His aunt, Sister Mary Antoinette, a missionary with the Daughters of Wisdom, had been murdered alongside another sister and two priests by Simba rebels in Isangi. It was November 1964, during the dark final days of the rebellion shaking the newly independent country. Her body was cast into the Congo River. For Joe Cincotta ’71 and his family, the tragedy went almost unmentioned for decades, noted only briefly on the anniversary of her death.
As a boy, Cincotta was struck by “Aunt Nana” in her habit, with a rosary at her belt and a cross upon her chest. She had been a missionary for 12 years, first in Malawi and then in the Congo, writing frequently to her family on Long Island about her work in a country fractured by colonial rule and civil war. Cincotta recalls her favorite phrase, always saying she was “storming the gates of heaven.” Despite the persistent danger, her life was full of kindness, compassion, and joy.
Decades later, when a French memoir by a surviving Belgian priest came into Cincotta’s possession, he felt an obligation to preserve the account. To him, people dying for their faith belonged to ancient history, not the 20th century, yet he realized his aunt was one of the unheralded “saints among us today.” Finding a translator, he confronted the grim details of the Isangi massacre.
“It was a while before I could bring myself to read it,” Cincotta said. The text revealed the precarious reality his aunt and her colleagues faced, trying to care for Congolese children amid a brutal insurgency.
In May, prior to his 55th reunion, Joe self-published the completed translation, Hostages in Congo. The book is a permanent ledger of an ordinary family’s extraordinary grief and an enduring monument to a beloved aunt who never came home.
J. Frederick Rogers P’21, helped translate Hostages in Congo from French to English. Rogers worked in Hamilton’s Alumni Office from 2012 to 2023.
Posted November 6, 2026
