SOMALIA: Sr Leonella, a nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in volatile regions of Africa, used to joke that there was a bullet with her name engraved on it in Somalia. When the bullet came, she used her last breaths to forgive those responsible, her memorial Mass heard yesterday.
"I forgive, I forgive," she whispered in her native Italian just before she died, Fr Malaga Wesson said at the Mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
Sr Leonella's execution-style murder over the weekend has raised concerns that she and other foreigners who have been killed in Somalia recently are victims of growing Islamic radicalism in the country.
Willy Huber, regional head of the Austrian-funded hospital where Sr Leonella worked, said her killing was not a random attack and could have been sparked by remarks by Pope Benedict about Muslims which provoked angry reaction from Muslims around the world.
A powerful radical Islamic group, accused of having ties to al-Qaeda, have all but wrested control from the weak and factional Somali government.
Sr Leonella (65), who was born Rosa Sgorbati, had lived and worked in Kenya and Somalia for 38 years, her family said. She was shot as she left the Austrian-run SOS hospital in Mogadishu on Sunday. Her bodyguard also was slain. They had been walking the 30 feet from the hospital to her home.
"She had no chance," Mr Huber added. "It was like an execution."