowliest of this earth. Back in Forli she spends her free time with the sick in the outskirts of the city: prostitutes, alcoholics and the mentally ill. She dreams of going to India but her family does not want her to do so. Finally she changes direction and her gaze is turned toward Africa. She leaves with a friend in 1970 for the Northeast of Kenya. At that time, she believes she cannot entirely give of herself if she remains in her own country. “I soon understood, she herself would later say – that you can serve and love in any location, but I was already in Africa and I felt that it was God who had taken me there and there I remained with joy and thankfulness.” The two young girls find themselves in the desert of Wajir, amongst rigorously Muslim Nomad tribes, teaching children and healing the sick. She sees there for the first time those sick with tuberculosis, abandoned for fear of contagion. “In that moment – she would confess – I fell in love with them.” She sets up a small structure with tents: first 40, then 100, 200 and so on. Annalena personally follows each of the sick until their complete cure or until their death. In the meantime, she studies medicine and receives a diploma in her fight against TB in Kenya. She continued with this work until 1985 practically without being noticed or known. It was then that a Kenyan army began to kill some members of a local tribe that was connected with the Somalian guerrilla in Ethiopia. Hundreds of people were massacred. With a small group of helpers, she picked up the wounded and survivors and took them to recovery centers. She saved many lives and wrote up a list of the dead which she gave to the wife of an American diplomat to be published and thus known throughout the world. They would have exterminated 50,000 people, but only a thousand were killed. Annalena’s actions were able to prevent the massacre, but she was also expelled from Kenya. She returned to Italy and went to a course in Liverpool on the treatment of tropical illnesses.

Africa continues to call her and after a year, she travels this time to Somalia to continue her interrupted work. She sets up her base at Mogadishu where she feeds those exiled by the war. She is robbed and kidnapped. Her car is stolen and she travels by donkey to bring food to the sick. She collects the corpses from the streets for burial, cares for the sick, and hides the refugees. She moves to Merca where she works as a doctor in the Caritas Hospital. Daily she spends for the poor a million old Italian liras that she obtains thanks to benefactors throughout the world. She has to struggle to not yield to the local officials who want to keep for themselves the assistance that arrives by boat. She knows that they have decided to kill her but the sick people she takes care of appear before the mayor of the village, asking her life to be spared. She is cast out of the hospital and takes over an abandoned church from which she would later be expelled. In Italy family and friends ask her to leave the country, arguing that the situation had already become too dangerous. All the humanitarian organizations leave the country but she remains there alone. In 1995 she finally leaves Merca because the dangers are too great after the conflicts between rival clans. In fact, the doctor that substitutes Annalena is murdered a few months after his arrival.

Annalena moves to Borama where she builds a hospital which she keeps up and running thanks to the help that she receives from Italy, especially from her hometown, Forli. The sanitarian establishment grows and with the passing of the years becomes an organization with 75 doctors and nurses. Annalena is the living proof of the transformations and changes that one person, full of great will and love, even though lacking certain means, is able to do for the good and improvement of others.

She acted with great tranquility even though she was always wanting for time. She found the time to be with each person. Her days were full. She slept only four hours. She worked without breaks. She ate rice and beans. She rarely returned to Italy to see her family. She had almost no time to do so. She only had two tunics and a pair of sandals that someone had given her when he saw her walk barefoot. She was a small woman who seemed to be just skin and bones but full of energy. Her day in the hospital began at 7:30 with a meeting with the doctors with whom she had planned and carried out an innovating sanitarian project to observe and follow the treatment of tuberculosis patients. She then passed by to visit the sick, stooping at each bed, speaking to them one by one. She always had a special caress for the children. The hospital also had schools to teach children and adults to read and write, a course of sanitarian instruction, a school for deaf and blind children and for children with other disabilities. She fought greatly against the practice of female genital mutilation and because of this received numerous threats and persecutions. She received several assaults and was beaten, but was never afraid.

She would later say, while speaking about her life style which would have been a real sacrifice, almost impossible to live for many, “Many people speak about sacrifice, but for me it has never been a sacrifice. I have often had the sensation that no one else on earth has privilege to live as I do. My life is pure happiness. Who else in world has a life as beautiful as mine?
For many years, Annalena was prepared to die. Some months before her death she wrote to her friends, “I would like all those I love to learn to see death with simplicity. Dying is like living. My death, my illness, my suffering are not at all different from the death, illness, and suffering of these adults and children that die before our eyes every day. My life is for them, for these little sick ones, for those mutilated in body and spirit, for those unfortunate ones who have not deserved it. If I could only live and die out of love! Will it be granted to me?”

Her prayer was heard. She died on October 5, 2003 in Boroma, the day before the completion of the new wing of the hospital for the treatment of tuberculosis. Two shots on the back of her neck ended her life.

This is how this great woman died, the woman who had said, “Life only has meaning if you love. Nothing has meaning outside of love. In my life I have lived so many dangers, I have been in the danger of death so many times. I have lived for years in the midst of war. I have experience in the flesh of those I love and thus, in my own flesh, man’s evil, perversion, and cruelty. And I have one conviction: the only thing that counts is love. Only love frees man from all that enslaves him. Only love makes him grow and flourish. Only love makes us not afraid of anything, capable of turning the other cheek to those who strike us, able to risk our life for our friends, able to bear everything, hope for everything... This is how our life becomes a blessing. It becomes happiness even in the midst of suffering. I strongly feel that we are all called to love, that is to say, to holiness.”

©HM Magazine No. 135 - March/April 2007