On 6th September, a group of Muslim insurgents attacked a mission in Memba district, in Nampula province, Mozambique, and killed three residents, including an Italian-born nun.
The combatants arrived from the war-stricken Cabo Delgado province on Saturday, burning villages and killing at least 10 people – catechists among them, according to the local bishop, the Rev. Alberto Vera.
On Monday afternoon, they got into Memba district and first attacked a local mosque. At night, the group – described by a victim as heavily armed and wearing military uniforms – reached the Catholic mission.
Sr. Maria de Coppi, 83, was hit by a gunshot through the window.
“She was talking on the phone and they probably thought she was calling the police,” Vera told the Catholic Herald.
Two of her colleagues were taken as hostages by the terrorists for some time, while villagers fled to the woods to hide. One of them told a local TV station that the men ordered the Catholic missionaries to immediately leave the district.
“They took a nun to the church and began to set fire to pews. She thought they were going to kill her. But then she decided to run in the dark and they did not shoot her,” Vera described.
The group then raided the local clinic and killed the two workers who where inside. According to the bishop, they were beheaded.
“The priests were sending me information as the men moved across the mission. They heard when they got into their house. Thank God, they preserved their lives,” Vera added. The insurgents set fire to the priests’ house but left their rooms intact.
In the next morning, the priests finally left their rooms and ran away.
De Coppi had been working in Mozambique since 1963. At the Catholic mission in Chipene, she supported the pastoral work with catechists, women, and children.
In an audio message sent only a few hours before her death, de Coppi is heard describing to another nun the “sad situation” in the region, as the terrorist group – at times identified as a branch of Al Shabab – approached Memba and led hundreds of people to leave their homes.
“It is a very tense situation. The insurgents, which are called Al Shabab, arrived and there was an incident a few kilometers away. People are running away. It is sad, people are leaving the region: teachers, nurses, schoolchildren,” she reported.
Showing her concern about the locals, de Coppi added that parents would tell her about the long marches in the woods and that “their children could not tolerate it and cried.”
“They arrived at the mission and soon they killed Sr. Maria de Coppi. We cannot understand the reasons why she was killed. The others were allowed to escape,” Sr. Laura Malnati, the provincial superior of the Combonian sisters, told the Catholic Herald.
The terrorist attack destroyed part of the buildings in the mission besides documents and equipment. Several houses in the village were also destroyed.
“We have been supported by the authorities in order to recover the burnt documents. But we have not been informed on possible measures to protect the population,” Malnati said.
She informed that the Combonians have six missions in other provinces and they will keep their work.
“In Chipene we do not know what do to yet. The village is probably empty now. Over the past few years, we had to leave some of our communities in Cabo Delgado province due to the attacks. Maybe we will have to leave Chipene too,” she added.
The insurgency in northern Mozambique started in 2017, after great natural gas deposits were discovered in the region. Armed groups claiming to be “jihadists” – at times identified as a branch of Al Shabab, at times calling themselves the Islamic State – launched several attacks against villages all over Cabo Delgado province, killing hundreds of people. At least 100,000 residents had to leave their homes behind and migrate south, something that created a devastating humanitarian crisis in cities like Pemba, which do not have the necessary resources to welcome so many refugees.
Among the insurgents’ targets, churches and Catholic missions seem to have a special appeal. Local Muslim leaders have also been persecuted – they are frequently accused of not preaching the correct form of Islam –, and at times mosques were vandalized.
The Mozambican government deployed military forces to fight the rebels, and they were reinforced by troops from other southern African nations. The military operations have reestablished peace in several districts, but continuous attacks have been leading Mozambicans to doubt the effectiveness of the authorities’ strategy.
During her 59 years in Mozambique, de Coppi took part in the flourishing of the church in the north of the country.
“I arrived in Mozambique in 1967 and met her in my first mission. We spoke the same Italian dialect, as we are from the same region. We used to travel together to visit faraway communities,” recalled Fr. Danilo Cimitan.
They risked their lives in several occasions during the tough years of the colonial rule by the Portuguese, ended with the independence in 1974, he described.
“We suffered ambushes together and risked our lives together,” he said.
According to Cimitan, de Coppi was always ready to share her food and her few possessions with the poor.
“Many times I saw her deciding to eat less in order to give food to the needist ones. She loved the Mozambican people. God allowed her to rest with them forever,” he declared.
The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference released a statement on September 7 to manifest their solidarity with the Mozambican clergy and to the Combonians.
“We pray for you, sisters and brothers in Christ, in the provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado, and for the conversion of those who kill innocents. May God protect you all,” the letter read.
In Rev. Vera’s opinion, the raid was premeditated by the insurgents as a form of creating publicity.
“They knew the news on their attack would reach all the world. The managed to create fear and now thousands of women and children are migrating to other regions,” he lamented.
“That is a very poor region. They are increasing poverty, that is what they are doing,” Vera concluded.
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