Missing Louisiana Nun Found 'Alive And Safe' Months After Armed Home Raid
A New Orleans nun has been found alive after she was kidnapped during an armed home raid in Burkina Faso in April, The Times-Picayune reported.
Sister Suellen Tennyson, a Roman Catholic nun, was kidnapped when 10 men entered a home she was sharing with two other nuns and two Burkinabè women, according to Bishop Theophile Nare of the Kaya Diocese.
The 83-year-old nun reportedly “found her calling” through work in the West African country, ministering to starving and malnourished children, the newspaper reported. She had stayed in Burkina Faso despite calls to leave amid recent violence, according to the newspaper.
Tennyson is now in Niamey, Niger — roughly 160 miles from where she was kidnapped in Yalgo, Burkina Faso — and in U.S. hands, according to a letter sent to members of Tennyson’s order, the Marianites of Holy Cross, and obtained by The Times-Picayune. The letter does not explain how she was discovered or include information on her condition.
The nun was held by kidnappers for nearly five months and is worn out from the experience, according to Sister Ann Lacour, the congregational leader of the Marianites of Holy Cross.
“I told her how much people love her, and she doesn’t have anything to worry about. I told her, ‘You are alive and safe. That’s all that matters,’” Lacour told the Clarion Herald, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
“Thanks be to God!!!!” the archdiocese wrote on its Facebook page Tuesday.
The Marianites did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for further comment.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
