Sr Dr Mary Litty, LSDP A living saint A.J. Philip One of the privileges of journalism is that it enables its practitioners to come in contact with extraordinary people, not necessarily rich and powerful. Two such persons I met will always remain venerated. They are Saint Pope John Paul II, whose hand I kissed during his second visit to India, and Blessed Mother Teresa, who is on the road to Sainthood, whom I had interviewed and dined with at Bhopal in the late seventies. I am sure one more person would be added to the list and she is Sister Doctor Mary Litty, foundress of the Little Servants of the Divine Providence (LSDP). Alas, the process of sainthood is initiated only after a person’s death. Nobody needs to prove that she has performed miracles. A visit to any of her 16 centres will reveal the miracles she has been performing every day. My first encounter with the LSDP was when I accidentally visited its centre at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. I had accompanied my friend Jose George, who wanted to show me how he had electrified two large educational institutions with solar energy. On his suggestion, I visited the LSDP centre which opened my eyes to the kind of service the sisters from Kunnamthanam have been doing in what was once a godforsaken hamlet. I have visited countless Christian and non-Christian institutions doing yeoman service to the poor, the disabled and the destitute but I had not seen anything like what I saw at Meerut. The sisters were taking care of children, whom their parents had abandoned because they were born with deformities which could not be corrected. Most of the children were unable to stand or sit and remained lying down. Some of them could not even see or hear. One had his head growing larger and larger like a basketball. They all urinated and defecated in the bed. I reached there in the morning when the sisters were busy cleaning them. The rooms were so stinking that they advised me to visit them in the afternoon. That is what I did. The second time I found all the children attired well, either sleeping or enjoying my company. Some of them smiled at me and some clutched at my fingers. What a miracle it was! From stinkers to charming little angels, all in a matter of a couple of hours! The sisters were not social workers with MSW. They were missionaries. As luck would have it, the then head of the congregation, which is a rotating post, was on a visit to the centre. I asked them how they were able to serve those children, many of whom were destined to die in childhood, day in and day out without any reward. Yes, they, too, seek a reward because they believe that “it will be these poor who shall open the doors of the paradise for us”. How can you lift up a child wallowing in its excrement and give it love, I asked her. “We see in every child, the Jesus on the cross, totally helpless and forsaken”. They draw inspiration from their patron saint, St. Joseph Cottolengo, whose words echo in their mind: “The dormitory of the sick, a Cathedral! Each bed there, an altar! The patients - Christ! So serve them on your knees!” What a tall order, you and I would wonder. But not for the LSDP sisters for whom nothing mattered more than this command. I wanted to know more about the congregation and that is how I drove into Kunnamthanam, near Mallapally in Pathanamthitta district a few months ago. Before I started, I ensured that Sr Mary Litty was at the Mother House, the headquarters of the congregation. We could see a lot of activity going on in the campus. Every sister was busy doing some work or the other. We checked and found out that the next day was an important day for the congregation, as some candidates were to become full-fledged sisters at a ceremony to be graced by the local bishop. Had I known this, I would have synchronised my visit with this ceremony. My nephew Febin and I were asked to wait in the parlour for a while before Sr Litty arrived. We did not have to wait long before she came, received us with a smile and asked to sit. “Your camera is intimidating”, she said as I took her picture. She, too, seemed to be busy and wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible. As I started asking some questions about her early life, she asked a sister to fetch a copy of her autobiography Daivaparipalanayude thanalil (In God’s care). “It has all the details of my life”. I was surprised that a person of her eminence and involvement had found time to write her story. Sitting there, I read her Preface to know that she was guided by the Biblical prescription: “Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the Lord” (Psalm 102:18). Sr Litty told me how a person from Arunachal Pradesh had written to her that he had read her book six times. Though I did not read the 324-page book so many times, I read it in one sitting. To be readable, any piece of writing has to come from within one’s heart. Her book has this great quality and that is why I found it unputdownable. Once I was through with my questions, she took me out to show me the campus. Playing in the courtyard was six-year-old Abhishek, who did not have either well-formed legs or hands. It was a pleasure talking to him. He had a ready-made answer to all my questions. He was a bundle of energy. He was so restless that if he had nothing to do, he would roll on the ground. Seeing my interest in him, one of the sisters brought a battery-operated vehicle in which he is able to move around the campus. “A lady from Australia visited us. She liked him so much that she got this custom-made vehicle for him from Bangalore. He