Lubumbashi, 12 May, 2023 / 9:20 pm (ACI Africa).
A gang leader in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has freed a Catholic Nun a few hours after her kidnapping in the region covered by the country’s Catholic Archdiocese of Lubumbashi, saying he did not want to have “problems with the Pope, the Archbishop, and especially with the Catholic Church”.
Paying a visit to Sr. Lucie Mwasenga, a member of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary of Kongolo on Wednesday, May 10, Archbishop Fulgence Muteba Mugalu of Lubumbashi said that the visit was meant to express his closeness with “a daughter of the Church”.
“For me, it is a visit that has a pastoral significance first of all because it is a daughter of the church, a consecrated person, and as said in an adage it is in misfortune that one recognizes the true friends. It is in the misfortune that one must recognize also the true father,” Archbishop Muteba said.
Sr. Lucie was abducted on April 26 in Lubumbashi, a city in Southeastern DRC, and released a few hours later on the orders of the kidnapping gang leader.
The Catholic Nun was leaving the University of Lubumbashi where she is pursuing a medical course when her kidnappers ambushed her at around 6 p.m. She was forced to enter a cab that had a male driver and a female passenger in the back seat.