Esmeralda Rego de Jesus Araujo (born ) also known as Sister Esmeralda is an East Timorese Catholic nun and human rights advocate. She was the head of the

Canossian The Canossians are a family of two Catholic religious institutes and three affiliated lay associations that trace their origin to Magdalen of Canossa, a religious sister canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988. Canossian family Canossian Daughte ...

Convent in East Timor.

Early life and education

Esmeralda Rego de Jesus Araujo is the daughter of a local chief of Hatulia in Ermera. She was educated.

Career

As a young woman she worked with the East Timorese resistance before joining the Roman Catholic

order of nuns. During the violence before independence, she worked hard to protect families and children. Sister Esmeralda was an outspoken supporter of independence, saying that the referendum would show the world once and for all that the East Timorese desired independence. During this period there were several women who formed the main 'nerve centres' of political work in East Timor including, Sister Lourdes (in Dare) and Sister Esmeralda, who took responsibility for 1,500 or more refugees in the United Nations Mission in East Timor compound in 1999. Despite directly confronting the local militia, Sister Esmeralda and 700-800 refugees were forced from their convent, at gun point. She led the group of mostly women and children to a UN compound. Sister Esmeralda worked closely with the United Nations in

East Timor East Timor (), also known as Timor-Leste (), officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is an island country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-weste ...

. In 1999, she contacted the Vatican news agency and pleaded for help from the outside world, warning that, when the United Nations left, the militias would go on a killing rampage. Sister Esmeralda feared that the pull out of the UN would lead to massacres. In 2001, as part of the Inter-religious Tolerance project working group, Sister Esmeralda told "major stake holders" and representatives from Catholic Relief Services of her upbringing in a multi-religious community.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Araujo, Esmeralda Rego de Jesus East Timorese Roman Catholic religious sisters and nuns Living people People from Ermera District East Timorese activists 20th-century Roman Catholic nuns 21st-century Roman Catholic nuns 1959 births