‘She was a saint’

Sister Victoria Camilleri, known as Sr Salvatorina, who was killed in a car accident in Israel on Christmas Eve, was described as a “saint” by a nun from her convent.

The accident, which killed another two nuns and injured two, sent the Catholic Church in Jerusalem into mourning at a normally joyful time when Christ’s birth is celebrated.

“She was a saintly sister, a good sister, a prayerful sister – she was very dear to us,” Sr Luisa, a Franciscan Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary said tearfully over the phone.

Sr Luisa, who had known Sr Salvatorina ever since she was 15 and lived in Jordan, lives in the nearby convent in Tabgha, a five-minute drive away from the convent where Sr Salvatorina lived and worked in the Shrine of the Beatitudes.

Just before the accident happened, they had bid each other farewell as they went their separate ways, Sr Salvatorina to Bethlehem and Sr Luisa to Haifa.

The car she was in hit the concrete base of an electricity pole at Yarden Junction, in the northern city of Beit She’an. According to Sr Luisa, “the car wasn’t going very fast” and the accident happened when the Provincial Superior Sr Maria Rosanna Nava, who was driving, “felt sick” and lost control of the vehicle.

Initial media reports said the three nuns who were killed were Italians, however Maltese Ambassador to Israel Abraham Borg confirmed Sr Camilleri was in fact Maltese when the police called him, as he had been involved in issuing her passport.

Sr Ranya from Jordan, just 35, and Sr Valeria from Italy also died in the crash.

Sr Salvatorina used to do her best to serve pilgrims – especially if they were Maltese. “When a Maltese group used to turn up, she used to make sure to organise things properly for them, and used to ask about what was happening in Malta,” Dr Borg said.

Andrew Consiglio, who has often led tours to the Holy Land, said she was a “very sweet” nun who “was always very welcoming and always very pleased to see a Maltese group, and would ask us about Malta”.

“She was a very humble nun and she was very obedient,” Maria Debono, Sr Salvatorina’s niece, told The Times.

Since she met a lot of pilgrims, “a lot of people from Mellieħa who had been to Israel would come to say they saw my aunt.

“She used to visit Malta every two years – she would have been back next summer,” Ms Debono said.

The funeral will take place in Jerusalem on Wednesday at 3 p.m., but Ms Debono won’t be going down to pay her last tributes: “I couldn’t handle it, it’s too cruel. But she was a very humble nun... a saint”.