Alicia Vacas Moro

Alicia Vacas Moro (born c.1972) is a Spanish-born nurse and a leader of the Comboni Missionary Sisters in the Middle East and Asia. She served as a nurse in Egypt and in Bethany in the West Bank. During the pandemic she returned to help in Italy. She was awarded the International Women of Courage Award in 2021 on the recommendation of the Holy See for her work.

Life Vacas was born in Spain in about 1972. She studied to be a registered nurse and she used these skills in Egypt where she was treating 150 Bedouin patients a day.

She was awarded the International Women of Courage Award in 2021 after being nominated by the Holy See. At the time she was working in Bethany in a Comboni convent where the house was surrounded on three sides by the wall that separates Israel from its neighbours. The convent had been founded in 1966 and at one time was in Jordanian territory (In 2019 the convent was registered in Amman as a small religious house with three religious living there. She was the Superior nun. ).

In 2004 the second Palestinian uprising was taking place and the convent became unreachable by half of the people they care for. The convent is surrounded by blocks of concrete and barbed wire. Trees just disappeared as the wall came through their garden. in a community of 55 elderly Comboni nuns in Bergamo. Usually, she leads the Comboni Missionaries for the Middle East and Asia.

The Woman of Courage award was presented in the company of Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and the First Lady Jill Biden by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 8 March 2021.