'I get nothing out of Mass'

Young African woman crawls 2.5 miles to attend Sunday Mass

Olivia (Photo courtesy of AVAN)

Valencia, Aug 28, 2008 / 01:42 am (CNA).- The Little
Sisters of the Abandoned Elderly in Chissano (Mozambique) took into their home this week a 25-year-old African young girl named Olivia, who despite not being baptized at the time and not having any legs, crawled 2.5 miles (more than 4 kilometres) every Sunday to attend Mass.

According to the AVAN news agency, the nuns said that one day, they saw “something
moving on the ground far away,” and when they drew near they saw, “to our surprise, that it was a young woman.”

“We were able to talk to her through a lady who was walking by and who translated into Portuguese what she was saying to us in her dialect", they said.

The sisters said that although “the sand from the road burned the palms of her hands during the hottest times of the year,” the young woman crawled to Mass, “giving witness of perseverance and heroic faith.”

The young woman received baptismal preparation from a catechist, who periodically visited her at home. After she was recently baptized, one of the benefactors of the sisters donated a wheel chair for Olivia.