Sister Mary Consolata Nakawooja assists an aged nun as she takes tea on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises in Nkokonjeru, Uganda.
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Nkokonjeru, Central Uganda — Sister Jane Frances Nakafeero walks purposefully between rows of white crosses adorned with pink and yellow flowers in a cemetery on the Little Sisters of St. Francis convent in Nkokonjeru, Uganda.
She pauses, pointing at one of many easy graves. “This one was a nurse,” says Nakafeero. Just a few steps later. “This one was a trainer. This one was a social employee. This one was a health care provider.”
A breeze blows softly between the headstones. Aspiring nuns start their coaching on this convent, and novices take their vows earlier than being despatched out to serve the neighborhood. Ultimately, the identical sisters are laid to relaxation right here. “The motherhouse,” Nakafeero says, referring to her order’s founding headquarters, “is the place we start and the place we finish.”
The convent additionally hosts retired nuns, and Nakafeero is more and more frightened about their destiny.
Sister Jane Francis Nakafeero, superior common of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, walks with one other nun on the cemetery in Nkokonjeru, Uganda, the place members of the order are laid to relaxation.
Stuart Tibaweswa for NPR
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Palliative care, which supplies medical and emotional assist to sufferers on the finish of their lives, is a comparatively new idea, arising solely within the Nineteen Sixties. There may be little funding for, or data about it, particularly within the Church, she explains. The issue of caring for aged nuns is especially dire in African orders, which already are underfunded compared to American and European ones.
On the convent in Nkoknojeru, younger nuns take care of retired ones, taking them to and from mattress and serving their meals, however the outdated girls would not have the sources they want: grownup diapers, wheelchairs, listening to aids – even heat blankets. At a gathering of the African Palliative Care Affiliation in 2023, Nakafeero laid out these considerations one after the other. She caught the eye of Jean Callahan, former chair of the Irish Hospice Basis and an advisory board member of the affiliation.
Sister Jane Francis Nakafeero stands outdoors the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises in Nkokonjeru, Uganda. After greater than 25 years working in healthcare, Sister Jean Francis helped advocate for a partnership between the Little Sisters of St. Francis and the African Palliative Care Affiliation to enhance end-of-life care.
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Callahan was in Uganda to be taught extra about two initiatives funded by the Irish Hospice Basis. She listened intently to Nakafeero, considering of her grandmother, Sybil, who misplaced her husband within the Fifties and departed Eire for Tanzania to work as a nun.
“These girls, who might have been my grandmother’s colleagues, are being left on the finish of their lives with out the fundamental human helps they need to have,” Callahan says.
So the 2 girls determined to begin a pilot program with the African Palliative Care Affiliation to offer hospice assist to ageing nuns. This system, which started in September 2025, endeavors to cater to the nuns’ medical care and materials wants. It would additionally present psychological interventions for each emotional assist and psychological stimulation, together with actions for the retired nuns and coaching for the younger nuns tasked with caring for them.
This system has but to be totally realized. At current, researchers led by African Palliative Care Affiliation director Eve Namisango are assessing the wants of some 50 retired sisters with the Little Sisters of St. Francis. A lot of the nuns are from Uganda, however the order consists of Kenyan and Tanzanian nuns. After that, Namisango and her staff will start coaching caregivers, with hopes of rolling out palliative care in Ugandan convents by 2027, after which throughout the continent.
“They’ve served humanity for all their helpful years,” Namisango says of the nuns. Now, “they deserve first rate, person-centered care.”
With some 82,000 nuns in Africa, in line with the Vatican, the African Palliative Care Affiliation believes that between 8,000 and 10,000 may very well be in want of finish of life care.
Nuns attend morning mass within the chapel on the Little Sisters of St. Francis.
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Prayer … after which what?
Mornings for the 14 retired sisters within the Nkokonjeru convent start with prayer. “Take what we carry and provides what we’d like,” they warble. Since lots of the sisters can now not stroll, they line up in wheel chairs, with graying hair peeking from beneath their habits. Father Joseph Balikuddembe, a younger priest, weaves down the aisle for communion, depositing wafers on the nuns’ lips.
He fears the sisters would not have sufficient to do. “They’ve retired however their brains must be stored lively,” he says, earlier than departing to present communion to the nuns too weak to rise from mattress.
After praying, the nuns eat a breakfast of hardboiled eggs together with mashed plantain and bread, sitting at assigned locations round scuffed picket tables. After consuming, among the nuns are wheeled out into the solar, however there are usually not sufficient wheelchairs. About ten of the nuns have mobility points, whereas there are solely seven wheel chairs on the convent. These chairs are in dangerous form , with sticky wheels and defective hand brakes. Some nuns return to their rooms.
Younger nuns put together to serve breakfast to aged sisters on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises.
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Aged nuns sit of their eating room on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises, the place they’re going to have tea. Retired and ageing members proceed to stay inside the neighborhood compound.
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On the Might day of our go to, 81-year-old Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was being inaugurated for a seventh time period in workplace. Just a few of the retired sisters watched on a wall-mounted tv within the eating room. People who might communicate chatted quietly, and others stared into the gap.
