By Thomas Scaria
Mangaluru, June 3, 2020: Fishermen in the coastal city of Mangaluru now thank some Catholics nuns, who have brought hope to their lives shattered by a nationwide lockdown and the onslaught of monsoon.
“We knew their plight and could not stop reaching out to them,” said Sister Milly Fernandes, the assistant general of the Ursuline Franciscan Sisters, the oldest indigenous women congregation in Mangaluru (formerly Mangalore).
As many as 26 convents of the 133-year-old congregation have been serving various communities in and around Mangaluru for the past three months after the administration started imposing restrictions to contain the coronavirus pandemic. The entire country went into a strict lockdown from March 25.
The nuns continue to feed the poor even after the administration relaxed the lockdown from June 1.
“With the relaxing of the lockdown, most service organizations had ended their services, but we could not forget fishermen who were still starving without any jobs,” Sister Fernandes, who coordinates the congregation’s relief works in Mangaluru, told Matters India on June 3.
The administration has banned fishing in view of the Monsoon that began on June 1.
Sister Fernandes said as soon as the restrictions began their superior general Sister Susheela Sequeira urged the members to rise up to the needs of the poor and the displaced. “Every member contributed their maximum to help the needy,” she added.
The general council members from the generalate in Mangaluru directly involved in several activities during the pandemic.
They distributed food packages to 120 families of daily wage earners in Panir and provided lunch packets to migrant workers in Kasargod, a district in neighboring Kerala state, for several days, besides supporting hundreds of poor families with money and material.
On May 22, the sisters reached out to the 140 fishermen families at Hoige Bazar, Bolar, Mangaluru, the prime historic area where the Ursuline pioneers began their mission of mercy.
“It was indeed a touching sights to see their eagerness and satisfied smiling faces on receiving concern and support. They expressed great joy and gratitude to the concerned sisters,” Sister Fernandes said about their work among fishermen.
The district administration commended the Ursuline nuns for the humanitarian works, which they said would go a long to reassure hundreds of thousands of people.
Established in 1887, the congregation is engage in social apostolate and relief works around the globe. The UFS sisters with their hundreds of convents in India have engaged in relief services, especially among the migrant workers and fishermen community.
The congregation’s first convent was established on banks of Netravathi river touching the Arabian sea, where most homes of the fishing community live
The congregation was founded in Mangalore by a German Jesuit missionary, Father Urban Stein, with the motto ‘Pro Amore Dei” (For the love of God).
The congregation initially started as a “Pious Association of St Ursula” in the Rosario Cathedral, Mangalore, with 12 pious women who visited house to house, educating and catechizing people, but staying at their own homes.
In 1934, the association was canonically approval as a religious congregation. After a year of novitiate, the pioneers started living in communities. In 1995, the congregation was named “Ursuline Franciscan Congregation” and received the pontifical status.
Today, UFS sisters serve 38 dioceses Germany, Italy, Tanzania, Kenya and America, besides India.