The documentary film With This Light recounts the life and heritage of Sr. Maria Rosa Leggol, who, in her more than 70 years as a Franciscan nun, helped almost 90,000 Honduran children escape from abject poverty. Prior to the film’s public release, a private screening of it was held in Rome by the Honduran Embassy to the Holy See in collaboration with the Spanish edition of L’Osservatore Romano.
Sr. Maria Rosa opened her first orphanage in 1964 and two years later she started the non-profit organization Sociedad Amigos de los Niños (SAN). Since then, more than 500 homes for needy children have been opened throughout Latin America. From the start, SAN adopted a comprehensive approach to child welfare, providing social, health and educational programs for the children, and even reaching out to create jobs for their relatives and communities–something that was still truly visionary in the second half of the 20th century.
Armed with unshakable faith, this intrepid woman and her collaborators did not allow dictatorships, military coups or environmental disasters to interrupt their struggle to end childhood poverty. After a lifetime spent working in countless ways and with great creativity to improve the lives of these most vulnerable members of Honduran society, Sr. M. Rosa died in 2020 at the age of 93.
The film With This Light brings her inspiring story to life through the eyes of the young people whose lives she changed forever.
