Our Blessed Martyrs

Sisters Angèle-Marie Littlejohn and Bibiane Leclercq

3 September 1995 – 30 Years, Carrying Their Witness

The sands of Algeria, steeped in ancient history and vibrant culture, endured a decade of brutal conflict between 1991 and 2000. This period has since been called its “black decade”, a time of political crisis and civil war. Towns and villages were scarred by bombings, assassinations and massacres; daily life carried the weight of fear, and the war claimed more than 200 000 lives. The great majority of these were local Muslim people, but foreign workers and Religious were not spared, their very presence seen by extremists as a threat.

Amid this violence, nineteen Catholic men and women made the deliberate choice to stay in the country. They did not see themselves as apart from the people among whom they lived, and they refused to abandon them in their hour of trial. Between 1994 and 1996, each was killed. On 8 December 2018, the Church recognised their offering in the beatification of the Blessed Martyrs of Algeria.

Each one’s story is inseparable from the daily struggles and hopes of Algerian people, what Archbishop Paul Desfarges described as “a communion written in blood.” (The wider story of the nineteen Blessed Martyrs of Algeria can be found here)

Sisters Angèle-Marie Littlejohn and Bibiane Leclercq spent nearly thirty-five years with the people of Algeria. Thirty-one of them were spent in the Belcourt district of Algiers, where their days were coloured by the faces and stories of women and girls. Their mission was lived in classrooms, workshops and homes where they worked side by side, sharing life and teaching skills that opened new possibilities and affirmed dignity and confidence.

Blessed Sister Bibiane (Denise Leclercq)

Denise Leclercq was born on 8 January 1930 in Gazeran, Yvelines, France, the eldest of eight children in a farming family in the Somme. Her sense of calling came early and never wavered, though she waited until her siblings were independent before entering the Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles on 4 March 1959. Entering at twenty-nine made formation demanding, but her determination carried her through, and she made her first vows on 8 March 1961, taking the name Bibiane.

Shortly afterwards she was sent to Algeria, where she began work in the maternity ward at Constantine. She took on the challenge of learning Arabic with joy and persistence, and flourished in a role that drew on her patience and tenderness, caring for mothers and their newborns.

In 1964 she moved to Algiers, where her mission expanded. She directed a sewing centre and embroidery workshops and managed a child welfare centre for young women without access to schooling. With Sister Angèle-Marie, she visited families, especially those living with the greatest hardships, and helped teenage girls who had left school to learn clothing-making and literacy. She was also one of three OLA Sisters who taught sewing and embroidery at the School of Industrial and Decorative Arts in Belcourt for 31 years.

Sister Bibiane was a steady and generous teacher, attentive to the lives of the women and girls around her. She encouraged them in their own paths, including their own religious traditions, and bore witness to the love of Christ through the daily gestures of her life. She is remembered for saying: “It’s the language of the heart that counts.”

In 1994, after the assassination of Sister Paul-Hélène Saint-Raymond and Brother Henri Vergès, when the perilous situation in Algeria demanded a choice, Sister Bibiane’s response was clear. She wrote: “It was the people themselves who asked for Sisters. Now they’re asking us to stay. I am very grieved, I feel helpless in the face of so much suffering, but I know God loves this people and I have great confidence in Our Lady of Africa … I choose to stay.” Her conviction was sustained by her faith, which helped her recognise “wonders that are hidden, generosity, courage, a spirit alive in the hearts of the people.”

On 3 September 1995, she and Sister Angèle-Marie walked to Mass at the Little Sisters of the Assumption. On their way back, just one hundred metres from their home in Belcourt, Algiers, they were shot in the back and killed. Sister Bibiane was 65.

On the altar of their chapel, the Bible was found open at the words of St Paul: “The message of the cross is folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God.”

Fear ran so deep in the aftermath that, even though the people loved them, few dared to show their grief in public. A local Muslim poet from the sisters’ neighbourhood penned a poignant poem about Sisters Angèle-Marie and Bibiane, concluding with words that echo their enduring legacy: “Two doves took flight, do not cry, do not be frightened, do not be alarmed, because you are witnesses of the Supreme God, of obedience to the One who said ‘I am the Way, the Truth, I am the life.‘ Look, see how they fell, one on the other, forming a cross. In the sky with their souls, they embroidered the word LOVE“.

In life and in death, their witness spoke of the OLA mission – faith sustained in prayer, lived in presence, and carried through service – love that held firm as violence closed in.