“Today I would like to remember Sister Ines, 77, educator of poor girls for decades, barbarously killed in Central Africa in her room where she taught how to sew, a special woman who gave her life for Jesus at the service of the poor,” Pope Francis said May 22, 2019, during his General Audience in St. Peter’s Square.
Sister Ines Nieves Sancho, the 77-year-old Spanish nun of the local community of the Daughters of Jesus, was murdered in the early hours of May 20, in the village of Nola, near Berberati, in the south-west of the Central African Republic, on the border with Cameroon.
Assailants entered Sister Inés’ home and forcibly took her to the workshop where she regularly held sewing lessons for local girls to help improve their lives. There her attackers reportedly decapitated her and mutilated her body.
The murder of Sister Ines came just a day after Fr. Landry Ibil Ikwel, 34, was killed on May 19 in Beira, Mozambique. The priest was stabbed in his community, taken to the hospital where he died due to his wounds. Investigations are underway.
Of Congolese nationality, Fr. Landry entered the novitiate in 2008 and was ordained a priest three years ago, on February 7, 2016, in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was the director of the Institute of the blind in Beira (IDV-B), a structure whose mission is formation, rehabilitation, education, social integration of children, young people and blind adults from all over the country, ensuring everyone an adequate education according to individual abilities, and thus making them emerge from the marginalization to which the society relegates them.
