According to her community and the nearby diocese, an American religious sister who was abducted in April and was serving in Burkina Faso is now safe and free.
Since 2014, Suellen Tennyson, an 83-year-old native of New Orleans, has worked in a missionary outpost in northern Burkina Faso.
She was taken on April 5 from the little residence she lived with two other members of her congregation, the Marianites of the Holy Cross, by unidentified armed men.
She reportedly went missing without her shoes and with her spectacles and blood pressure medicine.
Tennyson is now safe and in the care of American authorities, according to Sister Ann Lacour, the current head of the Marianite community.
She made this statement on August 30. The sister was listed as missing by the FBI, but up until this week, neither her whereabouts nor health status were known.
Lacour assured the Clarion Herald, a publication of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, that “she is secure.” She is in the United States but not on American soil.
She’s secure. She was well on the morning of Monday. She has heard from us. She’ll return to the United States someday.
According to a statement made public on August 31 by Bishop Theophile Nare of Kaya, Tennyson is presently “in a secure location and in excellent health,” as the BBC reported.
After visiting Burkina Faso in 2011, Tennyson, a former international leader of her church, was inspired to establish a missionary station there.
Tennyson’s congregation asked for ongoing prayers for her recovery and for privacy until she is ready to discuss her experience in public.
“We are very appreciative to everyone’s prayers and support over the last five months.
We are now need your prayers for Suellen’s total restoration of body, mind, and spirit, according to a Facebook post on August 31 from Tennyson’s congregation.
She has asked for seclusion; please respect her need for time and wait until she initiates contact with you.
Let the knowledge that she is secure provide you comfort. God provides for us so wonderfully!
Tennyson was the lone victim of the home invasion in Burkina Faso, even though three Marianite sisters were residing there at the time. Sisters Pascaline Tougma of Burkina Faso and Sister Pauline Drouin of Quebec, both nurses, escaped the assault unscathed. According to Lacour, she thinks the shooters could have been searching for cash and medication.
The Clarion Herald quoted Lacour as saying that the Marianites contacted both the U.S. Embassy in Burkina Faso and the U.S. State Department and were assured that this was “a high priority matter for them.”
Although American special operations personnel recently freed a prisoner from somewhere on or around the African continent, the U.S. military said on Tuesday that there is still no proof that American soldiers were involved in Tennyson’s rescue.
About 40 of the Marianites of Holy Cross’ 140 members are stationed in and around New Orleans, and the order was formed in 1838 by Blessed Father Basil Moreau.
Sister Tennyson served as the organization’s global head until she resigned in 2012.
Following her travel to Burkina Faso in the capacity of congregational leader, Sister Tennyson informed the Clarion Herald that Bishop Thomas Kaboré of Kaya had requested the assistance of four Marianites to establish a parish and construct a hospital in his diocese.
Sister Tennyson left her position as congregation leader and went to live with the other sisters in the missionary outpost.
Tennyson remembered the bishop telling her, “You come here, and God will take care of the rest.”
In 2016, she said to the newspaper that she wished to remain in Burkina Faso for as long as her health and those of her religious community would let her to do so. She claimed to have “never felt more alive in my vocation.”
The modest parish church remains active, and one account claims that the clinic is so essential to the community that people travel 50 kilometres to get care there.
In recent years, particularly after 2016, Burkina Faso, a country of 21 million people in West Africa, has become a hotspot of Islamic extremism and bloodshed.
There have been multiple reports of gunmen attacking Christians. At least six people, including a priest, were murdered when a gang of shooters set a Catholic church on fire during Sunday Mass in the middle of May 2019.
The next day, four more Catholics were shot and died. In January 2021, a Catholic priest in Burkina Faso went missing. His body was eventually discovered in a wilderness.
The nation had a military coup in January 2022, and the new president has stressed the need of reestablishing security.
However, in February, assailants set fire to two dorms, a classroom, a car, and a crucifix at Saint Kisito de Bougui, a small seminary.