Nigeria-visiting Owerri, Imo State

When a Roman Catholic nun offered me an opportunity to go on a mission to Nigeria, I said yes. We’d meant on the phone when I inquired about their short-term assignments for laypeople. The nun, a medical doctor, lives in New York and belongs to a Franciscan congregation. Because of political and religious assassinations throughout Nigeria, I won’t name her.

This mission’s purpose: interview prospective candidates for her shrinking congregation.

“Some of the sisters wanted to close our order,” she told me. “We are losing members to age, death, and a lack of American applicants. I asked them to remember the founders and early members who struggled to establish and keep our group going.“

If there are no candidates for admission in American,” I said, “I believe there will be in Nigeria. ” Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, where the Church has long educated youth from grade school through college.