The Deacon's Bench
Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to death for refusing to renounce her Christian faith and then spared after an international campaign, left Italy on July 31 on a flight for the United States, where she plans to build a new life.
Ibrahim, who met Pope Francis on the first day of her week-long stay in Rome, boarded an American Airlines flight bound for Philadelphia with her husband, Daniel Wani, and their two young children.
The 26-year-old and her family are expected to join Wani’s brother, Gabriel, and his wife and three children in Manchester, N.H., where they run the non-profit organization South Sudan Community of New Hampshire.
Ibrahim arrived in Rome last week after a nearly year-long ordeal that spawned intense diplomatic efforts by the Italian government, U.S. lawmakers and the Vatican. She was forced to give birth to her two-month-old baby girl, Maya, while shackled in a prison cell in Khartoum in May.
Antonella Napoli, president of Italians for Darfur, said Ibrahim hopes to write a book about her life.
“I am a little afraid to be leaving Rome,” Napoli said Ibrahim told her. “I have learned how to live again and now I do not know what to expect, but we are all together.”
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