Kidnapped New Orleans nun details harrowing ordeal: ‘Prayer sustained me’

The former school principal was abducted during a medical mission in Bukina Faso in a case that drew international attention

A Catholic nun from New Orleans who was kidnapped while working in western Africa, contracted malaria as she was held for nearly five months and was ultimately freed, said reciting prayers helped her survive her ordeal.

Prayer sustained me," Suellen Tennyson, 83 and a former principal of a Catholic elementary school, told the in-house newspaper of the New Orleans archdiocese. That was the thing that kept me going because I had nothing."