By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
A woman whose heroic defense of the rights of the poor in Egypt found her often being referred to as another “Mother Theresa” has died in France at the age of 99.
Sister Emmanuelle, a member of the Order of Our Lady of Sion, lived for years among Cairo’s zabbaleen, or garbage collectors, who carve out a living by collecting trash. She created an association, Sandrine de Carlo, that helped establish a network of clinics, schools and other services to serve the children of these slums. The association now operates in eight countries from Lebanon to Burkina Faso.
“She was a particularly significant personality of our time,” said Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi. He compared her work with some of the most revered humanitarian workers of modern times, including Nobel laureate Mother Teresa.
He said Sister Emmanuelle’s character was “similar to that of . . . Mother Teresa, who had the ability to show how Christian charity can speak to all men.”
Zeina Zarif, the Egyptian coordinator for Association Sister Emmanuelle, said her work there was crucial.
“When she arrived here the zabbaleen were marginalized and no one wanted to look at them, they were people who had no rights,” Zarif told The Associated Press in Cairo. “Her work marked this country.”
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of the humanitarian aid group, Doctors Without Borders, said he would never forget Sister Emmanuelle’s “faith, which could move mountains.”
“I will always remember the joy of working by her side, and will always keep that life-force which she infused in me,” Kouchner said in a statement.
She was born Marie-Madeleine Cinquin in Brussels, Belgium on Nov. 16, 1908. By the age of twelve, she knew she wanted to be a nun and was greatly inspired by Blessed Father Damien who gave his life in service to the lepers of Hawaii. She joined the Order of Our Lady of Sion and made her vows in 1923, taking the name of Emmanuelle. For a time, she taught wealthy children in convent schools in Turkey and Tunisia but felt called to serve less fortunate children. A Pope’s representative heard of Sister Emmanuelle’s wishes and suggested she help the thousands of refuse collectors known as the ‘zabaleen’ in Egypt.
At the time, the zabaleen, which means ‘filth or rubbish’, lived on the outskirts of Cairo at a rubbish dump called Ezbet El Nakhl. It was a filthy place inhabited by refuse collectors who worked for very little pay and lived in sub-standard conditions. Their children were uneducated and spent their days getting into trouble.
In 1971, at the age of 60, Sister Emmanuelle moved into Ezbet El Nakhl and livedin a small one room hut. Every day she would travel into the city at 5 a.m. to attend Mass at a convent. She lived with few possessions and on very little food, putting up with the same problems as the zabaleen – white worms in her food supplies, flea infestations and disease. Not long after she arrived, she decided to start a school for children in her meager home and accepted any child of any religion who was willing to learn.
When Sister Emmanuelle was satisfied with her work at Ezbet El Nakhl, she moved on to Mokkatam, a refuse collector’s dump which was in worse condition than Ezbet El Nakhl. Sister Emmanuelle started the work of collecting money from charities to build a factory for composting material, which she finally achieved.
“She was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life,” said Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her throughout the 1980s.
“You could see one of the worst qualities of life on the planet, but in this inferno was an enterprising population that worked like ants,” he said.
Neamatalla worked with Sister Emmannuelle on the composting plant which was used to process the vast amounts of manure produced by the garbage collectors’ pigs, which was then processed and sold as fertilizer.
Even at the age of 77, she was still actively collecting money from around the world to aid her beloved zabaleen. She returned to France in 1993, but continued to speak out for the needy, repeatedly appearing on French television.
A spokeswoman for Sandrine de Carlo said sister died in her sleep on Oct. 20 at a retirement home in Callian, a town in southeastern France.
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