President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday commended four Italian nuns of the Sacro Costato Missionary Sisters of Hsinchu City and county, thanking them for their services in the education of young children in the area.
Sister Elena-Pia Frongia has dedicated more than 50 years of her life to spreading the teachings of the Catholic Church and educating children in the county’s Jianshi Township (尖石).
Frongia said that as a teenager, she made up her mind to become a nun and help people in remote areas of the world.
She has returned to Italy only six times since she was sent to Taiwan in the early 1960s, Frongia said.
Although she keeps in touch with her relatives by telephone, she said she has devoted her life to Taiwan, adding that “there is no such thing as retirement for nuns, so I will keep doing what I am doing until I am no longer able to do it.”
When she first came to Taiwan, the 83-year-old spent her days visiting Aboriginal communities to offer assistance and used her evenings to learn Mandarin, as well as Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and Hakka.
Frongia said she was gradually accepted and recognized as part of the local community, to the extent that some people call her yaya (“mother” in the Atayal language).
Frongia established a church and a Franciscan kindergarten in the Naro community and most of the children who have grown up there have attended the kindergarten, she said.
The other three nuns are Sister Flaviana, who heads a church in Hsinchu City, Sister Elisa, who works in a kindergarten in Hsinchu County, and Sister Maristella, who works in a center for the intellectually challenged in the city.
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