Italian lay missionary murdered in Peru
Nadia de Munari, a fifty-year-old Italian lay missionary who was part of Operation Mato Grosso, which serves the poor in Peru, died April 24 after being attacked in her residence. There were no witnesses to the crime.
The news has deeply grieved the community of Nuevo Chimbote, where she served hundreds of poor children.
According to the local newspaper Diario de Chimbote, the woman was attacked in the early hours of April 21 at the “Mamma Mia” home run by Operation Mato Grosso, located in a poor neighbourhood in Nuevo Chimbote, a town on the northern coast of Peru about 250 miles north of Lima.
The missionary ran six daycare centres or kindergartens and a primary school, where about 500 children were served.
The Diario de Chimbote said the “Mamma Mia” home provides “free food to minors and low-income mothers as well as ongoing social services, so the brutal attack on the Italian missionary, very dear to our city, makes no sense.”
The missionary was taken to the Eleazar Guzmán Barrón regional hospital, where the attending physician said that the woman had fractures to her jaw, forearm, and neck, as well as several cuts to her head and face.
She was later transferred to a clinic in Lima, where she died on April 24.
You can read the full article here.
Photo credit: Avvenire.it
