Irish nun rescued after three days in a Rome lift

For two Marist nuns in Rome, last Friday June 5th will forever be a date to remember.

The two sisters were the last folks in a Marist house on the Via Aurelia on Friday night.

The house in question is a sort of “stop over” place for missionary nuns with no permanent residents living there. So it was that the two sisters, one of them Irish and the other a New Zealander, were the last out of the building.

Problem was that on their way out, the lift blocked. An even bigger problem was the fact that neither of two nuns had a mobile phone with her.

After banging and hammering for a short while, the two nuns resigned themselves to their fate as they realised that there was absolutely no one who could hear them.

Lift break downs are a regular feature of Italian life but this one could hardly have happened on a less auspicious weekend when the average temperature was 34 degrees, on the hottest weekend of the summer so far.

The pair were not recused until Monday morning when the house cook turned up for work. When no one answered the door bell, the cook summoned the police.

Having found a set of spare keys in a neighbouring religious house, the police entered the building and began shouting to see if there was anyone present. To their surprise, the police heard noise coming from the lift shaft.

At that point, the police turned off the mains electricity and were able to release the two women, a 58-year-old Irish woman and a 68-year-old New Zealand woman.

Taken immediately to the San Carlo di Nancy hospital, both nuns were found to be suffering from dehydration but were soon afterwards dismissed.

According to a paramedic quoted in today’s Rome daily, “La Repubblica”, the two nuns survived their ordeal in the oven hot lift by drinking their own urine.

A spokesperson in the Marist Mother House in Rome yesterday confirmed that both nuns were alive and well after their torrid weekend but she declined to name either of the sisters nor would she reveal any details of their ordeal.

Asked by The Irish Times if the two nuns had prayed a lot over the weekend, the spokesperson replied: "We don't need to get stuck in a lift to pray. We pray all the time..."