HOSPICE FOR DYING

Press, Volume C, Issue 29424, 28 January 1961, Page 2

HOSPICE FOR DYING

Nun’s Work In Calcutta

“In the centre of Calcutta’s slums is a small hall—the Home for the Destitute Dying. Lying on straw, men on one side of the hall and women on the other, are more than 100 humans, representing every every kind of human corruption and filth, suffering and evil.” This was the description given yesterday by the secretary of the National Council of Churches (the Rev. A. A. Brash), of a hospice run by a Roman Catholic nun. Sister Theresa. “She is a short, middle-aged woman, who wears the sleeves of her nun’s robe tied up securely above her elbows.” Mr Brash said. Sister Theresa and her few helpers—four Indian women and a handful of young student priests'from a nearby seminary—laid their patients on the straw and did what they could to ease their dying pains. "Her patients are the persons who would otherwise be left to die on the streets.” said Mr Brash. “I saw them—--100 or more—lying on straw. Here was every kind of suffering and evil. For Sister Theresa and her few helpers there could be no successful results, there could be no conversion, there could hardly be any thanks. There could just be a daily harvest of suffering and death. “Yet in this woman. Sister Theresa. I found a sense of peace and victory and the closeness of God which I have seen in only a few places of the earth.”