Murdered nun asked forgiveness for killers as she lay dying colleagues say

Sister Leonella, a nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in volatile regions of Africa, used to joke that there was a bullet with her name engraved on it in Somalia. When the bullet came, she used her last breaths to forgive those responsible.

"I forgive, I forgive," she whispered in her native Italian just before she died, the Rev. Maloba Wesonga told The Associated Press at the nun's memorial mass in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on Monday.

Sister Leonella's execution-style murder over the weekend has raised concerns that she and other foreigners who have been killed in Somalia recently are victims of growing Islamic radicalism in the country.