On October 20, 2008, at Callian, in southeastern France, in a retirement home, Sister Emmanuelle, possibly the most famous woman in the country, died at the age of 99, less than four weeks from celebrating her 100th birthday. She died serene in her sleep, only with the regret of not having died among her beloved zabaleen (rubbish collectors) she had helped in Cairo. Her death came soon after that of Abbé Pierre, the well known saintly priest of the homeless. Their two deaths plunged France into mourning. Homage was paid to them all over France and worldwide.
Of Sister Emmanuelle, President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “She was a sister to us all… She was a woman of high convictions, but also one of action.” Sarkozy added in his statement: “We miss her already.” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who helped found the charity, Doctors Without Borders, said that the Sister’s faith could move mountains. He said it had been a joy to work with her. Jewish and Muslim leaders in France also issued emotional statements about her passing.
As President Nicolas Sarkozy took part, together with some of France’s best known figures, in the Requiem Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral, Sister Emmanuelle’s publisher released a tape she herself had prepared to promote her posthumous memoirs. It went: “When you hear this message, I will no longer be there. In telling about my life – of my whole life – I wanted to bear witness that love is more powerful than death. I have confessed everything, the good and the less good. Where I am now, life does not end for those who know how to love.”
In addition to the tape recording entrusted to her publishers, Sister Emmanuelle also left a funeral address that was read out to the dignitaries who attended the service in Paris: “Today, when you have once more taken the trouble for me, my soul and my heart are close to your soul and your heart. I want this dear meeting to go forward in joy. I have chosen light–hearted hymns. Sing them joyously and with full voice. I want to give you thanks, full of recognition for what you have done and what, I know, you will do again for thousands of children around the world…Yalla! Let’s go,” she declared in conclusion, using the Arabic term she had learned in Cairo.
WITH THE RUBBISH PICKERS
Sister Emmanuelle was born Madeleine Cinquin in Brussels, Belgium, on November 16, 1908, of a Belgian mother and a French father who was a manufacturer of lingerie. When she was six, her father drowned at sea, and she witnessed the event from the beach. Later in life she would say that it was this tragedy that determined her future: “That Sunday morning, the little girl understood that you cannot hang on to appearances, like the foam of the waves. Unconsciously, my vocation dates back from that. I sought the absolute, not the transient.”
At the age of twelve, Madeleine wanted to be a nun. She was inspired by Father Damien, a Catholic priest who helped lepers in Hawaii, now a saint. As a young woman, however, she did not shun from enjoying the pleasures of being bright and young during the Roaring Twenties, or from taking up smoking as a typical act of rebellion, or from being attracted to handsome young men. But in 1929, after studying religion and philosophy at the Sorbonne, she joined the Order of Notre Dame de Sion, taking the name Sister Emmanuelle.
These nuns ran several renowned French schools around the Mediterranean. She was assigned to teach Literature in Turkey, where she came into contact with Jewish and Muslim intellectuals. She taught in schools for well–off Turkish children but made a point of showing them the hardships of life by taking her classes to carry out sociological studies in poor areas. She later continued her teaching career in Tunisia and then in Alexandria, Egypt. After forty years of teaching, in 1971, when she was 62 years old, Sister Emmanuelle finally got permission from her congregation to start working with the poor. A real vocation within a vocation as It was the case of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
In fact, it was retirement that enabled Sister Emmanuelle to fulfill her dream. With the blessing of her superiors, she settled in Cairo, hoping to dedicate herself to the lepers. When this proved impossible, the Pope’s representative in Egypt suggested she help the thousands of refuse collectors known as the zabaleen. The zabaleen, which means filth or rubbish, lived on the outskirts of Cairo at a rubbish dump called Ezbet El Nakhl.
Ezbet El Nakhl was a squalid, brutal world of rats, lice and poverty, of cheap alcohol and of violence between children and against women, a dirty and unhygienic place where the rubbish of the metropolis was stored and sorted mostly by young people. The children were uneducated and had no way of entertaining themselves so they used to get into trouble. Sister Emmanuelle moved into Ezbet El Nakhl and lived in a small single room hut with very few possessions. She traveled into the city everyday at 5 o’clock in the morning for Mass at the city convent. Sister Emmanuelle lived with very little food and had to put up with the many problems that the zabaleen lived with, like white worms in food supplies and housing, fleas and disease.
“She was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life,” said Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her throughout the 1980s. “You could see one of the worst qualities of life on the planet, but in this inferno was an enterprising population that worked like ants,” he said.
THE “SALAM” CENTER
Sister Emmanuelle had not been at Ezbet El Nakhl long when she decided to open a school in her spare room. She accepted any child of any religion who was willing to learn. She often took her small class on field trips to the pyramids and other famous places around Cairo. She started teaching children and men basic Arabic. Her classes were very successful, and many passed Arabic reading and writing exams – including herself.
Sister Emmanuelle was desperate for a youth club and center to help the zabaleen. She set about collecting funds from local charities and around Europe. She finally achieved this two years later. A kitchen, club, pool, football field and lounge were set up for the youth of the Ezbet El Nakhl. She called it the ‘Salam Center,’ which is Arabic for peace. It was opened on March 29 1979 and the center also provided social, medical, cultural and educational help.
When Sister Emmanuelle was satisfied with her work at Ezbet El Nakhl, she moved on to Mokkatam; a refuse collector’s dump which was in worse situation than Ezbet El Nakhl. There were thousands of families living on a gravesite and their conditions were terrible. Sister Emmanuelle started the work of collecting money from charities to build a factory for composting material, which she finally achieved. Sister Emmanuelle’s work in the rubbish slums contributed greatly to the progress of the living conditions in the refuse collectors’ lives.
She reluctantly left Egypt in 1993, at the age of 85. Two years after her departure, a young Comboni missionary, Fr. Luciano Verdoshia, who was lecturing in Dar Comboni, the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies of Cairo, took up Sister Emmanuelle’s legacy and started working with the zabaleen. He is still there, carrying on with his charitable work.
A MEDIA PERSONALITY
Upon her return to France, Sister Emmanuelle continued to speak out for the needy, regularly appearing on French television, her white hair swept up into a gray scarf and her eyes sparkling behind large glasses. She made her first appearance on French television in 1990, and her mixture of infectious enthusiasm, humor, and the unquenched moral indignation – with which she hit the bourgeois complacency and political corruption – soon made her a firm favorite.
She aged to be almost a centenarian, always active and full of joy of living and when her strong body started to show signs of deterioration, she expressed her feeling in one of her books: “Old age is the greatest self–emptying.
I had the naivety of thinking that old age would not concern me. I could not imagine this exhaustion that invades my body from head to foot. We have to accept, moment by moment, this powerlessness that becomes bigger every day. It is very hard, but at the same time, it is very good for our spiritual life: it frees us from our “ego.” I was intoxicated by the joy of relentless activity. Today, my poverty is inaction. It is possibly the greatest grace of my life because I am now in the naked truth”.
