Born in Togo in 1967, Sister Marie Stella Kouak attended nursing school in Belgium and returned in 1998 to work at a pediatric hospital in Dapaong run by her congregation, now known as the Sister Hospitallers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In 2018, after what it called an accumulation of “episodes of violence and animosity with racial and xenophobic overtones,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter condemning racism and vowing to combat it.