Part of my
visit to the Chinese province included a visit to two leprosaries in Mainland China : One in Anhui
province, and the other in Shaanxi
I had never
visited a leprosary before, so this was a new experience for me, although
serving sick people has been of my life as a Jesuit.
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| A nurse cleaning the wounds of a leper in |
I must confess that the first sensation I felt was disease: I was not afraid of the illness itself, I was told that it would not be a risk for me, but the sight of those big, open wounds refusing to heal even after years of treatment really impressed me. I wonder how they live it. I hope that the fact that they have jobs inside the leprosaries like working in the kitchen or in the fields helps them to maintain some dignity.
The service
we provide to those people is “just” this: living among them and spending the
mornings washing their wounds and medicating them, in sometimes very big
institutions run by the Chinese government and by “we” I mean both Casa Ricci
that manages our presence there, and the Sisters who actively work there.
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At first my western spirit was pretty critical towards a lot of things that need to be improved: hygiene, rules for the sake of the sick people, efficiency, etc. While there are in fact margins for improvements, I started to notice how much this smallness and imperfections are actually the signs of our presence in Mainland
I think
this is even more valuable since it’s done under the supervision of the
government, in a hidden but official presence. I hope this can contribute to
kick off some prejudices towards the Catholic church, we are collaborating with
the Chinese officials for the same good: the well being of the sick and
marginalised people in China
