(From previous issue)
The second stint of Sr. Gaudalupe as a missionary, took her to Tura to join her sisters is the Government’s leper asylum. In the beginning, the centre was in a dreadful state and the patients were in a pitiable condition. Sr. Lupe said, “In the past to look after lepers was terrible. Now not much, with lots of medicine available.” The loving and heroic care of sisters changed lepers’ lives completely and a new era dawned for the patients.
When India was known only as a land of snake charmers and a land stricken with poverty, the knowledge that one had about the Northeastern part of the country was miserably low. It was to this place Sr. Gaudalupe came “To follow Jesus and to do good”, the motto that she had chosen for her religious life. It was her wilful decision to race into the land of Assam to do good and be a missionary.
Sr. Guadalupe’s life as a missionary for more than seventy years in Northeast India had nothing extraordinary to boast about. It was preaching in silence, first in the Naga Hospital in Kohima, and later in the Leper Colony at Tura. She remembered vividly a great style of preaching taught by Msgr. Emmanuel Bars, the chaplain she worked with in Kohima: “When external forces prevent you from preaching in public, you have to preach in silence by visiting families and villages.” Sr. Guadalupe never felt tired of doing that.
Her work definitely cannot be compared to that of St. Francis Xavier. Perhaps she never witnessed Baptisms at Kohima. But she did one thing – the sowing of the Gospel seed by nursing and healing thus bringing what Jesus and his Church could give.
In those days, leaving the homeland as a missionary, meant leaving forever and never to return. But, thanks to the changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council, Sr. Lupe could return to Spain for the first time after eighteen years, but only to see her home without many of her dear ones. Presently she has only her youngest sister, Elvira, alive.
About her ministry among the lepers she said, “The Lord gives me […] strength to go forward and keep going until I die […] I would do it because my vocation is a missionary work.” She said this in her unforgettable moment of holding the hands of Pope Francis, during a general audience on 26 Aug. 2015at Vatican.
“How good! How good!”, was the reply of Pope Francis in admiration to Sr. Gaudalupe.
Leaving all adulations, she returned to Northeast India, where her heart was, to continue what she could to the people, the lepers, to whom she spent almost all her life, but leaving traces of foot prints which time will not dare to delete.
In her incapacitated moment for few months, what made her wake up and cheerful was the mention of Kohima and visitors from Nagaland.
The Church in Nagaland walks on in confidence and joy. One reason is the strength and power she receives from Christ. The other she cannot forget are the footprints left by the early missionaries, like Sr. Gaudalupe Velasco.
(Concluded)
Fr. R.R. Graviour Augustine