The Third Option: The Nun Who Stood Between the Machete and Its Target

The harrowing true story of Antonia Locatelli, the Italian volunteer who sacrificed her life in Rwanda to protect the hunted and expose the early stages of the genocide to a silent world.

Introduction: The Architecture of Hate

Rwanda is often called the "Land of a Thousand Hills." It is a place of breathtaking, verdant beauty—mist-covered mountains, rich red earth, and endless green valleys. But in the early 1990s, this beauty was becoming the backdrop for a meticulously engineered nightmare.

We often think of the Rwandan Genocide as an explosion—a sudden, chaotic burst of violence that erupted out of nowhere in April 1994. But genocide is not a weather event. It is not a hurricane. It is a construction project. It requires architects, blueprints, foundations, and practice runs.

Long before the final 100 days of slaughter that claimed 800,000 lives, the machinery of death was being tested. The radio stations—RTLM, the infamous "Radio Machete"—were already testing their frequencies, broadcasting a slow drip of poison into the ears of the population. They spoke of "cockroaches." They spoke of "purity." They spoke of a final solution to the country’s problems.

In this environment of absolute moral collapse, the social fabric was being torn apart thread by thread. The logic of the coming genocide demanded a binary world. You were Hutu, or you were Tutsi. You were a patriot, or you were a traitor. You were the one holding the machete, or you were the neck waiting for the blade.

There was no room for nuance. There was no room for neutrality.

Into this binary nightmare stepped a woman who fit none of the categories. Antonia Locatelli was 54 years old. She was Italian. She was small, with short hair, thick glasses, and a smile that radiated a quiet, stubborn warmth. She was not a diplomat. She was not a soldier. She was a lay missionary and a schoolteacher who had lived in Africa for decades, settling in the town of Nyamata, south of the capital, Kigali.

She ran a school. She taught domestic science and hygiene. She loved the people of Nyamata with a ferocity that confused the politicians and the militias.

When the darkness began to fall over the Bugesera region in March 1992—the bloody dress rehearsal for what was to come—Locatelli found herself standing at the intersection of history and horror. The embassies advised her to leave. The church superiors worried for her safety. The killers warned her to step aside.

But Antonia Locatelli had already made her choice. She refused the false binary of the genocide. She would not be a bystander, and she would not be a partisan. She chose a third option, the most dangerous one of all: she chose to be a human being.

Part I: The Canary in the Coal Mine

To understand Antonia’s sacrifice, one must understand Nyamata. Today, Nyamata is known for its genocide memorial—a church where the clothes of thousands of victims are piled on pews. But in 1992, it was a living, breathing community.

It was also a target.

Nyamata had a high population of Tutsis, many of whom had been displaced from other regions in previous waves of violence. The extremist elements within the Hutu government viewed Nyamata not as a town, but as a problem to be solved.

In early March 1992, the government-controlled radio station, Radio Rwanda, broadcast a lie. They claimed that Tutsis in the region were plotting to kill Hutu leaders. It was a classic projection tactic—accuse the enemy of what you are about to do yourself.

The propaganda worked. The Interahamwe—the youth militias trained to kill—descended on the Bugesera region. They were joined by soldiers and indoctrinated civilians. They set up roadblocks. They began burning houses. The smoke rose thick and black over the green hills.

Antonia Locatelli watched this from the window of her compound at the Centre d'Enseignement Rural et Artisanal (CERA). She saw the fires. She heard the screams.

She knew what this was. Most foreign observers at the time dismissed the violence as "tribal conflict" or "civil war chaos." Antonia knew better. She had lived there too long. She understood the language, the culture, and the political undertones. She saw the trucks bringing in the militia. She saw the printed lists of names.

She realized with chilling clarity: This is not a riot. This is an extermination.

At that moment, her passport became a golden ticket. As a European, she could have driven to Kigali, boarded a plane, and been eating pasta in Bergamo by the next evening. No one would have blamed her. The logic of self-preservation is powerful.

Instead, she unlocked the gates of her school.

Part II: The Sanctuary of the Stubborn

The refugees began to arrive at night. Women with babies strapped to their backs, men bleeding from machete wounds, children whose eyes were wide with a trauma they couldn't process. They came to the "Mamma Antonia" because they knew she was the only authority figure in Nyamata who wasn't trying to kill them.

Antonia took them in. She filled the classrooms with families. She hid them in the dormitory. She hid them in her own living quarters.

This was not a passive act of charity. It was a direct confrontation with the state. By harboring the "enemy," she became an enemy herself.

The local authorities—the bourgmestre (mayor) and the military commanders—were furious. They sent soldiers to the gate of the school.

The confrontation that followed is the stuff of legend in Nyamata. The soldiers, armed with automatic rifles and grenades, demanded entry. They demanded the "cockroaches" be handed over.

Antonia Locatelli walked out to meet them. She was unarmed. She wore her simple lay sister’s clothes. She stood five feet tall against men who were high on adrenaline and hate.

She didn't plead. She didn't cry. She lied with the steely conviction of a saint protecting her flock.

"There are no politicals here," she told them. "There are only students. There are only children. This is a place of God. You cannot enter."

It was a bluff, and everyone knew it. But her presence—her "whiteness," her religious status, her sheer audacity—confused the killers. In 1992, the genocide had not yet reached its peak frenzy. There was still a slight hesitation to murder a European nun in cold blood.

She used that hesitation as a weapon. She bullied the soldiers. She shamed them. She forced them to retreat, day after day.

Inside the compound, she was a whirlwind of activity. She was bandaging wounds. She was cooking huge pots of maize to feed the hundreds of people hiding in her classrooms. She was comforting the dying.

