OCR Text |
Show Former Nun Recalls Life As Secretary to the Pope BY BRUCE MANTI. UTAH When I was a nun, teaching in the convent, the children called me Sister Piera. Now that I am a Mormon, I am still called Sister Piera. Otherwise, she said with a kind of girlish laughter in her voice, my life is much different. That life had its beginning 52 years ago in a little farm village near Milan, Italy. At her christening in the parish church, she was given the name Piera (the Italian, feminine form of Peter) and the surname Bellaviti (meaning beautiful life). My life has been beautiful," she said, coming to a fulness of the gospel. Sister Piera attended the public school in her village until she was 16. Her father had died and her two brothers were away to war when she left school to help milk the cows and tend the fields. "Those were hard times for the people, she said, the times of Sister Piera Bellaviti heard of Mormons while in the U.S. war. After the war she entered a convent, joining the order Madri Pie. The name means mothers dedicated to God. It is a teaching order. I have always wanted to serve God. In the convent she studied to become an elementary school teacher. She studied such subjects as language, mathematics and history and then taught in schools operated by her order. I loved the children, she said. I asked them to call me Sister Piera, rather than Mother Bellaviti, which is more formal. I wanted to feel their nearness. JENNINGS Deseret News Correspondent Then she was asked to leave teaching and go to the Vatican in Rome as a secretary to the Pope. I was glad to go, she said, for the change, for the new people I would meet, and for the service I might perform. Sister Piera served 12 years at the Vatican as a secretary to Pope Pius XII, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI. I met people from all parts of the world, she said. Bishops and heads of state, powerful people and little people. And then one day at the Vatican the bishop of North Carolina asked me if I would like to go to America. It would be a mission for me. The Mother General of my order gave her permission and I went to North Carolina as Mother Superior of a convent. I administered, taught and worked witn people the poor people One day I heard the word 'Mormon. It was a strange word. I looked it up in the dictionary. A nun told me she knew a Mormon family and that the Mormons were good people. This was the first I learned of the Mormons. At this point Sister Piera, who had once thought the path of faith and belief to be s' might and certain, found it leading in various directions. I had become confused, she said, because there were so many different interpretations of doctrine and ideas about authority and other matters I had once thought clear. Perhaps the Mother General sensed my confusion and was afraid of losing me. She called me back to Milan in 1971. I resumed teaching In my life, when I have needed help, God has sent someone. One day, on the way to my English class (she speaks six languages) I sat down on the tram beside two young men. We spoke. They introduced themselves: Scott Mormon Blaser and David Maxwell missionaries. I asked them what they believed. They asked me if I would read the Book of Mormon. They taught me and I learned. I studied and I prayed. The Mormons understanding and intrepretation of the Bible seemed right. I came to a belief in the Book of Mormon and the prophet. I knew God had shown me the way. Sister Piera was baptized by Elder Blaser m Milan on June 8, 1974. She came to the United States the next I came without money, but month. with faith, and again God provided a way, she said. She returned to Italy with her family during 1975. My mother does why I did this, but she for a brief visit the summer of not understand is reconciled, Sister Piera said. She spent the recent holidays with a friend, Sister Lonnie Wintch, in Manti, speaking at firesides and sacrament meetings. She resides in Salt Lake City and hopes to become a citizen of the United States and spend the rest of her life in Utah to serve God. He showed me the better way, she said. When He has something else for me to do. He will tell me. Vietnamese Refugees Center Life on Gospel REXBURG, IDAHO Their golden time" in Vietnam is over for Ricks College students Anne (Thu Anh) and Angela (Mai Anh) Doan, but they are grateful for the Church and its blessings and hopeful about their new life in America. Anne, 20, and Angela, 19, fled Vietnam last spring with their parents and six other brothers and sisters. They left with nothing except the clothes on their backs and some worthless Vietnamese money. They left a luxurious life behind them and had nothing but hope, faith in the gospel, family love and the desire to find happiness in a new country. Anne and Angela are at Ricks oday wc wanted to come 10 a Church college, Anne said. Both plan to transfer to Brigham Young University next year after they become more proficient in English and their grades at Ricks are acceptable at BYU. Both attended college in Vietnam, but grades and transcripts were all left in Saigon where all their possessions were lost to the communists and the bombs that fell there. because 10 CHURCH Col. Lieu The Doan family of 10 was Doan and his wife and children one of the last to leave Saigon in an American helicopter. It was terrible, said Anne. Bombs were falling around us at the airport and I was sure we were all going to be killed. But the helicopter spirited them away from the advancing communists and took them to an American warship. They then went to the Philippines, then to Guam before landing on American soil at Camp Pendleton, Calif., a receiving camp for the thousands of Vietnam. refugees fleeing war-tor- n Because the Doan family had joined the Church earlier in the year through a friend of Coi. Doan and later sessions with missionaries, they were adopted by a ward in Visalia, Calif., and moved to that city. The members of the ward in Visalia opened their doors and hearts to the Doan family, Anne and Angela said Those people are the finest any place. There were so good to us, said Anne. Col. Doan is now a service station attendant in Visalia. He has attended colleges in the United States and has his WEEK ENDING JANUARY 17, 1976 degree. He served in the Vietnamese Army for 24 years and was heed of a large army installation in Saigon at the time of the evacuation. He was an important public official so important that he would have been killed by the communists if the last American helicopter had failed to arrive, Anne said. The two girls attended French schools in Vietnam for 13 years. The family had many servants and rode in ehauffeur-dnve- n cars. Their mother was also an important person in the Vietnamese society, having come from an important family in the ruling class of Vietnam. Anne and Angela never did any manual labor until coming to the United States. Now Angela washes dishes in the Ricks cafeteria and Anne is a clerk in a Rexburg grocery store. The girls reali7e their old life is gone a part of the past. They said they are grateful for the new life in the Church. This is worth more than all the possessions we left in Vietnam, Angela said. We are so grateful just to be free and to live in America. Vietnam, their former home. |