U.S. Special Forces have freed an 83-year-old nun who was kidnapped in early April in West Africa’s Sahel region.
Sister Suellen Theresa Tennyson was kidnapped on April 4 in Yalgho, in north-central Burkina Faso.
The American nun from the Marianites of the Holy Cross Congregation was freed in a Special Forces operation, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley revealed Wednesday, August 31, during a ceremony marking the transfer of command of SOCOM (U.S. Special Operations Command) from Gen. Richard Clarke to Gen. Bryan Fenton.
According to a U.S. State Department official quoted by Christian News, the freeing of the 83-year-old nun took place in Niger, without further details.
“It is with great joy and gratitude to God that we bring to everyone’s attention that Sister Suellen Tennyson, the nun abducted in Yalgo on the night of April 4 to Tuesday, April 5, has been freed by her captors,” said Bishop Theophile Nare of Kaya, a town 112 kilometers southwest of Yalgho, in an August 30 statement.
“Ann Lacour, President of the Marianite Congregation, said the octogenarian nun, who is currently in Niamey, is expected to return to the United States soon. “She is safe,” she said in an interview with the Clarion Herald, the official media of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
After a career in teaching in the United States, Suellen Theresa Tennyson moved to Burkina Faso in 2014.
Due to insecurity in the north of the country since that year from insurgents belonging to jihadist groups, the Marianite congregation sister had been asked to leave the area, to no avail.
When she was abducted on the night of April 4-5, witnesses say that her captors did not give her time to take her glasses, medicine, shoes and her phone.
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