Carlo Torriani

SWARGA DWAR

The conversion of a catholic missionary

presented by

Card. Simon Pimenta

PIME Publications, PIME Regional House, Eluru - 534 0-07, A.P., India

NURSING

Letter No. 40, December 1991

Dear friends,

    This time I cannot write to you without mentioning that I had been in hospital. The doctors had taken away my left kidney. Thank God they discover it in time and I did not suffer much. In fact I didn’t have any trouble, no pain no disorder, only loss of weight. I could attend my work till the day I enter hospital. I was admitted to the Hinduja Hospital, a new and very updated private hospital. I read in a leaflet that it was started in 1951 as “Mission Hospital”. The words mission and missionary, taken from the Christian world, are used in the common parlance as synonymous of dedication and commitment.

    Another reflection I did in these days about the nurses. May be you know that a very good number of nurses come from the state of Kerala and many of them are Christians. This made me thinking about the method of doing mission and about the ways the good Lord uses to spread Christian values in the world. There are the organised missions, those of priests and nuns, those of congregations and Pontifical Works; but there are also the migration movements, the refugees caused by war and natural calamities, by economic situations and by historical events. Events that we can call as blessing in disguise with the left hand of God.

    Kerala has got the fortune of receiving the Christian message since the apostolic time from St. Thomas, but Indian caste system that accept and absorb everything, has pigeon-holed Christinaity so that it has remained for centuries a harmless caste of south India. Only in the latest thirty-forty years, the Syrian Christians of Kerala woke up, spurned by the missionary movement of Latin-European Christianity, or simply pushed by the demographic explosion and literacy achievement, they migrated from their land in search of jobs. Now we can find people from Kearla all over India, particularly in urban areas, in all the Gulf countries and all over the world. In north India the mission stations left by the European missionaries had been taken over by Christians from Kerala.

    This migration has produced a significant Christian presence in the Arabic Gulf. And particularly the Christian nurses give a beautiful Christian witnessing. Their presence near those who are suffering, their professional service and their compassion for the sick represent a good example.

Their professional work is very much sought-after since their profession is not at all coveted, on the contrary it is look down by the women of other communities.

    The patient who was in the bed near me, had been in one hospital or the other since sixteen months. He told me: ”I thank God for these Christian girls who do this nursing job; our women do not like to do this kind of job.”

    I made this reflection: missionaries are no more welcomed and in some countries they are denied entry; Christian nurses are requested by Muslims in the Gulf and by Hindus in north India. Let us thank God who send his Spirit ahead of us and without our planning. We are the witnesses of the merciful plan of God.