"She told me this an hour and a half before dying," Sr. Maria Jesus recalled.
The same day, Spain's ambassador to Algeria visited Sr. Esther at the hospital in which she worked, asking her to leave the country as well.
"She told us that the ambassador wanted to take her away in an armored car and she said no, and that she would return home walking, as usual," recounted Sr. Maria Jesus.
While she returned home that day, Sr. Esther was carrying with her a book titled "Your Surrender out of Love."
The Augustinians were going to Mass that evening, "at the chapel that the Little Sisters of Foucauld had a short distance from our house," in the Bab El Oued neighborhood of Algiers, Sr. Maria Jesus explained.
"We decided to follow the safety guidelines for going to the chapel given to us by the embassy: 'Always go out in pairs.' So Caridad and Esther left first, and then five minutes later Lourdes and I left. We were going about 100 yards away."
"Caridad and Esther turned down the street and we lost them from sight. At that moment we heard two gunshots. Seconds later people began running, and one woman pulled us into her home. We heard crying and we found out that a Christian had died."
"We went up to the roof of the home and from there we could see the chapel of the Sisters of Foucauld, and we saw the bodies of Caridad and Esther lying on the ground."
Sr. Caridad was ringing the doorbell at the home of the Sisters of Foucauld when she was martyred.
She and Sr. Esther are two of the 19 religious who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996. Also included in this group was Bishop Pierre Claverie of Oran, who was killed along with his driver when a bomb exploded at his home.
Seven Trappist monks from the monastery of Tibhirine were also killed. The monastery's story was told in the 2010 film, "Of Gods and Men."
The 19 martyrs' cause for canonization was opened by the Diocese of Oran in 2007, and is ongoing.
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