Your Names Are Written in Heaven

In the 1990s, a young Ugandan

Catholic nurse named Rose Busingye began working in the slums of Kampala with

the many women there suffering from HIV/AIDS. Many of them were refugees from

civil war in the north, having been raped, beaten, forced to kill in order not

to be killed, to steal children in the hope of one day returning to see their

own children.

Even though Rose brought food and

medicine to them, she often discovered that the women had not taken their

medications, so sunk were they in despair and a lack of self-worth. She was on

the verge of abandoning everything, when she received an invitation to stay for

some time in Italy. It was from Fr. Luigi Giussani, the Italian priest who had

founded Communion and Liberation, the movement to which Rose also belongs. After

those months spent in Milan, she returned to Uganda with a renewed desire to

share with these women what she herself had experienced: the infinite value of

her life. Of every life.

Soon things began to change. Out

of that change grew Meeting Point International, an organization led by many of

the same women Rose had ministered to. In time, new efforts arose, including

schools and orphanages—projects that continue to embody Pope Francis’s

injunction to “go to the margins.” In Your Names Are Written in Heaven,

veteran Italian journalist Davide Perillo tells the inspiring story of Rose

Busingye and “her women” with clarity, compassion, and insight.