Carlo Torriani

SWARGA DWAR

The conversion of a catholic missionary

presented by

Card. Simon Pimenta

LOK SEVA SANGAM

Letter No. 9, Bombay, March 1976

Dear Friends,

                    This time we are many to write to you. Our group has increased. This letter is addressed to the friends of Fr. Torriani, Sr. Luigina, Salafia and Tanina, a volunteer from Sicily. Now we work all together, or at least for the same purpose. Beside there is also a Spanish sister who work with us: Sr. Julia and we have also a dozen local people. All together we registered a charitable society with the name LOK SEVA SANGAM, association for the service to the people. Among the trustees there are friends and some doctors. We discarded the first suggestion to take the name Lepers Friends Association since our purpose is the integration of leprosy control into the general health service, so we thought better to avoid the word leprosy. Making programs and doing work only for leprosy patients we foster the isolation of the same. What makes the leprosy patient to suffer is not the disease, but the segregation. The problem of leprosy is no more a medical one, since at present is curable, but is a social problem. The treatment of leprosy is freely available in any public hospital, but people do not recognize the early signs. Now we have to convince people that leprosy is a disease like any other; that after treatment the patient is a human being like the others and one is not leprosy patient for ever.

    For this reason we avoid doing anything only for leprosy patients. Our dispensaries are for all kind of skin disease. If it is possible we transform the dispensary in a social center with many other activities. If we have a kindergarten, it is for all children, the typing class, the stitching class s for all.

This is about our work.

About the persons: Sr. Luigina has come back  in January from many months in Italy; Fr. Torriani can now go to Italy for some holidays after seven years continuously in India. Salafia is continuing his medical study in Bangalore; he had been with us in February. Tanina Matino  has come from Ragusa (Italy) for three months, to see the chances to join the group later on. Sr. Julia, who had been for many years the principal of a school in West Bengal, she thought she can be more useful  to give health and general education to the women in the slums of Bombay.

This is our group, always open to new persons and to new experiences.

Let us pray together that the good Lord may bless us and keep us always in his Kingdom. Thank you for all your donations.