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.