But she knew that her physical protection was temporary. A wooden gate and a stubborn Italian woman could not hold back an army forever. She needed a weapon that could strike back.

She realized her most powerful weapon was the telephone.

Part III: The Phone Call Heard ‘Round the World

The genocide relied on silence. It relied on the world thinking that this was just "Africans killing Africans" in the dark. It relied on the absence of witnesses.

Antonia Locatelli decided to turn the lights on.

While the militias prowled the perimeter of her compound, she went to her office and picked up the phone. She didn't call the police (they were the killers). She didn't call the army (they were the killers).

She called the media.

She managed to get through to the Belgian embassy. Then, she made the call that would seal her fate and immortalize her courage. She connected with Radio France Internationale (RFI) and the BBC.

It is hard to overstate the danger of this act. In 1992, information control was total. To speak to the international press was an act of treason.

Her voice, crackling over the phone line from the besieged town of Nyamata, was broadcast to the world. She did not mince words. She did not use diplomatic language.

"I know who is responsible," she told the reporter. "It is the government. It is the army. The army is not protecting the people; the army is killing the people."

She gave details. She described the trucks. She described the uniforms. She dismantled the government’s narrative that this was a "spontaneous uprising."

"We are in danger," she said. "They are killing us."

That broadcast was heard in Paris. It was heard in Brussels. And, crucially, it was heard in Kigali.

The Hutu extremist leaders heard it. They realized that the little nun in Nyamata wasn't just a nuisance; she was a strategic threat. She was a witness. And in the architecture of genocide, witnesses must be eliminated.

Part IV: The Assassination

On the night of March 9, 1992, the order came down.

Antonia had just finished helping a group of refugees settle in for another terrifying night. The air smelled of smoke from the burning huts on the hillsides.

A group of soldiers arrived at the gate. This time, there was no hesitation. There was no negotiation. They weren't there to check for refugees. They were there for her.

Witnesses say she walked out to meet them, just as she always did. She must have known, deep down, that her time had run out. The broadcast had been the line in the sand.

The encounter was brief. The commander of the unit raised his weapon. There were no speeches.

Two shots rang out in the night air.

Antonia Locatelli fell at the gate of her school, wearing her apron. The soldiers turned and left. They didn't storm the school immediately. It was as if killing her was the primary mission, the necessary act to silence the voice that was making them look bad.

She died almost instantly.

The news of her death rippled through the region. For the refugees inside the school, it was the moment hope died. Their shield was broken.

But something strange happened. The shock of her death—the murder of a foreign missionary—caused a momentary diplomatic scandal. The international pressure that Antonia had tried to generate finally arrived, albeit too late for her. The Belgian ambassador and other diplomats drove to Nyamata. They saw the body. They saw the carnage.

Because of the outcry over her murder, the government was forced to temporarily pull back the militias in the Bugesera region. The killing slowed down. The "dress rehearsal" was halted earlier than planned.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who were hiding in the swamps and churches of Bugesera survived that week because the killing of Antonia Locatelli forced the world to look, if only for a moment.

Part V: The Legacy of the Third Option

Antonia’s body was buried in Nyamata, near the church.

Two years later, in April 1994, the full genocide began. The pause she had bought with her blood ended. The killers returned to Nyamata with a vengeance. The church where she had worshipped became a slaughterhouse where 10,000 people were murdered in a single day.

It would be easy to look at this and say her sacrifice was in vain. The genocide happened anyway. The people she tried to save were eventually hunted down.

But that is a cynical reading of history.

Antonia Locatelli proved something vital. In the face of overwhelming evil, she proved that an individual has agency. She proved that "inevitability" is a lie we tell ourselves to excuse our inaction.

She saved lives in 1992. Those people had two more years of life. Some of them managed to flee the country during that grace period. Some of them survived 1994 because of the lessons they learned in 1992.

More importantly, she left a record. Her testimony to RFI remains one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the genocide was planned, organized, and state-sponsored. She destroyed the "chaos" defense of the perpetrators.

Today, if you visit the Nyamata Genocide Memorial, you will walk through the bullet-riddled doors. You will see the bloodstained clothes. It is a place of profound despair.

But outside, in the quiet earth, is the grave of Antonia Locatelli. It is a pilgrimage site for those who remember.

Her story challenges us. It asks a terrifying question: What do you do when the world goes mad?

Most of us hope we would be heroes. But the reality is, most of us would be silent. We would look at our passports, our families, our own safety, and we would leave. We would rationalize it. "It’s not my war." "I can’t make a difference."

Antonia Locatelli had every reason to leave. She had no blood ties to Rwanda. She had no political stake.

She stayed because she believed in a definition of humanity that transcended borders. She believed that when a child is being hunted, there is no such thing as a "foreigner." There is only the adult standing between the child and the hunter.

She refused to pick a side in the political war, and by doing so, she picked the only side that mattered: the side of the victims.

Conclusion: The Speed Bump of Conscience

History is often written by the victors, but the soul of history is preserved by the martyrs.

Antonia Locatelli was a speed bump of conscience against a tank of hatred. She didn't stop the tank. It rolled over her. It rolled over the country.

But the scratch she left on the treads of that tank remains.

Her life is a testament to the power of the "Third Option." In a polarized world—whether in politics, in culture, or in war—we are constantly told we must choose a tribe. We must support everything our "side" does, and hate everything the "other side" does.

Antonia teaches us that we can reject the premise. We can stand alone. We can stand for truth, even if it makes us enemies to everyone.

The refugees who survived 1992 because she opened the door didn't care about her politics. They didn't care about her nationality. They only knew that when the rest of the world turned off the lights, she lit a candle.

And sometimes, a single candle, burning in the window of a schoolhouse in Nyamata, is enough to prove that the darkness has not yet won.