ASIA/CHINA Story of Paolo Dongdong: from the orphanage of Chinese nuns to the podium of the Paris Paralympics
Ningjinxian (Agenzia Fides) – From an orphanage of Catholic nuns in the Chinese province of Hebei to the Paris Games. This is the surprising story of Dongdong Paolo Camanni, a young Paralympic Judo athlete who will represent Italy at the Paris 2024 Games.
Sister Wang Qingfen is a nun of the Congregation of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, in the Diocese of Zhaoxian (Ningjin), Hebei Province, in mainland China. 20 years ago, she and the sisters of the House of Dawn took in their arms a two-year-old child, suffering from bilateral retinoblastoma (a serious eye disease that appears in the first years of life) and who had been abandoned on the street. Twenty years later, the sisters of the House of Dawn also expressed their good wishes on social networks to “their” Dongdong, who was leaving Italy to take part in the Paralympics underway in Paris.
Dongdong is the name that the nuns gave 20 years ago to the child they had saved. Thanks to them and the knowledge of an Italian journalist, Dongdong then met his adoptive family in Italy. In Italy he began a life journey that led him to become a young Paralympic judo champion, winner of gold medals at the EPYG (European Para Youth Games) and a world bronze in 2022 in Baku.
Dongdong is one of more than six hundred abandoned disabled children who have found affection, a home and a good life thanks to the watchful charity of the nuns of the Congregation of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and their works in the field of assistance to the weak and the sick.
The Casa dell’Aurora orphanage, run by nuns, was founded by Raymond Wang Chonglin, bishop of the diocese of Zhaoxian (Ningjin) in the late 1980s. At that time, disabled children were often found abandoned in train stations or near hospitals. Bishop Wang bought a private house, called the Sisters of Saint Teresa and asked them if they wanted to become the mothers of those children, helping them to escape their unfortunate condition. Of the 600 boys and girls they cared for, 40% were struck by polio. With tenacious work, the nuns helped them to live, to meet Jesus, to study, to work, to start a family.
Today, the House of Dawn is divided into three parts: the Treatment Center (in Biancun Village), the Rehabilitation Station (in Gaoyi County) and the Functional Rehabilitation Center (in Ningjin County). For 38 years, the nuns have spent their best youth healing the wounds, both physical and internal, of disabled children and young people. To raise the funds necessary to carry on the work, the nuns invent original initiatives with creativity (such as a marathon organized to collect donations).
When reporters once asked her about her life and the life of the House of Dawn, Sister Wang Qingfen replied: “We are honored because the Lord has given us this gift, to our Congregation and to each of us… This place has seen so many miracles happen for the love of the Lord, which have benefited the whole society and so many people of good will.”
(NZ) (Agenzia Fides 3/9/2024)
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