Emmanuelle Cinquin

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Sœur Emmanuelle (2003)

Sister Emmanuelle NDS , (born November 16, 1908 in Brussels ; † October 20, 2008 in Callian , southern France ; maiden name Marie-Madeleine Cinquin ) was a Belgian-French religious sister . She was known as the "mother of the garbage people of Cairo " because she lived for years with the garbage children in the slums of Cairo.

Life

Origin and childhood experience

Madeleine Cinquin came from a Belgian entrepreneurial family with roots in France. One of her grandfathers was a Jewish rabbi. At the age of 5 she was present when her father was washed up while swimming in the sea and disappeared. She grew up partly in Paris. After graduating from high school, her mother refused to want to study.

35 years religious and teacher

On May 6, 1929, she entered the religious community of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion (Notre Dame de Sion) in London-Holloway and was given the religious name Emmanuelle . From 1930 on she taught "higher daughters" in literature and philosophy in the religious schools in Istanbul , Tunis and Alexandria . It was not until 1962 that she completed a degree in French, Latin and Greek ("Lettres classiques") at the Sorbonne with a license. In 1965 she gave up high school in Alexandria and became the head of the school for poor girls in the Bacos district. There she taught English instead of French and gave religious instruction in Arabic.

The first years in the Ezbet-el-Nakhl garbage settlement

Nuncio Bruno Bernhard Heim made her aware of the misery of the Cairo garbage collectors. She settled in the middle of the slums of Ezbet-el-Nakhl to share the life in the dirt (without water pipes or electricity) of the garbage collector families (4000 men, women and children), especially the rightsless and enslaved women. Since her attempt to raise the level of civilization through schooling remained within narrow limits due to lack of money, she became aware of the need to raise donations when the geographer Jean Sage (* 1934) visited her in 1974.

Europe trip. Help from Sister Sara

In the same year, a murder in her immediate vicinity that touched her heart was the trigger for her first trip to Europe, on which she caused a sensation in Italy, France, Belgium and Switzerland with her media-effective and sometimes sensational appearances. Knowing that she needed help from the Egyptian population for linguistic and cultural reasons, she turned to the Coptic Orthodox Church and came across the women's monastery of the Daughters of Mary in Bani Suwaif, founded by Bishop Athanasius in 1965 . There, in 1975, she succeeded in gaining a young comrade-in-arms in Sister Sara , who from then on shared a life full of privation with her, and not only for the reasons mentioned, but also because of her balancing, level-headed and diplomatic nature for Sister Emmanuelle, who caused anger and overreaction tended to become irreplaceable.

Further engagements. Retired at 85. Another public appearance

After improving conditions in the settlement of Ezbet-el-Nakhl, the two nuns attacked the Mukattam garbage settlement (20,000 people) in 1981 and the Meadi-Tora settlement in 1987. In 1985 they worked for the street children of Khartoum in Sudan , and in 1991 for the rescue of starving babies in Lebanon . In 1993 Sister Emmanuelle was ordered by the Superior of the Order to retire to the Order's nursing home in Callian ( Var department ) in France. Contrary to her wish to die with the garbage collectors, she submitted. But she continued to fight against poverty and injustice, was a guest in many talk shows and also stood up for the homeless in Fréjus on site . Contrary to the church teaching office, she pushed the use of contraceptives and advocated the possibility of marriage for priests . She published numerous books.

Spectacular success

With the help of the Swiss composting expert Arnold von Hirschheydt, Sister Emmanuelle succeeded in setting up a compost factory in Mukattam in 1987. In addition, a school center was built, which the Swiss artist André Sugnaux (* 1944) painted with frescoes, and a grammar school was added in 1995. A clinic was opened in 2002 and a women's refuge in 2006.

Aid organizations in the area

Sister Emmanuel founded the aid organization Association Sœur Emmanuelle (ASMAE) in 1980, which cares for and supports needy people in Egypt , Sudan and Burkina Faso , Lebanon and Madagascar . ASMAE built several social centers with hospitals and schools. In Geneva founded Sister Emmanuelle in 1979 with Michel Bittar, the des Amis de Soeur Emmanuelle Association Suisse (ASASE), which is now in Sudan and Haiti active. In Austria, the relief organization Sr. Emmanuelle was established in 1979 in the Graz-Ragnitz parish under Pastor Johannes Regner (1937-2017) , which was taken over in 1992 by the Graz-Seckau diocese . The motor of the activities is Hannelore Bayer (* 1943), who was awarded the honorary title of "citizen" by the city of Graz. In 1989, at the request of Sister Emmanuelle, the aforementioned Jean Sage organized one orange per week for 25,000 children in Sudan. From this the aid organization Opération Orange developed , which is still active.

Death and honors

In 2002, Sr. Emmanuelle was appointed Commander by Jacques Chirac and in 2008 by Nicolas Sarkozy as Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor . Sister Emmanuelle was awarded the Grand Officer's Cross of the Belgian Order of the Crown in 2005. In 1993 a foundation was named after her in Belgium ( Fondation Soeur Emmanuelle ), which has been awarding prizes in her spirit since 1995. The city of Graz awarded Sister Emmanuelle the gold medal during a visit in 2002. A few weeks before her 100th birthday, she died on the night of October 20, 2008 in a nursing home in Callian. A funeral service was held in the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral with great public participation. In Cairo, 50,000 people gathered for the funeral service. Streets are named after her in Paris, Nice, Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence and numerous other French municipalities.

Motive of their action

Sister Emmanuelle has repeatedly emphasized that it did not work for charity ( Charité ) went, but (for justice justice ). She was convinced that the problem of poor third countries could not be solved through development aid, but only by the rich countries paying the poor a "fair" price for their raw materials. She was particularly outraged by the unjust fate of women in the garbage settlements ( female genital mutilation , marriage at the age of 12, 20 pregnancies per woman, domestic violence against women as a normal case, which is also accepted as normal by women). On the other hand, she focused on education and was particularly proud of having led many girls from the garbage settlements to higher schools and universities.

Works (German)

  • The place to which God led me. My life with people in the trash . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1980.
  • Love is stronger than death. An interview with Sister Emmanuelle from Cairo . Paulusverlag, Freiburg (Switzerland) 1989.
  • In the middle of people on the edge. The "mother of the garbage people of Cairo" tells . New City, Munich-Zurich-Vienna 1998.
  • (with Philippe Assó) What is worth living for! Sister Emanuelle. The mother of the garbage people of Cairo . Pattloch, Munich 2005.
  • Heaven is the others. Sister Emanuelle. A conversation with Marlène Tuininga . Sunday paper, Graz 2016.

literature

  • Paul Dreyfus: Sister Emmanuelle. In the service of the garbage people . Styria, Graz-Vienna-Cologne 1987.
  • Sister Sara : Sister Emmanuelle. My girlfriend and mother. Our lives for the garbage collectors in Cairo . Tyrolia, Innsbruck-Vienna 2013.
  • Pierre Lunel: Soeur Emmanuelle. La biography . Anne Carrière / Robert Laffont, Paris 2006 (2008). (Foreword by Bernard Kouchner )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lunel 2008, pp. 27 and 357
  2. ↑ Lunel 2008, p. 109
  3. ↑ Lunel 2008, p. 113
  4. ↑ Lunel 2008, p. 241 ff.
  5. ^ Sister Emmanuelle 2013, p. 189
  6. ↑ Lunel 2008, pp. 17 and 238
personal data
SURNAME Cinquin, Emmanuelle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cinquin, Marie-Madeleine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian-French religious sister
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Brussels
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 2008
Place of death Callian