The Missionaries of Charity, founded by St Teresa of Kolkata, yesterday closed their home for the destitute in Goa, in western India, amid fears that their landlords pushed them out to reclaim the land. Source: UCA News.
Sr Rosario, the superior of the seven-member community in the state capital Panaji, said they have returned the house to its owners, Assistência de Goa, a charity organisation.
“We received an order from our Kolkata headquarters to leave and go to another place,” she said.
The Missionaries of Charity nuns worked in the house for 49 years after St Teresa started the home on a 5000 square meter premises at the invitation of Assistencia de Goa, in a prime location in the state capital.
Sr Rosario said Sr M. Joseph Michael, the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, had also informed Cardinal Filipe Neri Ferrao, Archbishop of Goa and Daman, about vacating the place.
The nun said the 44 residents living there will be relocated to two other shelters run by the Missionaries of Charity nuns in the state.
Fr Maverick Fernandes, director of the Goa Archdiocesan Council for Social Justice and Peace, said “the nuns have been pushed out” of the property by not allowing repairs of the leaking tin sheet roofs in the rainy season.”
Mariano Ferrao, a Catholic activist, said he was “surprised by the move as no one can do the service” that the nuns of the Missionaries of Charity do.
However, the landowners, the charity organisation founded in 1910, refuted the allegations.
Neville Monteiro, president of Assistancia de Goa, said on Sunday that it was a “unilateral decision” of the Missionaries of Charity, “without informing us, which surprised us.”
“This place is meant only for charitable purposes and the statutes cannot be changed for any other construction or commercial purpose,” Mr Monteiro said, adding that the letter from Missionaries of Charity came as “a shock” to them.
He said the trustees of Assistencia de Goa met Cardinal Ferrao, who told them that the sisters had made a decision and informed him too.
FULL STORY
Missionaries of Charity shut down shelter home in India’s Goa (By Michael Gonsalves, UCA News)
