Sister Lorena

Sister Lorena Jenal, born Friederike in Samnaun in 1950, has lived and worked in Papua New Guinea since 1979. Sister Lorena works in the centre of the country in the diocese of Mendi. The country is around 10 times the size of Switzerland and has 8.9 million inhabitants, almost the same number. A country with over 820 languages and cultures. The island lies in the Pacific north-east of Australia.

The Papuans, as the people on the island are called, are overwhelmed by the rapid modernisation: Papua New Guinea has experienced the development that took several centuries in Europe from the Middle Ages to modernity in just 50 years. Until recently, the people fled into traditional clan warfare as a counter-reaction. With mediation and communication, many fights were resolved peacefully. A new phenomenon is the witch craze, known as sanguma, which first appeared in 2012: for example, if a person dies in a village, even if it is a natural death, a scapegoat is sought for the death. It is usually women with a strong character who are accused and condemned as witches. The accused women are publicly humiliated, their clothes are torn off and the women are abused with red-hot iron rods, on the breasts, in the abdomen, all over the body. Sister Lorena wants to put a stop to the torturers. But there are more and more of them, she says. 

Sister Lorena goes to the villages of the abused women, takes them and their children to a safe place, nurses them back to health and organises their lives after the torture: If the victims so wish, attempts are made to reintegrate them into the villages. However, this is not always possible: it is often their own husbands who accuse them of witchcraft. 

She seeks dialogue with the perpetrators: During role plays, church services, reconciliation, integration and discussions on logic, the torturers are confronted about their actions. It often takes many such discussions over weeks before the torturers understand that the irrational witchcraft is wrong: how can you communicate charity and torture mothers at the same time? Through conversations like the discussion on logic, you can make people realise that their ideas are wrong. As soon as they realise this, they are deeply shaken and begin to empathise with the situation of others. 

Sister Lorena's work is not without danger: she has had a knife to her neck or a gun to her chest on several occasions. In these moments, she appealed to the superstition of the locals and threatened - for once: ‘If you kill me now, my spirit will live on. Woe to you, my spirit will plague you!’ 

In July 2022, Sister Lorena gave an impressive talk about her work in Papua New Guinea at the school in Samnaun-Compatsch. She spoke about the abused women she has taken in and cared for: For example, of the admirable Maria, mother of six children, who was accused of bewitching her relatives in 2017 and brutally abused, never losing her bright eyes. Maria was able to return home five months after the abuse. Today, Maria accompanies Sister Lorena to visit new victims and be a role model for them. She is an active participant and speaker at the seminars with the perpetrators. Maria carries hope out into the world and is a role model not only for Sanguma victims, but for each and every one of us. 

Despite all the suffering that Sister Lorena Jenal experienced, she remains positive and optimistic: she believes in the good in people. This motivates her to carry on. When asked whether she would like to return to Samnaun one day, she replied with a broad smile that she would like to stay in her paradise in Papua New Guinea for as long as possible. She has found her paradise. 

Pictures: Dominik Täuber, Bettina Flitner (cover picture).