Departures of note

Pilar Vila-San Juan Sagnier was a Spanish religious sister of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary who spent nearly three decades on mission in Lahore, Pakistan. For about 25 years she directed the Jesús-María school in Lahore, a center of more than two thousand students where classes were taught in English and Urdu, and where girls and boys, Muslims and Christians, rich and poor studied together. She championed an integrative education that fostered coexistence, and she created the Thevenet Center, a special-education facility named after the congregation's founder, Claudine Thevenet, which she proudly described as an oasis of safety and inclusion. She also worked to denounce mistreatment of women and girls and to secure health and hygiene measures in poor neighborhoods. Born into a Barcelona family with a journalistic tradition, she studied English philology and theology and worked as a cruise hostess before entering religious life. Her father, Juan Felipe Vila-San Juan, was a television producer behind successful Spanish programs of the 1960s and 1970s. Despite harassment and threats as a Christian woman in Pakistan, including the 2015 attacks on churches in Lahore, she remained committed to her mission. She was awarded the Cruz de Isabel la Católica, and the government of Punjab sent its condolences upon her death on 23 October 2026.