A Brave Nun

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 3, 21 January 1904, Page 6

A Brave Nun

It is not often that the French Academy, which has the disposal and distribution of the Montyon prize for virtue, awards it to monks or nuns, probably because devotedness and self-sacrifice are regarded as in some way their professional characteristics. But the prr/e does now and again go to a nun to show the world that the Academy is not unaware of the virtues that are daily practised all the world over by those in the cowl, cornette, or veil. The foremost amongat those commemorated this year by M. Thureau-Dangin, who pronounced the discourse of distribution, was, however, a nun, Sister Saint Charles, who for years ' past has devoted her life to the negroes of Africa. In 1859 she entered the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of Castres, and was sent to Gabon, in Equatorial Africa, where she was at first set to hospital work. She then found means to devote herself to the helpless poor of all sorts, even of the leprous. She learnt the language of the natives, and passed amongst them fearless and unharmed. She became well known amongst the blacks as their mother, and even tribes who had never seem her or known her case spoke of the mysterious being who worked such wonders amongst their countrymen. She established a hospital for European sailors, and with her Sisters nursed the men of the Catinat through a dangerous epidemic in 1885. Only once had she quitted her post, and that was in 1866, when she went away to recruit her broken health. Her heroism and devotion >were brought, to the notice of the Academy by M. de Brazza, and the Academy awarded her the prize of 3000 francs.