Family of late nun appeals for visa from US embassy
Some family members of late Rev. Sister Angela Egbikuadje, a nun, and an American citizen of Nigerian descent have appealed to the United States consulate in Nigeria to grant them visas so that they can travel to the United States to bury their sister.
The appeal is contained in a statement released by Mrs. Neta Nwosu, the sister of late Egbikuadje.
Nwosu said in the statement that the US consulate had initially turned down the visa applications of Mr. Emmanuel Egbikuadje and hers.
She said that the consulate had done that under the pretext “that you have been found ineligible for a non-immigrant visa under Section 214(b) of the US Immigration and Nationality Act.”
Nwosu said that the stance of the US consulate has thrown the burial arrangements for the late Rev. Sister. Egbikuadje into disarray with her family members’ inability to travel to the United States.
She also said that the late nun’s religious congregation, the Institute of the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ (SIM) was in no position to inter her remains.
Nwosu in the statement said that the late Egbikuadje had in her will, expressly set out under statement of interment, cremation and wishes that “it is my desire to be interred in a burial spot.”
She also willed that her “funeral mass will be at Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Church and a Catholic funeral in a cemetery in Bakersfield, California.”
Nwosu in the statement also quoted Franca Niameh, a member of the Secular Institute of the Missionaries of the Kingship of Christ to have said that they could only pray that the consulate grants the family members the permission to come and bury their sister.
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She was quoted to have said this in a letter dated February 10, she addressed to the family of the late nun residing in Nigeria, in which she revealed that their society does not take care of funerals.
The statement added that in Niameh’s letter to the family of the late Egbikuadje, she stated that her body has been deposited in the Doughty-Calhound-O Meara, a mortuary in Bakersfield pending when any family member will be able to come to initiate plans for the funeral.
