Sister Marie-Bruno and two other nuns work in Luang Prabang, northern Laos, where controls on religious activities have been tightened. Through their "presence", boys and girls from minority groups can learn a trade and integrate into society. Leading a Christian life is "difficult" and "evangelisation is forbidden".

Vientiane (AsiaNews/ÉdA) - "My witness is to be a [living] presence, nothing more. Myself and the other sisters who live with me in the north, we are careful not to break the law, nor talk [openly] about our faith," said Sister Marie-Bruno, one of the few women religious authorised by the Laotian government to live in northern Laos, an area where leading a Christian life is "particularly difficult" and where " evangelisation is forbidden."

Speaking to a conference titled 'The Night of the witnesses' held on 12 April in Paris (France) organised by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the nun described her mission as bearing silent witness among children living in poverty or with disabilities at a government facility in Luang Prabang.

Born in 1947 into a Laotian family that followed Buddhist and animist traditions, Sister Marie-Bruno converted to Catholicism at a young age.

Together with two other nuns from the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Joan Antida Thouret, she has been in charge for more than five years of a government school, home to more than 50 deaf-mute children.

"In the north, the situation is particularly difficult," she said, because "all the outward expressions of faith are banned, whether places of worship, crosses, images, or sacred books" along with "words and gestures that can be interpreted as proselytising."

"We take care of children," Sister Marie-Bruno said about her work, even though "we cannot give them a religious education."

The school run by nuns is financially independent. It is the result of a multi-year partnership between local authorities and Mgr Salvatore Pennacchio, former apostolic delegate to Laos, and is housed in a government building.

In their daily work, the sisters work with "extreme caution" and "are careful to follow all the directives imposed by the authorities."

The centre welcomes mostly young people from ethnic minorities, offering them the opportunity to learn a trade, like cooking or bread making, to integrate into the Laotian society.

When the Communists came to power in 1975, foreign missionaries were expelled, leaving the country's tiny Christian minority under the new regime's tight control with clear limits to the right to worship.

Although the constitution provides for religious freedom, the authorities in practice have imposed restrictions, banning all forms of proselytising, especially in the north, in the Apostolic Vicariate of Luang Prabang where the apostolic administrator, Bishop Tito Banchong Thopanhong, victim in the past of arrests and torture, was the only priest authorised to operate under huge constraints.

Since April 2011, government controls have been tightened, following a violent crackdown on protests promoted by some groups within the Hmong ethnic minority.

• laos
• nuns
• school
• education
• poor
• disabled
• children