It was 25 years ago this week when an armed robber stormed into a convent in Pakistan and shot a Gozitan missionary nun in the neck. The killer was never brought to justice but her family and fellow nuns in Gozo believe she is a martyr and find comfort knowing she lived an exemplary life and encouraged other young missionaries to follow in her footsteps.

Sr Marcellina Tabone, 50, returned to Gozo for the last time in December 1996 to visit her dying father. Before leaving, she turned to her brother George, and told him she would probably return in four years’ time, because there was a lot of work to be done in the town of Mirpurkhas, in Pakistan.

“Little did she know her body would be returned to Gozo only six months later, for the funeral,” her brother Fr George Tabone recalled. “Her aunt would tell her to come back to Malta and settle here, but she loved her mission in Pakistan too much to leave it all behind.”

Tabone, a Franciscan nun, served as the Superior of the Franciscan Sisters of the Heart of Jesus at the time. She had been working in Pakistan for 29 years when she was killed on June 28, 1997, a day after going to the bank to withdraw money for the convent.

The armed and hooded robber stormed the convent at around 1.30am, when most of her fellow nuns went away to pray. She was in the convent with two other nuns and a young Pakistani priest, Fr Mushtack Azad.

When the robber walked into the convent, he encountered the priest, who had just woken up to get a glass of water. He reportedly assaulted him and demanded to know where the money was kept, until the priest was forced to tell him it was in Sister Marcellina’s room.

By then, the nun had heard a suspicious noise inside the convent and walked outside her room to see what was happening, only to come face-to-face with the robber, who immediately shot her in the neck. She died shortly afterwards.

The murder was given prominence in local newspapers.

At the time, it was reported there may have been more than one suspect and that two other Pakistani nuns, who were in the convent at the time of the attack, were locked up in a room and fled from a window to seek help.

“I remember getting a call early the next morning. I remember I was standing right here, where I’m standing speaking to you,” her sister Ġiġa recalled. “It was the Superior of the Franciscan nuns in Gozo. She told me my sister was shot in the neck and died shortly afterwards. What a shock that was! I could only think, why would God allow something like this to happen to her?”

The killer remains unknown, although some people who knew Tabone say he might have been identified and never brought to justice. They also believe that if he was residing in the area, Tabone might even have fed him or helped him as part of her mission.

Tabone might even have fed [the killer]

The authorities had initially jailed Fr Mushtack Azad and wanted to accuse him of the murder. He was released six months later, after the authorities offered him bail if he paid a sum of money, but he refused, insisting he was innocent.

Fr Anton Grech, who has spent over two decades leading a mission in Guatemala, said it was Sister Marcellina who inspired him to start his missionary vocation. “I remember speaking to her a few months before I was ordained priest, and she had told me, ‘go and do good’,” he said in a video that the Cathedral parish issued on the 25th anniversary of Tabone’s death.

Grech was ordained priest the day before Sister Marcellina was killed, and he said the news of her murder disturbed him greatly. But a few years later, he left for his own mission in Guatemala.

In Pakistan, Sister Marcellina worked mostly with the poorest and most marginalised people and was a teacher. She opened health clinics specialising in the treatment of tuberculosis and maternity centres. She also devoted much of her energy to reopening a Franciscans’ school.

Two of her sisters also became nuns, another sister was a member of the MUSEUM and died suddenly in church when she was only 34. Her brother, Mgr George Tabone, is a priest and her other sister, Ġiġa, never got married to take care of the family.

“We have nobody else in the world. No parents, partners, children, grandchildren or nephews. It’s just us, and we live for each other, knowing that our Sister Marcellina is looking for us from above,” Ġiġa said.

Cathedral Archpriest Fr Joe Sultana, who organised a special Mass in remembrance of her death, said Gozitans still remember the nun, and frequently put flowers and light candles on her tomb.