Today, the Italian Ambassador to Eritrea, Marco Mancini, presented a plaque to the Combonian missionary Giovanna Comencini, known as Sister Giannantonia, born in 1920, from Verona, who arrived in Eritrea in 1948 and is currently living in the sisters’ house in Asmara, where the small ceremony was held.
The initiative, promoted by the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marina Sereni, is in recognition of the great work carried out by the nun in the African country, according to the words engraved on the plaque: “To Sister Giovanna, who with exemplary commitment, for over seventy years, has contributed to strengthening the bonds of friendship between the Italian and Eritrean peoples, earning the appreciation and love, as a teacher and religious educator, by generations of young people, goes the profound recognition and gratitude of the Italian Embassy in Asmara”.
“Few other feats can compete,” Vice Minister Sereni wrote in a letter read by the Ambassador, “in illuminating our path and associating the name of our country with the image of Good in its deepest sense, with a decades-long, tireless and selfless commitment to Others, such as the activities carried out, day after day, by Sister Giannantonia. It is to people like her that we owe a great deal of our civilisation”.
