(LifeSiteNews) — Vatican News profiled the world’s first woman rector of a shrine in a piece published Wednesday that shared how Anna Medeossi, an architect originally from Gorizia, Italy, was chosen to oversee the shrine of Notre-Dame de Santa Cruz in Oran, Algeria, an “overwhelmingly Muslim” country.
Rectors lead church institutions in a religious and administrative capacity in the absence of a permanent pastor. Rectors of churches and shrines are typically priests.
Medeossi explained that she came to Santa Cruz as an architect in response to the bishop of Oran’s request that she help with the renovation of the shrine. She then helped organize the 2018 beatification of the Martyrs of Algeria that took place as the shrine reopened.
Her eventual appointment as rector by Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, the bishop of Oran, came from the practical need for someone to permanently “care for the site,” she said.
With its limited activity, the shrine did not previously have a rector. Notre-Dame de Santa Cruz attracts an annual diocesan pilgrimage in honor of its miraculous origin. The chapel was built at the place where the bishop of Oran had processed with a statue of the Blessed Mother when a cholera epidemic reached Oran in 1847. The priest and people asked the Virgin Mary to protect the city from the epidemic and bless the place with rain, and after the rainfall, the people were saved from the disease.
“When all goes well,” the shrine holds Mass once a month, according to Medeossi. Otherwise, it is mostly visited by Muslims.
“It is a shrine for Muslims,” she told Vatican News. “They come to visit it in their tens and hundreds during the summer and at weekends. It is therefore important to have someone there to welcome them, help them discover what a church is, show that we are brothers and sisters, and bear witness to the world that it is possible to live together in peace.”
This is the theme of the esplanade in front of the shrine that was renamed “The Esplanade of Living Together in Peace” and “established one year after the United Nations approved the international day dedicated to that theme,” according to Vatican News.
Medeossi, who lives as a consecrated virgin in the Diocese of Oran, referred to Mary as a “path of dialogue” between Christians and Muslims “because she is also venerated in the Muslim tradition.”
“In reality, many people who come to Santa Cruz – which does not have the same history as Notre-Dame d’Afrique – come simply as tourists. It is a beautiful place above the city of Oran, with a magnificent view,” Medeossi said.
“It is wonderful to see how the beauty of the place – including the inside of the chapel – and that moment of wonder at the beauty of the setting help people enter into dialogue and find peace. From there, we can begin to encounter one another,” she continued.
“I work with Muslims, and all the paintings in the shrine, all the scenes from the life of Mary, were painted by Muslim Algerian women artists. My daily work, including all the maintenance, is carried out with local companies. I believe fraternity also begins there. They agree to collaborate and to work in a church. That cannot be taken for granted.”
Medeossi said she tries to give Christian witness through her example but not through direct evangelization.
“For me, we bear witness in exactly the same way as in Europe or anywhere else: by being ourselves and trying to live the Gospel fully with the person before us – not through words but through actions,” she said.
“You must listen to what the other person is telling you and to the image of yourself that the other person reflects back to you. You must know that you are always judged on love. People recognize whether you speak truthfully, whether you are smiling and whether you are understanding.”