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Home / Awards / Servitor Pacis Award / 2007 THE SERVITOR PACIS AWARD RECIPIENTS
2011 - Sr. Rachele Fassera, CMS Sr. Rachele Fassera, CMS, is a Comboni Missionary Sister. Her name is inextricably linked to the humanitarian crisis in East Africa and the particular tragedy of the 10 October 1996 kidnapping of 139 girls from St. Mary’s College in the town of Aboke in the Apac District of northern Uganda. Her courageous pursuit of the kidnappers from the Lord’s Resistance Army led to the rescue of 109 of these girls. Eventually all but seven of the remaining girls managed to escape. The last girl to gain her freedom was reunited with her parents in 2009 after thirteen years of captivity. The episode has been the subject of several books and will soon be portrayed in film. Sister’s continued advocacy for the girls of Aboke brought worldwide attention to the plight of child victims of war. With the parents of the children who remained in captivity, she formed the Concerned Parents Association (CPA), which would bring its cause to the Holy Father and to the United Nations. Sr. Rachele recently completed several years serving the Comboni Congregation as Superior General. On 8 March 2011 the Ugandan daily newspaper Monitor published the names of the 50 Ugandan women most remembered in the country and among these was Sr. Rachele Fassera. Her own sisters in religious life describe her as one who fully fits the image of a Comboni consecrated woman, able to “make common cause”, citing her as one tried to imitate St. Daniel Comboni, her father and founder, who in his turn indicated the Crucified One, Who gave everything for us. The Comboni Missionary Sisters came into being in 1872 as an exclusively missionary institute and as a result of the prophetic inspiration of St. Daniel Comboni, a missionary who was passionate about Christ and about Africa and who always and everywhere gave priority to the poorest and most excluded people. St. Daniel Comboni believed unreservedly that the peoples of Africa could, through the power of the Gospel, become protagonists for the regeneration and liberation of Africa. He recognised the importance and necessity of the presence of consecrated women in the evangelising mission of the Church, believing that their presence “constituted an indispensable element that was essential in all respects.”
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