Catechist Phanice said that Sr. Anna Ali was a very jovial person. She explained, “She sang a very beautiful alto in the parish choir. She also engaged in pastoral work, visiting homesteads. Here, we have many photos of her with different families. Whenever she visited a family, she would give them an embroidered tablecloth for family prayers.”
During the 2007/8 post-election violence, many displaced people in Burnt Forest found refuge at St. Patrick’s Burnt Forest Catholic Parish, Sr. Anna Ali welcomed those who came and took care of them.
Adjacent to the small Convent, where she lived was a wooden house that was filled with internally displaced persons (IDPs). Catechist Phanice says that because Sr. Anna Ali could no longer have the privacy that all consecrated women require, she moved to the Cathedral where she stayed until she died.
“Moving to the Cathedral, however, did not stop her from coming to this place, and at the point of her death, her belongings were still in her room here,” the Catechist said.
She recalls that the visionary Nun was also a very prayerful young lady, always encouraging people, especially those who came to the dispensary to pray. “She would come to the dispensary and get patients to pray in her small chapel,” Catechist Phanice recalled.
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Whenever people visited her, Sr. Anna Ali would motion them to her small chapel and proceed to the kitchen to make them a cup of tea, she further recalled.
Apart from her apparitions and the stigmata she experienced, Sr. Anna Ali led a normal life. According to Catechist Phanice, the Nun enjoyed performing her duties such as cleaning the chapel and the compound, and cooking for the visitors.
“The only task that was challenging to her was doing her laundry because she had wounds on her fingers from the bleeding,” the Kenyan Catechist recalls, adding that Sr. Anna Ali was also “a very light eater”, sometimes going for a very long time without eating anything. “I would say the Eucharist was practically her food,” she said.
Sr. Anna Ali’s apparitions became a normal occurrence especially for those who worked with her at the dispensary.
“Every Wednesday she would say ‘Mama Allan, come help me’, and I would know what that meant. I would help prepare the bed for her and she would lie down and go into some kind of unconsciousness. She would remain this way from Wednesday night to late hours of Thursday every week,” Catechist Phanice narrated.
“The Bishop or any Priest would come in those moments to celebrate Mass in her chapel and she would be given the body of Christ in her unconscious state. Most times, it was a struggle to get the body of Christ through her clenched teeth,” she narrated.
When people discovered Sister Anna Ali’s healing gift, they started thronging the Parish looking for her, Catechist Phanice recalls, adding that those who came looking for Sr. Anna Ali were led to the chapel to pray especially those who came at the time of her apparitions on Thursdays.
On waking up from unconsciousness, the Nun would speak about the people who wanted to see her and were asked to pray in the chapel. “She would give a vivid description of her visitors, and we would be left wondering how she knew about them when she had been lying unconscious in her room,” Catechist Phanice told ACI Africa.
She added that to date, people come and pray at St. Anna Ali’s resting place and they get healing and a lot of transformation in their lives.
At the Cathedral of Eldoret Diocese, the Catholic Nun contracted a flu and died shortly after.
When Sr. Anna Ali died, a strange thing happened during the procession to bring her body from the morgue. Recalling the incident, Catechist Phanice says, “A random paparazzi taking a video of the procession captured an image of a Host that flew above the casket all the way to the Cathedral. He showed the video to Bishop Korir, who said that it was indeed a miracle.”
The Kenyan Catechist told ACI Africa that the Host appeared again, leading the procession from the Cathedral to St. Patrick’s Burnt Forest Catholic Parish, where Sr. Anne Ali was to be laid to rest.
Sr. Anna Ali spoke about the visions of the Hosts in the book, “On the Eucharist: A Divine Appeal”, which details her experiences starting from her birth on 29 December 1966 to a Muslim father and Catholic mother.
Fr. Jude Mbukanma, a widely published Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion who edited the book asks Sr. Anne Ali, “Is it true you had visions of Hosts?”, to which the Nun responds, “Yes. I saw them on various occasions in our small bedroom at Porta Angelica, Roma. I saw the Host in the air close to the wall. This was in May 1987.”
Fr. Mbukanma further probes, “How many times did you see them and what did you do when you saw them?”
Sr. Anne Ali responds, “As I said before, I saw them on several occasions. Then I reported the matter to my Father-Founder. It was suggested that I take photographs. I did, and when they were printed they came out real.”
Fr. Mbukanma reports that the Kodak camera with which Sr. Anna Ali took the photographs of the Sacred Hosts was the one with which she used to take the photograph of the Adorable Jesus.
According to Catechist Phanice, Sr. Anna Ali was prophetic. “Everything she said in her book is happening now,” she told ACI Africa during the December 6 interview.
Agnes Aineah is a Kenyan journalist with a background in digital and newspaper reporting. She holds a Master of Arts in Digital Journalism from the Aga Khan University, Graduate School of Media and Communications and a Bachelor's Degree in Linguistics, Media and Communications from Kenya's Moi University. Agnes currently serves as a journalist for ACI Africa.
