LIFE OF SERVICE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 911, 4 November 1933, Page 11

LIFE OF SERVICE.

Nursing Lepers on Makogai Island. AUCKLAND GIRL'S MISSION. Once a secretary in an Auckland office. Missionary Sister Mary Fidelis, of the Third Regular Order of Mary, arrived in Auckland on Monday after her period of training at the Mother House in Lyons, France. Miss Nellie Franklin, of Devonport, f.lt the desire to give her life in Service for others, and some years ago she wrote to the headquarters of the Oceanic Missionary Order of Mary at Lyons, France, which supplies women missionaries for the Pacific Islands, asking if she could be trained as a sister for the leper settlement on Makogai Island. She was accepted as a postulant for a probationary period, and she left New Zealand in 1930. Miss Franklin was the first New Zealander to go to the mother house at Lyons, and she will be the last, for a new house has recently bsen opened in Bedford, United States for the training of American- New Zealand and Australian candidates. In fifteen months she was accepted into the order by taking the white veil in 1931. The novitiate period which followed was a. time of religious training, with special instruction. as to the religious guidance of natives in Oceania, the raising standard of life, and the care of lepers. On September 8 of this year, .Miss Franklin was professed and became Sister Mary Fidelis of the Missionary Order of Mary. Early next year she will go to Makogai, there to devote her life to assisting in the care of the 500 lepers of all nationalities who are segregated there. “People cannot understand why I am so happy at the prospect of life-long exile on Makogai Island,” said Sister Mary Fidelis, “but a life of sacrifice is always one of happiness.”' She is awaiting the arrival of the Mother-General of the Order, who is due to arrive in January to make her periodical visit to all the island stations of the. congregation. This inspection will take over two years, for she must go to places as far apart as the Solomons, the New Hebrides. New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. The Mother-General, Sister Mary and another sister who, after twelve years’ missionary work in the islands, has had a brief holiday in Auckland to recuperate from a serious illness, will leave together about the end of January, and Sister Mary will be left at Makogai.