News

Ingrid Betancourt And The Assumption, July 7, 2008

The amazing rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and her companions after years of captivity in the Colombian jungle has hugged news headlines all week. Why is an article on her appearing on the website of the Religious of the Assumption?

Ingrid Betancourt spent her formative years at the school run by the Religious of the Assumption in Lubeck – Paris.

We salute Ingrid Betancourt for her faith and courage and rejoice that she and her companions are now free. Let us continue to pray for peace in Colombia and for an end to the horror and violence of kidnapping.

We reproduce here an article that appeared in La Croix, a daily French Catholic newspaper published by Bayard Press.

THE FAITH OF INGRID BETANCOURT ROOTED IN THE HELL OF THE JUNGLE

Francois-Xavier MAIGRE,

July 3, 2008

La Croix

Throughout her captivity, faith carried Ingrid Betancourt, who gave “thanks to God” for her liberation.

The image is striking. Barely out of the airplane that had come to pull her out of the hell of the guerrilla camp, Ingrid Betancourt is kneeling on the tarmac of the Bogota airport, along with her mother and the other hostages. Vested in a white alb, a priest is there to welcome the escapees and to bless them.

Several times, the ex-hostage makes the sign of the cross, hands together and eyes shut, deeply recollected despite the frenzy all around her. And right away, before the cameras of the whole world, the ex-hostage shows an intense fervor, not hesitating at all to see her liberation as a sign of Providence.

The Bible was her only luxury

“I want first to give thanks to God and to the soldiers of Colombia,” she said, several minutes earlier, thanking for “their prayers” all those who had thought of her. “It’s a miracle,” she said again. That unshakable faith, which we had already been able to perceive from the testimonies of many during these last few months, undoubtedly helped her to survive during these six long years and four months of captivity.

In a long letter published last December, she said that the Bible was her “only luxury.” “Here,” she wrote, “nothing belongs to you and nothing lasts. Each day I am in communication with God, Jesus and the Virgin…Here everything has two faces; joy comes, followed by sorrow. The joy is a sad joy. Love soothes and yet also opens new wounds. It’s about living and dying again and again.”

“When Ingrid is freed, her first trip will be to Lourdes”

She continued: “For several years, I thought as long as I was alive, insofar as I continue to breathe, I have to continue to hope. I don’t have the same strength I had before, though, and it’s very difficult for me to continue to believe.” She formed the wish “that God might come to help us, to guide us, to give us patience and to bring us back. Forever and ever.”

In a video broadcast in 2003, the hostage invited her loved ones “to gather together on Saturdays” to unite with her in praying the rosary. Her education in a Catholic milieu – she was a student at the Assumption School [Lubeck] in Paris – and her rootedness in Latin American culture, where the faith is always underneath, certainly helped to make her return to God, her abandonment of herself to him in this captivity, possible.

Her family never quit on her request for a spiritual communion, hoping themselves for a precious help in faith. “I believe that it is my faith that pushes me,” affirmed Yolanda Pulecio, her mother, in 2005. “I believe in God and I love the Virgin very much. So, when Ingrid is freed, our first trip will be to Lourdes, just us two. I have promised that to the Virgin.”

"First, I believe that there is a God…I believe in God."

In February, Yolanda Pulecio went to Rome: “I was very moved,” she said after her meeting with Benedict XVI. “I had a hard time not to cry while I explained to the Pope who I was and of whom I was the mother. He said to me: ‘I pray for that young woman and I know very well the difficult situation in which she is.’”

Two weeks before her kidnapping, in a television program broadcast on February 8, 2002, Ingrid Betancourt evoked very clearly the risks of fighting corruption. “First off, I believe that there is a God….I believe in God,” she affirmed forcefully.

Thursday, July 3, she had several words for her captors: “I saw the commandant, who during so many years had been responsible for us, and who had been at the same time so cruel to us. I saw him on the ground, blindfolded. Don’t think that I was happy at that moment. I felt pity for him, because it’s necessary to respect the lives of others, even if they are your enemies.”

Back to top

How You Can Become A:

Ingrid Betancourt at her release...

...and later with her family

A radiant Ingrid in Paris

Today's community of Assumption Sisters at Lubeck