r to support the family; for Gonxha and her mother, the Catholic Church provided particular comfort and help through these difficult years.
When she was 18, Gonxha felt called to apply to the sisterhood, and she entered the order of Our Sisters of Loreto. She left her home in September of 1928. Anne Sebba writes, "She can have been under little illusion that entry into this Order would probably mean never again seeing her family or home town, since religious life of the era did not allow for holidays at home" (29). She spent two months at the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarman, Ireland, learning to speak some English; she already spoke Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, taught in the government schools she had attended as a child, and had learned a little of several other languages, as well, from her educated father.
In November of 1928, she left Ireland for India, arriving there seven weeks later. She spent her novitiate working in the Indian convent of her order, studying for her vows and learning to speak the local language. She took her first vows on March 24, 19
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