Beloved Sister of the Streets dies aged 99 ½
Cairo’s garbage dump is a city in its own right and the population is predominately Coptic Christian, driven there by the Muslim majority decades ago. They subsist by working as Cairo’s garbage collectors, the people with carts and other makeshift conveyances that collect the city’s garbage and haul it home to the dump where they then do the recycling, reclaiming anything of value. The French Missionaries of Charity have a convent there whose nuns help the local community.
Some years ago one of these remarkable women, Sister Emmanuelle, came to visit me at Wesley Mission, and I was able to interview her on my 2GB radio program several times, and on national television. During one of her visits to Wesley Mission the members gave enough money to purchase and ship four tractors, two new and two reconditioned used ones, to the denizens of the Cairo garbage dumps known as the Zabaleen, a word which means “filth”. Those donated tractors would help them start up new businesses in the lanes and streets of Cairo being able to collect the garbage. Collecting garbage is a good cash business and would help many break the poverty cycle.
Sister Emmanuelle was an exceptional person who was often compared to Mother Theresa in her selfless work with the urban poor. She was born Madeleine Cinquin in Belgium and knew by the age of 12 that she wanted to be a nun. Her inspiration was Father Damien, the Belgian missionary priest who worked and died among the lepers on isolated Molokai, in the Hawaiian Island chain.
After earning her philosophy degree at the Sorbonne, Sister Emmanuelle took her religious vows in 1929 and taught in convent schools in Istanbul, Turkey. At the of age 60, when most people are slowing down, she moved into the slum Ezbet El Nakhl outside of Cairo to minister to the people who made their lives there. She opened a school for the children and set up a facility to minister to youth. She also established a composting factory which transformed vegetable refuse into fertilizer which could be sold.
Sister Emmanuelle returned to France in her old age, and continued to be an outspoken leader as she dissented from the official Roman Catholic doctrine, particularly by supporting contraception. She was widely regarded as a heroine, and inspiring role model for her lifetime of service and charity. She was a brave and noble woman, may she rest in peace.