Flora Cantábrica

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Mother Teresa of Calcutta and… THE LEPERS

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From the beginning of her departure from the Congregation of Loreto, Mother Teresa thought of helping the lepers, considered the true untouchables, the outcasts of her outcasts. According to the Hindu conception of the world, leprosy is due to a punishment from God for some sin of the patient or his ancestors. Therefore, according to them, whoever rebels against leprosy, rebels against God himself. The same relatives abandon them and the lepers must live alone in truly miserable situations, fighting among themselves and living in a true hell of loneliness and suffering.
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In India at that time, there were four million lepers. Today leprosy, if it is caught in time, can be cured and many lepers have been cured and rehabilitated. In 1957 Mother Teresa received the first leper and organized periodic visits with mobile ambulances to care for them in her homes. In 1959 she organized a center for them, called Titagarth. A few years later, the Indian government donated a 34-acre piece of land to Mother and there she began the construction of Shanti Nagar (City of Peace), a village for lepers, some 300 kilometers from Calcutta. There ponds were built, stocked with fish, banana and palm trees were planted, and gardens were made. It was a beautiful town and there the lepers could recover and lead a dignified life and work according to the possibilities of each one, in a clean and hygienic environment, receiving the appropriate treatments.
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It was a few kilometers from Asansol. The town had a hospital, a school for children, several workshops to work in and more than 500 houses. It was officially inaugurated on March 19, 1974, although since 1969 there were already lepers living there. For its construction, 400,000 rupees (100,000 dollars) were used from the raffle for the Lincoln car that Pope Paul VI had used in 1964 on his trip to India.
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In addition, Mother Teresa campaigned many times to help maintain shelters for lepers. Some of these campaigns said: Touch the leper with your heart; Touch the leper with your kindness.
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Sister Bernarda, who worked with lepers, declared: Everyone is terrified of them. This is an uninhabited place that belongs to the Railway Company. About twenty years ago we just occupied it and it began to spread along the railway line and we hope to build a colony here where leprous families can build their own homes and tend their own fields… When you get to know leprosy patients, it is discovered that they are so delicate, so stupendous. And we learn a lot from them. You know what they say sometimes? «We have leprosy outside, physically, but not in our hearts.» And they are also very affectionate and grateful, because we come into close contact with them… For our part, we have to wash our clothes every day, because we are in contact with infectious diseases. We used to think washing powders were for the rich and used the cheapest soap on the market
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I remember that at that time most of us studied at the university
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One day the Mother, speaking to the lepers, told them that what they had was a gift from God, that God loved them with a special love, that what they had was not a sin. A totally disfigured old man tried to approach me and said: Repeat it again. He has done me a lot of good because he had always heard that nobody loves us. It is wonderful to know that God loves us. Say it again
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A sister who worked with lepers in Yemen told Father Le Joly: At first we were a little scared to go to the leper village. Have you seen the movie Ben Hur? It’s kind of like what’s in the movie. We could hardly enter the village, because the accumulated rubbish blocked the accesses. We had to walk knee-deep in dirt. There were no houses, only caves dug into the hills into which the lepers went when they saw us coming. The women covered in their burkas were the first to hide, then the children. All disheveled and dirty. We called out to them and waved our arms in greeting, but they ignored us. With patience, Sister Gertrudis managed to establish contact with them. Little by little they began to become familiar with our presence… With the help of government officials, we cleaned it up and left the accesses open. We built houses, we made little gardens, we taught the children to wash themselves, and we put those who could still manage to do small crafts. In short, we try to give them a feeling of self-respect and make them useful.
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