prisoners.

“It was as if they were all abandoned, yet they needed spiritual and physical support and love. This was confirmed when I began to interact with them: they told me about their problems,” she explains.

Sister Anna took special interest in the plight of male inmates, who were held in desperately overcrowded cells where diseases went untreated and spread. Chichiri prison was built to house only 800 prisoners but holds close to 2 000.

“I was assisting them from their congested cells until I was allowed to renovate an old kitchen into an infirmary,” she recalls.

The sick bay, which has 16 beds and was completed in 2010, was built with funding she received from the Italian Episcopal Conference. Unlike the cells, the sickbay is immaculate: patients have their own bedswith clean linen and the toilets and bathroom are hygienic and clean.

Hope among the hungry Now 71, Sister Anna has officially retired — but she has adopted Malawi as her second home and devotes herself to improving conditions in the country’s prisons. She visits Chichiri prison twice a week and works in nine other jails across the country.

Sister Anna runs a feeding programme for prisoners with HIV who are on treatment, as well as for the very weak and ill inmates in the sickbay at Chichiri, who have special food cooked for them.

Any sick inmate she comes across is thoroughly examined and given the right medication. Where necessary, Sister Anna foots the bill for their medical treatment herself: almost every month she pays for up to five prisoners