Missionary sister pays tribute to her cousin, Pope Francis

FMA Sisters in Bam Pong, Thailand

Source: Fides

Sister Ana Rosa Sivori, a missionary working in Thailand with the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (FMA), who is a cousin of Pope Francis, is currently visiting Rome. Originally from Buenos Aires, after studying in Turin and working in India, she has been a missionary in Thailand for 60 years. .In an interview with Antonella Prenna from Fides she said:

"I arrived in Rome on the night of April 23 and didn't manage to pay my last respects to Francis in St Peter's Basilica until April 25. I stayed from 9 in the morning until 6 in the evening. I prayed and talked with him in front of his coffin, and I am sure he was listening to me. I was very impressed by the enormous influx of people from all over the world…."

"This morning, April 30, I was able to say goodbye to him at his grave in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore," Sister Ana Rosa said. "It made a deep impression on me to stand in front of the white marble, and I was very happy that he is exactly where he always wanted to be.

"We are a very close family, and although we hadn't spoken to each other for a long time, we always knew everything about each other. My father was very close to 'Jorge', as he continued to call him, and he always knew everything he was doing. We were baptized in the same basilica in Buenos Aires where the Don Bosco sisters work. He celebrated the funerals of my parents, our grandfather, and my sister's wedding. We knew that he always called his sick sister on Sunday afternoons and that we talked about family matters.

" I celebrated my 80th birthday with him here in Rome after I had been in Argentina and before I returned to Thailand," she said. "We often spoke with him about missionary work. He wanted to learn about the relationship between priests and Buddhists, who make up the majority of the population in Thailand. We always shared the idea of looking into each other's faces and seeing what the other person needs. I hope that the cardinals who will meet in the conclave will follow Francis' line for a Church of the people."

The FMA are represented in Thailand by eight communities and are active in the field of education. They are located in the northwest of the country in the city of Chom Tong, in the northeast in the cities of Phon Sung and Udon Thani, further south in the city of Bam Pong, in San Phran, and finally with two communities in Bangkok.

Sister Ana Rosa is currently working in the community in Bam Pong. Due to her age and health, she no longer teaches, but helps where needed and assists with the "chronicles" that the house collects every year from January to December.

"There are 80 FMA sisters throughout Thailand," she explained, "and 17 of us are in Bam Pong. Our community is the first house that the FMA sisters opened in this country in 1933. Our pioneers supported and trained the local sisters and took in the first sisters who had been expelled from China.

"There are very few Christians in Bam Pong, but we have a very good relationship with the Buddhists, who also attend our schools. Education is of fundamental importance to us, and in order to give as many people as possible a chance, we have the lowest school fees of any school in the country. Our schools are overcrowded; in Bam Pong alone, we have 3,200 students, of whom at most a hundred are Christians.

"We teach the young girls the charisma of our founder, Mother Mazzarello. The schools in our communities range from nursery to middle school. They are mainly girls' schools, with the exception of the kindergarten, which is mixed, and another school located outside the city. In this school, we have accepted the request of parents who have several children to accompany them all, so boys and girls can attend school together until the third grade."

"The Catholic community has a strong presence in Bam Pong," concludes Sister Ana Rosa. "There is a Capuchin monastery, a hospital run by the Camillian Missionaries, a Salesian Don Bosco school, the parish of St Joseph, which is very large and run by the Salesians of Don Bosco, and a cemetery right next to our parish."

Sr Ana mentioned that Pope Francis recently gave the FMA community some money that had been donated to him to be used for the construction of homes for needy families in Bam Pong.