In the early 1990s, Algeria was engulfed by a brutal civil conflict, as armed Islamist groups fought the state and civilians lived in fear. Foreigners were urged to leave, and many did. But Sister Lourdes Migueles, a Spanish Augustinian nun who had already spent decades serving in Algeria, chose to stay.
As the violence worsened, religious figures also became targets. In October 1994, two of Sister Lourdes’s fellow nuns, Caridad Alvarez and Esther Paniagua, were shot dead near their convent as they returned from work. Sister Lourdes remembers hearing the gunshots, the panic in the street, and realising immediately that it was her fellow Sisters who had been attacked. Soon afterwards, she was ordered by her superiors to leave Algeria, something she says caused her deep pain, as though she had abandoned the country she loved.
Years later, she returned to Algiers, where she still lives and works today, helping women and children. Sister Lourdes Migueles tells her story to Colm Flynn.
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(Photo: Nuns attend a ceremony at the Chapel of our Lady of Santa Cruz in Algeria in 2018. Credit: Ryad Kramdi/via Getty)
