Sister Angela Bipendu, from Congo, is also a doctor. Beautiful stories, in the midst of suffering.
Newsroom (September 10, 2020 Gaudium Press) — Sister Angela Bipendu, from Congo, is also a doctor. Beautiful stories, in the midst of suffering.
She arrived one day in Italy sent by her religious congregation, the Disciples of the Redeemer. She was sent to Sicily to take care of the elderly religious of her community.
It was then that she thought of studying medicine, as a vocation within her vocation.
And so, after having left her homeland and her family, nine brothers and sisters, she joined the University of Palermo to study medicine at the age of 35. Six years later she would be a physician.
Today, at 46, she carries out her apostolate in the medical guard of Villa Almé, in the province of Bergamo, where she not only fights the Covid, but also tends to the spiritual needs of the sick.
“I came across discouraged people, looking for comfort,” she told an Italian newspaper. “People were dying in my arms. I never felt so dejected as I did in those days [of the pandemic’s rise]. One night, I had to make fourteen death reports. On another night, as I was setting a patient on oxygen, I found myself explaining to her that God does not give up on suffering.”
She has not yet greeted the Pope. In April, they played a prank on her, simulating the voice of the Pontiff who would be calling her to praise his service. But she does not lose hope of seeing him.
For two years she was a missionary in the Italian Relief Corps of the Order of Malta, on a ship of the Italian Coast Guard. There she cared for many migrants: “They were looking for peace, that’s what they always told me. They escaped from war and bombs, from danger”.
“True or false nun?”
People were surprised and still is surprised to find a doctor-nun: “‘Are you really a nun?’, they ask me. During night shifts I see three times as many patients as my colleagues; perhaps because I don’t just prescribe medicines but let them talk. They come in with stomach aches and we end up talking about their fears”.
She does not deny anyone a kind word, a smile. People open their hearts to her, ask her for her prayers and she prays. And she continues to be willing to serve, wherever God calls her.
As she confirmed to Vatican News in January of this year: “Lord, I am here to do your will, wherever you want me, send me.
With information from Aleteia
