Barnabite Father Giovanni Scalese holds a baggage trolley, right, as he arrives with five Missionaries of Charity nuns at Rome's Fiumicino airport Aug. 25, 2021, after the group was evacuated from Afghanistan. Photo: CNS Religious sisters from the Missionaries of Charity and 14 disabled children from an orphanage in Afghanistan arrived safely last Wednesday at Rome’s international airport.
A Catholic priest and five sisters from the order founded by Mother Teresa arrived on one of two evacuation flights from Kabul that landed in Rome on August 25 carrying a total of 277 people.
Fr Giovanni Scalese, the ecclesiastical superior of the Catholic mission in Afghanistan, also arrived on the flight. He spent eight years in Kabul, offering daily Mass for foreign residents in the city at the only Catholic church in Afghanistan, located inside of the Italian embassy.
“I would never have returned to Italy without these children,” Fr Scalese told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
“We could not leave them there.”
The children, aged between six to 20 years old, were residents of an orphanage founded in 2006 by the Missionaries of Charity in Kabul, which has now been forced to close due to the Taliban’s takeover of the city.
Sr Bhatti Shahnaz, another Catholic religious sister who arrived in Rome on the evacuation flight, also worked with disabled children in Afghanistan with her community, the Sisters of Charity of St Jeanne Antide.
“The 50 intellectually disabled children we looked after are still there,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Fr Matteo Sanavio, the president of the NGO For the Children of Kabul, was at the airport to welcome the Catholic arrivals from Afghanistan.
“The first moments we shared were smiles under our masks,” Fr Sanavio told Vatican News.
“We were able to embrace, and the first words we said to each other were: ‘We praise the Lord because he has done great things.’”
Italy has welcomed 2,659 evacuated Afghans, about a third of them children, according to the Italian Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini.
Fr Sanavio said: “We really must thank the Italian forces for their work and dedication, for everything … They managed to bring the nuns to safety, these little seeds of Christian charity present in Afghanistan, and above all, we must thank them for having brought our children, those of the Missionaries of Charity, who have severe disabilities.”