Maryknoll Sister Lourdes Fernandez (Courtesy photo)
Missioner helped bring the faith back to post-communist Albania
By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Maryknoll Sister Lourdes Fernandez, who recently served in Hawaii and was a member of the community’s Central Pacific Region, died July 7 in the city of Moundou, in the north central African country of Chad, her latest missionary assignment. She had been among those who re-introduced the faith to post-atheistic Albania, following the fall of communism.
Sister Lourdes was 80 and a Maryknoll sister for 56 years. She was buried in Chad.
Sister Lourdes was born March 27, 1943, in Ramon, Isabela Province, Philippines. She taught elementary school for several years before entering the Maryknoll Sisters Philippines Quezon City novitiate on June 26, 1967.
Her first mission assignment was to Hawaii, where she taught for two years. In 1969, Sister Lourdes was sent to Hong Kong where she was the co-founder and director of the Workers Formation Program, which offered social, cultural, educational and spiritual programs to youth, many of whom were factory workers.
She pronounced her final vows Nov. 27, 1975, in Hong Kong.
Sister Lourdes later returned to the Maryknoll Sisters Center, New York, where she served for three years in the communications office as a journalist, photographer, graphic artist and filmmaker.
Sister Lourdes and two other Maryknoll Sisters were first assigned to Albania in 1995 in response to an invitation from the U.S. bishops to orders of religious women to help revive the church in Eastern Europe, which was emerging from atheistic communism. They were the first Catholic presence in the city of Pogradec in nearly 40 years.
After several years, she was recalled to Maryknoll, N.Y., to work on mission awareness. In 2006, she was sent back to Albania to help with an Italian school run by Dominican nuns teaching values education, offering instruction in the Catholic faith when requested. Of those years, Sister Lourdes said, “It’s been an experience of epiphany, a manifestation of God present. For me, it’s been a profound experience of the mystery of God.”
Over the course of two assignments and seven years, 19 Albanians asked to be baptized. “From this core group of new Catholics, others’ lives were touched and the light of faith continues to be passed on,” she said.
In 2021, Sister Lourdes wrote about her experience as a modern missionary in a post-dictatorship stripped of spirit and hope in the book “Light a Candle: A Memoir, A Special Assignment in Albania.”
In 2014, Sister Lourdes was assigned to the Vocation Ministry Team of the Maryknoll Congregation based in the Philippines.
After her vocation ministry, Sister Lourdes was reassigned to Hawaii where she did outreach and home visiting. She and other sisters responded to the Congregational Leadership Team in undertaking a communal discernment as to what is new in their mission life today.
This past April 30, four sisters were assigned to Chad. They left in early May and were beginning to settle and get to know the people when Sister Lourdes died.
