Flora Cantábrica

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HE LEPERS
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From the beginning of her departure from the Loreto Congregation, Mother Teresa thought about helping 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 sick person 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. Nowadays leprosy, if taken early enough, 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 plot of land to Mother and there she began the construction of Shanti Nagar (City of Peace), a village for lepers, about 300 kilometers from Calcutta. Ponds were built there, filled with fish, bananas and palm trees were planted, and gardens were made. It was a beautiful village and there lepers could recover and lead a dignified life and work according to each person’s capabilities, in an environment of cleanliness and hygiene, receiving 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 lepers had already been living there since 1969. For its construction, 400,000 rupees ($100,000) were used, obtained from the raffle of the Lincoln car that Pope Paul VI had used in 1964 on his trip to India.
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Additionally, Mother Teresa did many campaigns to help maintain leper shelters. 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 unpopulated place that belongs to the Railway Company. About twenty years ago we simply occupied it and it began to extend along the railway line and we hope to build a colony here in which leper families can build their own homes and tend to their own fields… When you get to know leprosy patients, it is discovered that they are so

discover that they are so delicate, so wonderful. And we learn a lot from them. Do 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 that powder detergents were for the rich and we used the cheapest soap on the market
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I remember that at that time most of us were studying 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 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 no one 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 afraid to go to the leper village. Have you seen the movie Ben Hur? It’s something similar to what appears in the movie. We could hardly enter the village, as the accumulated rubbish blocked the entrances. We had to walk in knee-deep dirt. There were no houses, only caves dug into the hills into which the lepers would go when they saw us arriving. The women covered in their burqas were the first to hide, then the children. All disheveled and dirty. We called to them and waved our arms in greeting, but they paid no attention to 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 and left the access free. We built houses, we made little gardens, we taught the children to wash and we put those who could still manage themselves to do small craft jobs. We try to give them, in short, a feeling of self-respect and make them useful.
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When we arrived, most of the children were infected. Now, thanks to cleaning and preventive treatment, we hope to avoid it. The village seems different. In two years, what was a garbage dump has become a garden. The boys are happy. I thanked God for the wonders that he has deigned to do through his humble servants.
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