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

THE LEPROSY PATIENTS CONVERTED ME

 I came to India in May 1969. On my first Christmas in India, Sr. Damiana Tansini, Sisters of Immaculate, invited me to celebrate Mass in a slum, at Vile Parle, one of the so called “leprosy colony”, where the Sisters were running a dispensary.  It was not far away from the parish church of Irla, entrusted to our institute PIME (Pontifical Institute for Mission Extension). This “colony” was a line of huts, along an open drainage, at the side of the heliport of Juhu. The Sisters were using a public hut as weekly dispensary.

We took out in the open the only wooden table available and there I celebrated my first Christmas mass in India. The few words I said after reading the Gospel came spontaneously to me. “When Jesus came on this earth, he was born in a stable and was greeted by poor shepherds. If he has to come today he will not go in the buildings of this city and not even in the cathedral, but he would come in your slum.”

On that evening, musing on the events of the day. I realized that I, myself, had to draw the conclusion of that speech. If I wanted to be a follower of Jesus, I had to go among the poor, in a slum like them. 

I came to India as a student to finish my MA in theology at the Papal Seminary in Pune. After that I enrolled myself at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Deonar, Bombay for MA in social work. From the hostel of TISS I started going to a very big slum (40,000 people) called Janata Colony, situated in the middle of BARC residential area. This slum was there since the years fifties, before the central government requisitioned the land for the Babha Atomic Research Center (BARC).

In Janata Colony I discovered a good number of Catholics Tamilians. Some of them told me that they come to Bombay in 1964 to see the Pope, and they remained in Bombay ever since.  I helped them to build a small chapel and on Sundays I was celebrating Mass for them. When I finished my MA I asked them to build for me a small hut near the chapel where I could stay and live with them. It was there that with help of the Sisters of Immaculate (PIME Sister) I open the first dispensary for leprosy patients. In collaboration with the doctors of Acworth Leprosy Hospital, we tried, for the first time in urban area, to have  a house-to-house mass survey to identify people with the early signs of leprosy. At that time the only treatment available was DDS (dyamino diphenil sulphone), nevertheless we could already give the ”good news” that leprosy is curable, there is no need to fear or to isolate the leprosy patient.

 The work of Lok Seva Sangam, as the fight against leprosy, has been a successful story. At the beginning of the eighties, after our paramedicals had made successive surveys of our area of control, we were having in our registers more than 4000 patients in a population of one million. All of them were staying at their houses, going to school or going to work, and coming to our dispensaries once a month to take treatment. 

With the introduction, in the eighties, of the multidrugs therapy (MDT: three drugs given together: sulphone, clofazimine and  rifadin) the period of treatment was reduced from two years to six months. So the statistics went down. From 4000, the patients currently under treatment went down to 800. A real success but a partial one, because the number of new patients discovered every year has not gone down: around 1000 every year.

 Leprosy is not a disease only of the poor, but those that we discover in the slums, are mainly poor who do not need only medicine but also education and a better job. Leprosy, if cured in time, before the nerves are damaged and sensitivity is lost, does not produce any deformity. But unfortunately, when diagnosis is late, particularly in the villages where health-education  is poor and medical facilities missing, then deformity and ulcers set in. Many persons, discovered affected by leprosy in the villages, come to the city in search of treatment and anonymity. When they come to our dispensary they get treatment but they ask also for a job.

In Lok Seva Sangam we always had a social worker in charge of rehabilitation. We tried many self-employment schemes like handloom, chalk making, etc. but finally we searched for a land where to start a rehabilitation centre. There at Taloja (Riagad Dt.) was our second project: Swarga Dwar.

 Simultaneously we experienced a lot of difficulties in getting a place, in the existing hospitals, deformed patients, old beggars, lonely patients. For this purpose we thought of a small hospice were abandoned people could finish their life in peace.

Another transformation was taking place inside myself.

Many times I asked myself: why leprosy patients had always been segregated, ostracized, sent away? In all countries,  in all religions, in all civilizations. Since the time of Moses, of Manu, till our days.

It is true leprosy is contagious, but it is much less contagious than tuberculosis or hepatitis.

It is true that, till fifty years ago, there was no cure; but for other diseases too there are no cure, like tumors.
Then, why only leprosy patients had always been segregated?

