Among the five blessed and venerable people announced yesterday by Pope Francis there is also an Italian nun from Cottolengo who literally gave her life to help the poor in Kenya.
This is Sister Maria Carola Cecchin, who for 20 years, from 1905 to 1925 was with other sisters and missionaries of the Consolata in the Kikuyu lands of Meru and the surrounding area.
It is from the periodical "Incontri" of the Cottolenghina Family that we learn the story of Sister Maria Carola.
Fifth of ten children, she was born on 3rd April 1877 in Cittadella (Padua), where she was baptised with the name of Fiorina. Her childhood flows normally. Of few words, simple but determined, she loves solitude and prayer. Her parents set her as an example to imitate for meekness, hard work, intelligence, generosity and love for her family. At home she is the angel of small cares and loving attention for her loved ones, happy only to see them happy, without looking for anything for herself. At the age of 18, after a course of Spiritual Exercises, she answered Christ's call and decided to embrace religious life.
On 27 August 1896 she entered the Little House of Divine Providence in Turin among the Vincenzine Sisters and began her formation. On 2 October 1897 she took the religious habit and began the Novitiate with the name of Sister Maria Carola. In the Epiphany of 1899 the Religious Profession
On the 28th January 1905 he left for Kenya with the expedition formed by six Cottolenghine Sisters and two of the first Missionaries of the Consolata of Canon Giuseppe Allamano, who had already asked Canon Ferrero, Father of the Small House, for the collaboration of the Cottolenghine Sisters since 1903. Sister Maria Carola lived her total and joyful donation in the most humble daily tasks, announcing the Kingdom of God and working for the evangelization and salvation of souls. Supported by prayer, she accepts the sacrifices, anxieties, difficulties of language, climate and different cultural contexts.
Driven by "Caritas Christi urget nos", she carried out her activity as "mother and sister" of the poorest people for twenty years, in extremely difficult situations. She visits sick people in the villages and catechizes the young women in Limuru, Tuthu, Iciagaki, where she is appointed superior.
As such she is then sent to Magoiri, to Wambogo among the Kikuyu, to Egoji and lastly to Tigania in Meru, where she falls seriously ill. Sister Maria Carola finds herself torn between thirst for souls and the moral and physical collapse of so many sisters eager to see the Little House again. She, by her own free choice, will be the last to leave Kenya.
On the morning of October 11, 1925, when she was already sick, Sr Maria Carola and a sister bid farewell to that mission and alone began an adventurous and risky journey back across the Red Sea. During the crossing she worsened and on the 13th November 1925 she died. Her coffin will be buried "there, in the waves of the Red Sea". After a two-year trial, Pope Francis declared "Venerable" the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Maria Carola Cecchin of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph Benedict Cottolengo, who was born on 3 April 1877 in Cittadella (Italy) and died on the steamship while returning from Kenya to Italy on 13 November 1925.