Other nights, she found an open bed in one of the nearby shelters for the homeless.
“She was a very great challenge for her community,” Fischer explained. He said the other sisters always treated her well, even while she made things difficult by her unusual behavior.
“I have always obeyed,” Lucindis used to say, according to Fischer. “But I must obey the Lord.”
The priest said that the Pallottine sisters tried to get psychiatric help for their community member. She was admitted first to a hospital in Italy, and later in Germany, but she protested both times and eventually ran away.
Lucindis told Fischer that after her escape from the German hospital she lived in Israel for two months, followed by Hong Kong for another month.
In Hong Kong, Lucindis slept in train stations and in the home of a friend she had made, she told the priest. She said that in February 2013 the news reached her that Benedict XVI had resigned as pope, which prompted her to make her way back to Rome to be present at his final Wednesday audience in St. Peter’s Square.
Fischer knew nothing about this story for years, until Lucindis confided in him in an hour-long conversation on her deathbed, after she received the last rites.
He was called to her room in the convent on March 4, as the only priest from whom she would agree to receive the sacraments.
Lucindis had developed an infection in her legs. It was treatable with an antibiotic, but after a short stay in the hospital, she asked to leave and did not continue to take the medication. The infection spread to her blood.
(Story continues below)
Despite developing blood poisoning, the 82-year-old continued to go to the place she knew best, St. Peter’s Square, until about a week before her death, the priest said.
When Fischer brought her the sacraments, “it was a celebration,” he recalled. She was “very awake” and “very pious,” and that time helped her to reconcile with her community.
After several hours of intense lucidity, Lucindis slowly faded, like the dying wick of a candle.
The religious association that owns the Campo Santo Teutonico offered to bury Lucindis in its cemetery in Vatican City, out of respect for her own request.
“It was clear that [Sister Lucindis] would not have accepted to return home to Germany, because she never accepted this in life,” Fischer said.
Credit: Source link
