Her son was beheaded by ISIS in a worldwide broadcast. But Diane Foley rejected hatred and chose to meet the killer looking at him with mercy. The testimony of another world, of another measure.

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Diane Foley, mother of a journalist kidnapped and killed by ISIS, recently met Pope Leo XIV.

Her path of suffering is recounted in the book “American Mother”, written with the writer Colum McCann, where she shares her experience of pain, faith, and forgiveness.

Her son, James W. Foley, was an American journalist kidnapped in Syria in 2012 and then beheaded on August 19, 2014 in a live video broadcast around the world.

 

Diane Foley and mercy for the killer

She wanted to meet her son’s killer, Alexanda Kotey, and from this meeting came the book she recently presented at the Rimini Meeting.

It was probably her ability to overcome hatred that impressed Pope Leo XIV, because the story of Diane Foley is that of a mother who chose to respond with Christian mercy to the one who beheaded her son on live television.

In the interview with Vatican News, it is striking, first of all, that Diane speaks of Kotey by name.

She recounts meeting him in 2021 because «I wanted Alexanda to understand that the people chosen as targets were trying to give hope to the people of Syria: journalists, humanitarian workers. They were not combatants. They carried no weapons. I wanted him to know Jim, to know what kind of person he was and that in another life they could even have been friends».

Speaking about her son’s killer, Diane states: «Poor Alexanda lost his father as a boy; I think he was a person searching, but he looked in the wrong places».

She herself calls the meeting a «miracle», because «he really listened to me, and I prayed for the grace to listen to him. And it was a grace. The Holy Spirit was present in a very deep way. It was a blessing. Very sad, but it was a blessing».

 

“I believe in a merciful God”

In another interview, Diane further explains: «I believe in a merciful God, and I prayed for a grace, so that I could also be merciful and see Alexanda as a person», not as a killer.

Diane Foley and Alexanda Kotey met three times, and in one of these meetings, she perceived the man’s repentance, «especially during our second visit, after which he wrote me three letters repeatedly expressing his remorse and saying how sorry he was for what he had done».

Although saddened, she believes it is right that he be sentenced to life in prison but rejects the death penalty because, she says, «as long as we are alive we can learn, we can grow and change. And I very much hope that Alexanda will eventually find peace too».

Finally, she recalls with emotion the phone call she received two days after her son’s death from Pope Francis, «before anyone from our government called».

 

Either she is crazy or Someone changed her life

There is not much to say.

Either this woman is completely insane and should be hospitalized immediately, or she is a witness to a standard of judgment and measure that does not exist in the world and is not taught in any school or university.

It is only possible through adherence to a transcendent reality that radically transforms life, the encounter with the One who is capable of changing hatred into mercy. And He does change: this is the greatest and most convincing proof of God’s existence.