loves driving it”, said Sr Litty. He seemed to epitomise what the Psalmist had said, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me”. I met dozens of children and grown-ups whom their parents and relatives had forsaken but Sr Litty had “received”. I met Manna, an infant left on the roadside by her mother. I also met Fousya, a Muslim girl, her mother had abandoned. There were many who could not speak or respond to my voice but they all responded to the love and affection given by the sisters. Sr Litty’s story is nothing but awe-inspiring. It is unusual to come across anyone whose ambition had been to become a martyr. True, martyrdom has always attracted the spiritually-inclined to take up arms. The jihadists who reach Iraq and Syria to fight for a Swiss watch-wearing Caliph, too, believe that martyrdom is the highest position that one can attain in life. Unlike the Jihadists who seek to take the life out of those who do not think like them, she sought to give life to those new-borns left on the roadside, who would otherwise have been mauled, killed and eaten by stray dogs. Sr Litty wanted nothing in life except time and ability to serve her master, whom she had chosen at a young age. “No one influenced me greater than my parents, who brought me up as a believer in God’s providence. It is this belief that has sustained me all through”. It has not been a bed of roses for Sr Litty who was even accused of leaving the spiritual life but it was her unflinching faith in her Creator that helped her cross hurdle after hurdle to reach where she is today on, what I think, are the steps of sainthood. It was her congregation which recognised her talent for medical studies and sent her to Rome for the purpose. She did her MD from Rome, diploma in tropical medicine from England and another one in paediatrics from Ireland. She created a sensation while she was in the United Kingdom. Sr Litty was in a train when a train employee approached her and asked: “Sister, are you a medical professional? One of the passengers is having labour pain and we have stopped the train and evacuated the passengers from the compartment”. She rose to the occasion and helped in the delivery of a healthy baby. When the train reached the destination, cameramen, both still and movie, were waiting to take her pictures. For the next three days newspapers carried reports that the train baby and his mother were hale and hearty. No, it was not the fame and publicity that transformed her. It was a chance visit to the town of Turin in 1953 that gave her a new direction. At Turin, she visited the Little House of the Divine Providence, set up by St. Joseph Cottolengo. There were about 7,000 patients, most of them victims of the first and second world wars. Together with fellow sisters and priests there were in all 14,500 people living together, serving one another with nothing in hand except abiding faith in the miraculous powers of divine providence. While leaving for Rome, one of the bishops had told Sr Litty that she should visit Turin even if she had not visited any other place. “Service rendered to the poor is service rendered to Christ Himself” is what St. Joseph Cottolengo had taught. It took a lot of courage to leave the comforts of the Medical Sisters of St. Joseph (MSJ) and start a new order that believed in: “The poor are our masters and we are their servants. Those forsaken and hated by all are our supreme masters”. Relying completely on God’s Providence, Sr Litty started a Home in a small rented, thatched hut on January 17, 1978, with one patient who could neither walk nor speak. That woman was incapable of performing even her primary needs on her own. It was quite providential that the “Little Home” at Kunnamthanam was started on the very same day of the 150th anniversary of the Turin home. “We do not own anything. All our needs are taken care of by the people”, Sr Litty said. Even in a non-Christian area like Meerut, I have found people belonging to all faiths and religions meeting their needs. “We accept everything, even old clothes which we need in plenty to keep the children clean and tidy. People give us detergents, food grain, toiletries”. A priest sold his inherited plot of land in a prime locality in Kerala and gave the money to Sr Litty. It was this money which helped her build the Meerut home. She told me about the many miracles she experienced in her life. A dog which belonged to a neighbour would come at night and sleep in the Mother House compound and provide the inmates a measure of security. Awards like the Rajiv Gandhi Manav Seva Award have come her way but she is not influenced by them. The congregation has come a long way since the first batch of six became members. Today there are 147 sisters serving in 16 homes, the last of which will be in Zambia in the African continent. The special charism of this congregation is to serve Jesus in the least, the lost and the lowliest, to proclaim the Word of God and to uplift the poor families. The mentally challenged, the paralytic, the epileptic, the mentally deranged roaming on the streets and the like are the ones who get special consideration of the Little Servants of the Divine Providence. How I wish those who accuse the missionaries of trying to subvert the Indian system of belief had visited one of the LSDP homes and seen how the sisters tended to the hopeless before indulging in their diatribe against them. The writer can be reached at ajphilip@gmail Courtesy: Indian Currents
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:34:41 +0000
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