Burkina Faso bishop says American nun freed by captors

Sep 1, 2022

|Associated Press

Burkina Faso bishop says American nun freed by captors — Sister Suellen Tennyson, 83, a U.S. member of the Marianites of the Holy Cross, is pictured in a 2007 photo. Sister Tennyson, a native of New Orleans, was kidnapped late April 4 or early April 5, 2022, after armed attackers broke into the convent on the parish compound in Yago, Burkina Faso. (Credit: Christine Bordelon/Clarion Herald via CNS.)

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — An 83-year-old American nun kidnapped from her bed in Burkina Faso earlier this year has been released by her captors unharmed, Catholic church officials in the West African nation said Wednesday.

Sister Suellen Tennyson had been abducted by 10 gunmen without her blood pressure medication. The church statement about her release, though, said she was still in good health after nearly five months in captivity.

“For the moment we have no information on the conditions of her release but we express our profound gratitude to those who worked toward it,” Kaya Bishop Theophile Nare said.

Gunmen kidnapped Tennyson from her home in Yalgo, about 62 miles northeast of Kaya, back in April. Two other nuns — one from Canada and one from Burkina Faso — and two young Burkinabe women who were living in the same house, were not taken.

Tennyson has been a missionary in Burkina Faso since 2014 and previously worked in the New Orleans archdiocese for many years.

Jihadi groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State in the Sahel, the vast expanse south of the Sahara Desert, have long taken foreign hostages for ransom to fund operations. American aid worker Jeffrey Woodke, who was kidnapped from Niger in 2016, is among those who remain in captivity.

Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.