The answer which I found, according to me, is a psychological answer: no other diseased person, like the leprosy patient, with those visible deformities, is for us and for all the image of death. We are all afraid of death. We do not want to see death. So, without thinking, unconsciously, by instinct we run away from death, we chase away its image. No use in telling that this deformed person is cured, is bacteriologically negative, is no more contagious, is no more a “leper”. What we fear is death. The leprosy patients are social victims of our fear of death.

 Spiritual masters had always taught that till we are not able to face death we will not be able to live fully our life. Leprosy patients speak to us about our future. There is nothing more sure in our future than death. Those who speak of the future are prophets. So they have a message for me, for all of us, for all society.

But to make this message heard, we need silence, we need peace, we need a special place: an ashram.

So Swarga Dwar is not only a centre for rehabilitation, not only a hospice, but an ashram.

Here the leprosy patient is not a beggar on the road who needs alms, is not a disease person who needs medical care, here is a Job who challenges all our theories about God and salvation, he is a prophet who speaks to us about our future: death. In the name of God he tells us that death is not the end, but only a door: the gate of His Kingdom. That is why the name of our ashram: SWARGA DWAR.
This is the first message that I received from the leprosy patients. 

A missionary is by definition the messenger of God, the one who preaches the Gospel of Jesus. But in Swarga Dwar the messages are coming from the leprosy patients. A conversion was requested of me: I had to keep my eyes and ears opened.

 At the beginning of the eighties we started looking out for a land where to realize this ashram.

On the Epiphany day of 1983 we entered in to an agreement for the land in Taloja, 40 km out of Bombay.

On March 1984 we took possession, In November 1986 the Italian Ambassador in Delhi inaugurated the building of the hospice. 

Through the long association with leprosy patients I got accustomed to hearing stories of rejection from family, broken marriages, removal from the village, denial of admission in schools or hospitals, loss of job, estrangement from the community, with any flimsy excuse, but the real reason was fear of leprosy.

Some parents brought to us one of their children, with some deformity, requesting us to keep him for some weeks, just the time to arrange the marriage of their daughter: “otherwise nobody will take our daughter in marriage”. But they never came back to take their son.

One wife brought the husband to Swarga Dwar “because the children are going to college and their friends will never come home if they see my husband”.

One son brought his father “because my wife threaten to live me alone”.

The owner of a restaurant was buying the milk of our buffaloes, but the owner of the near by restaurant started spreading the news that “leprosy milk” was used to make tea, and so we could no more find market for our surplus milk.

What a difficult time to find an electrician or a plumber to come for repairs. Also promising them a good remuneration, they say yes, but they never turn up or they stop coming after the first visit.

All these experiences, they made me feeling sympathy not only for leprosy patients but for all categories of  segregated and marginalised people because of an handicap or social stigma.

When myself I had to suffer isolation and segregation because of some choice of partner in my life, then I discovered what an amount of revolutionary strength, what a message of salvation, there is in that sentence of the Gospel which the leprosy patients reminded me daily: “the stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone. This is the work of God and it is marvelous to see.’ (Mathew 21:42)

We wrote this sentence, in big letters, on the wall of our dining hall. We sing it during the celebration of the Mass. It has become the second prophetic message of Swarga Dwar.

This sentence recurs six times in the Bible. For me it is the key to understanding the whole Bible.

For me as missionary, who had been sent out on the strength of the statement that “Jesus Christ is the only one who can give salvation.”  - Acts 4:12 says: ”For all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved.”- for me it was a surprise to discover that the sentence of the discarded stone comes just before this (Acts 4:11). So the second sentence must be interpreted in the light of the first, as a consequence of the first. If the first is all-inclusive (the one who start from the last [discarded] does not exclude anybody), the second sentence can not be interpreted in an exclusive way.

How does the salvation come about?

In a way, with a formula, which God established, demonstrated in Jesus: starting from the last, the discarded. There is no other way (no other name). God starts from the last, so He saves everyone, everything.

Those who think to be the first, Jews, Catholics, Christians, the ‘righteous ones” will be the last.

He said it with the parable of the vineyard labourers: ”The last will be the first, and the first, last” (Mt.20:16).  This is really a universal salvation.

Blessed the last who will be the first.

Blessed also those who, thinking to be the first, are ready to go with the last, to put themselves at the service of the least and last.

That is why I remain in India: to save myself with those that I considered last.

This is my conversion.

The purpose of the missionary is not to make people changing religion, but to invite all, and cooperate with all, starting from the last and the least, to build the kingdom of God.