Not a saint, but a woman "vindictive," "choleric," and "a bit feminist." That is how Sister Emmanuelle once described herself, tired of being compared to Mother Teresa of Calcutta and eager to show the "consciences of the opulent West" that anyone could follow her example. No miracles in her work—only the strength and courage of love. "Simply stop worrying about yourself," she would say, "and devote yourself to others, smiling and bringing them joy."
That is how she lived, the small nun in gray who died on October 19 at just shy of her hundredth birthday: more like a warrior than a saint. Her battle against hunger, poverty, and injustice was waged without pause until the very end, and across three particular fronts: education, solidarity, and witness. A "little mother" to the outcasts of Cairo's slums and an "abbé Pierre in skirts" to French media, who fed her celebrity, Emmanuelle knew how to carve out new roles according to the context in which she worked and the directives she received from her superiors—with a creativity and an ability to anticipate the times that surprised everyone. Born in 1908 in Brussels to a Franco-Belgian family—her mother Christian, her father Jewish—Madeleine Cinquin became Sister Emmanuelle at twenty-two, when she took her vows in the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion. Her destiny, as she often recounted, was decided much earlier, on the day she witnessed her father drown at sea as a child and grasped "the fragility of our joy on earth," its "ephemeral nature, like foam." To "fill the void that gnawed at my youth," she explained, "I sought early and urgently in God a lasting and boundless love. I sought the absolute, not the fleeting."
For much of her life, Emmanuelle pursued this search among young people. A cultured and charismatic woman, she was assigned to teaching—first in Istanbul, then Tunisia, and finally Egypt. From the classroom, she transmitted to students from the wealthier classes a love for their neighbor and the Christian duty of solidarity. The armies of volunteers who would stream into her missions in the years ahead, and the many organizations she founded worldwide to support her work, owed much to those years devoted to forming young people and building a dense network of contacts and friendships. Even then, through her writings, Emmanuelle matured the conviction that true Christian charity knows no borders and transcends differences of nationality, race, and religious confession.
Only at retirement, at sixty-three, did Sister Emmanuelle realize her dream. Moving to Ezbet el-Nakhl, a sprawling slum on Cairo's edge, she found her "paradise on earth." For the fifteen thousand zaballin—the "garbage men"—who lived in this immense open-air dump, and for the other desperate she would encounter in the slums of Sudan, Lebanon, and the Philippines, "Sister Courage" worked tirelessly for over twenty-two years. She set up clinics and dispensaries, founded shelters for the elderly and children, started hygiene classes and vocational schools, and fought for women's rights. These were "the happiest years" of her life, "years of sharing and justice," when, despite the suffering that surrounded her, she never stopped hoping: "In countries devastated by war, hunger, violence, and prostitution," she wrote, "I have met men and women capable of working for peace and love, despite everything. Wherever violence raged, I witnessed the flowering of life. Even in the darkest corners, there were oases of Paradise." Inter-religious and multiethnic paradises, from which Sister Emmanuelle often launched uncomfortable provocations—against the Church and politicians alike. She was famous for a letter to John Paul II asking him to authorize the distribution of contraceptives in regions ravaged by AIDS, and for a striking initiative in which she led a fundraising effort to build a minaret for a small Muslim community.
A compelling speaker and pointed writer, Emmanuelle intensified her work of raising awareness about the wounds of the Global South, especially in her final fifteen years. In 1993, obeying her superiors, the now eighty-five-year-old nun left Egypt and moved to Provence. Her fight for solidarity shifted strategy once more: she published numerous books, participated in lectures and conferences across every continent, became a familiar face on television, and an influential voice in French public debate and beyond. "How is it possible," she continued to ask the West, "to claim to be Christian and put your conscience at ease by going to Mass on Sunday, in the face of the Third World's suffering?" And again: "What I ask of a politician is the courage to make 'Death to Poverty' his slogan." Her direct and simple language reached many hearts, including at the highest levels of politics, and ASMAE, the association named for her and founded in 1980, gained the support needed to expand to eight countries, where it now serves over seventy thousand children. Honors and awards multiplied, and for two years running a survey named Emmanuelle the most beloved woman in France.
More than sixty years into her mission, her primary audience remained the same: young people. In them "the great old woman" placed her deepest hopes. And to them—the "backpack generation," ready to set out and take risks, a "better generation than many that came before"—Sister Courage made her plea: "Go to Africa, at least once." A "woman of heart and action," as the Archbishop of Paris called her, but above all a woman of faith, Emmanuelle closed her eyes confident that many would heed her call and carry forward her battle for and with the poor. Because, she once said, "love is stronger than death and carries within it a seed of eternity."
Silvia Gusmano, 2008