Sister Mary Hedwig Agoya got here to the convent in Nkokonjeru in 1951, when she was solely 14. When Agoya arrived on the order of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, she was met by its founder, Mom Kevin Kearney, one other Irish girl who traveled to Uganda in 1903. Over the course of fifty years, Kearney based quite a few hospitals. In the present day, she is a candidate for sainthood.
The aspirant nun gave up her garments and possessions, whereas Kearney helped her costume in khaki-colored robes and a veil. “She embraced me,” Agoya, now 89, says.
Sister Mary Hedwig Agoya, a retired nun of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, joined non secular life on the age of 14 and is now 89 years outdated. She is among the many aged sisters dwelling inside the convent compound.
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After that, Agoya labored as a trainer for 40 years.
Since she retired, life has felt totally different. Earlier than, she spent her days managing a classroom, supervising college students and marking papers. Now, she says, “it turns into a bit uninteresting.” Her voice is staccato and hoarsened by age. She prays within the morning and once more earlier than lunch and at bedtime. A lot of the different nuns who entered the convent together with her have died.
Sister Rosemary Luyiga, who’s 95, spends most of her time in her room, which holds a single mattress and a chair. It is embellished with a black-and-white portrait of her mom as a younger girl, and a candle celebrating the centennial of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, adorned with Kearney’s face.Solar slants by way of the window.
Sister Rosemary Luyiga, who’s 95, holds a portrait of her late mom within the room the place she lives inside the residential compound.
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Luyiga was 12 years outdated when she got here to the convent in 1944. She ran a faculty instructing younger ladies to cook dinner and clear. She lived by way of the Second World Warfare and thru Uganda’s independence from Britain. However “I do not bear in mind a lot of these issues,” she says of world occasions that occurred past the convent partitions. “I do not suppose we have been very a lot .” She finest remembers the ten totally different places during which she served, written out neatly in blue ink on a sheet of paper.
Principally motionless, she is commonly by herself. “I do not know what can take away loneliness,” Luyiga displays. “You want to sit and discuss, however you discover that you just can not do this.”
There are usually not sufficient caregivers on the convent to help her, she provides, even in circumstances of emergency. Assets are stretched skinny and certified nurses are few. If she wants medical help or just has to go to the toilet, “I do not even name for assist” she says.
Coaching the Caregivers
Taking care of aged nuns like Agoya and Luyiga is Sister Mary Consolata Nakawoojwa. A social employee, she studied geriatric care in america. She is now a part of a staff with two different sisters and a handful of cooks and caregivers, answerable for a couple of dozen retired nuns. The calls for are fixed, and Nakawoojwa hardly has time to sit down down.
“Thanks for consuming,” she tells one of many aged sisters gently at mealtime, earlier than consuming, herself. “You’ve gotten eaten very effectively.”
Sister Mary Consolata Nakawoojwa wheels an aged nun to her room on the Little Sisters of St. Francis premises in Nkokonjeru, Uganda on Might 12, 2026.
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The sisters in her cost typically endure from melancholy and nervousness. “They aren’t positive actually how life can be,” she says. “We outline ourselves by what we do. However now they have to be as a substitute of doing. They must be, after which they must redefine identification.”
Consequently, she desires nuns to obtain psychological assist. Palliative care isn’t just about ache aid however adjusting to new circumstances on the finish of life. “Whether or not you are a nun in Africa otherwise you’re a development employee within the Bronx, you face those self same sorts of considerations as you face the tip of your life. And it means so much to have individuals to stroll with you in that place,” says Kristina Newport, chief medical officer on the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medication.
Who cares for the nuns?
Callahan has questioned if nuns, like these on the Little Sisters of St. Francis, are neglected just because they’re girls. “I really feel very aggrieved that nuns are second-class residents,” she says.
Nakafeero has arrived at an analogous conclusion. “We have now the bishops, who’re accountable for the dioceses and accountable for the clergymen. They might do one thing for the clergymen, however they won’t do one thing for the nuns,” Nakafeero says. As in consequence, she concludes, nuns like her “must do it ourselves.”
The Vatican didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark, together with questions on who’s answerable for feminine non secular orders upon retirement.
For now, survey analysis with aged nuns, together with these in Nakawooja’s care, is ongoing, funded by an Irish donor who needs to stay nameless. Campaigners are at the moment attempting to boost about $135,000 wanted to hold out the remainder of this system, together with offering materials assist to nuns, and coaching to their caregivers. “I am an optimist and I am additionally bloody decided on this,” Callahan says.
For Nakafeero, this system is private. She cared for her personal father as he died, which later impressed her to determine a palliative care program at Naggalama Hospital, the place she is chief working officer.
In Nkokonjeru, she seems throughout the rows of graves resulting in the mausoleum the place Mom Kevin Kearney is buried. Nakafeero is 57 now and contemplates what is going to occur to her as she grows older too. “In a number of years time, I actually can be there,” she says, reflecting on her impending retirement. Having labored laborious all her life, “when that point comes, I might need somebody to softly, gently journey with me.”
Sophie Neiman is an award-winning journalist. She’s based mostly in Kenya and writes concerning the area.
