Maria de Lurdes Nunes, who was affectionately called Lurdinha by her friends, a journalist at the Christian Media Center and a missionary of Canção Nova, passed away on Friday 6 December, at the age of 64, after years of a battle against a tumour. She had returned to Brazil only a few weeks ago and a few days ago she was taken to the hospital of Barra Mansa (Rio de Janeiro). She died at 12 noon, reciting the prayer of the Angelus. The co-founder of Canção Nova, Luzia Santiago, the general formator Vera Lucia Reis and the missionary Carla Astuti were at her side.
“For us, the friars of the Custody of the Holy Land, Lurdinha was much more than someone we worked with. She was a sister and a friend who shared our vocation and our mission of walking in the steps of Jesus in his Holy Land and announcing the Fifth Gospel in words, images and charity,” the Custos of the Holy Land, Fra Francesco Patton, wrote in a message, as soon he learnt the news. “Joking with her, just before she returned to Brazil, I called her “friar Jacopa,” recalling the brotherly bond which St Francis of Assisi had with the Roman noblewoman Jacopa dei Settesoli and that we friars of the Custody shared with her.”
Lurdinha was born on 12 February 1960 in Bananal, in the State of São Paulo, in Brazil. She joined the community of Canção Nova from its beginning and was very close to the founder, Father Jonas Abib, whom she had met when she was only fourteen.
Lurdinha had been in the Holy Land since 2006, first to produce content for Canção Nova TV in Brazil, then directly at the service of the Custody of the Holy Land and the recently established Franciscan MediaCenter, today the Christian Media Center, of which she was chief editor and coordinator of content. Since then she had worked tirelessly to make known the Holy Land, the life of Christians, the activities of the Church and the Mission of the Custody to the whole world.
Lurdinha was not only a communicator, she was a missionary and a visionary who gave her life to God and made her love for Jesus a fundamental reason to carry on her mission.
“Lurdinha has completed her earthly pilgrimage, which in the last year had the flavour of a Via Crucis,” the Custos also wrote, “Now that she has reached the final destination of the pilgrimage of life, she can once again embrace her parents who gave her the gift of the faith. Now she can also embrace Father Jonas Abib again, who passed on to her the passion of announcing the Gospel, with modern means of communication, but also the taste for the radical nature of the faith. Now she can see from close-up Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the Apostles, St Francis and all the people who were a source of inspiration for her.”
“We friars of the Custody want to thank God for having given us the grace of sharing with her a leg of our journey and we will remember her in all our communities and in the shrines of the Holy Land. Goodbye, Lurdinha, see you in the Jerusalem of Heaven.”
