By Matters India Reporter
Rajkot, Sept 19, 2020: A Catholic woman, who has lived as an acetic among wild animals in a Gujarat forest for 41 years, has been hospitalized.
Sadhvi (ascetic) Prasanna Devi “is in a critical condition,” Carmelite Father Vincent Kannatt of the Junagadh parish in Rajkot where the 87-year-old hermit has been staying for the past six years, told Matters India on September 19.
The only Rome-recognized hermit in the Syro-Malabar Church was admitted to Christ Hospital in Rajkot on September 14 because of a decrease in her oxygen level.
“Her oxygen level continues to be very low,” Father Kanatt explained.
The priest also said the nun regained her consciousness and recognized him earlier in the day, but fell unconscious soon. “The ventilator was removed for one hour. Then she developed breathing complications and again she is put on ventilator,” he added.
The hermit, who lived alone atop a hill in the Girnar forests, has many admirers, the majority of them Hindus. They used to visit her hut, “Snehadeepam” (lamp of love), deep inside the forest to get her blessings or just to look at her. They considered her “next to God” because her “incomparable” love and compassion.
Born Annakutty (little Anna) in the southern Indian state of Kerala, Sadhvi Devi´s life as an ascetic began when the religious congregation she had joined folded up because of legal problems.
In an earlier interview, she said she was attracted to the Indian way of ´sanyas´ (ascetic life) and hence stayed away from joining another congregation.
After her convent life, she studied the lives of Indian hermits and visited several Christian monasteries, which together led her to an ascetic life.
“It was not easy, especially for a woman,” she admitted, recalling that Junagadh parishioners initially resented her Indian way of penance.
Sadhvi Devi acknowledged that most of her visitors did not know Christ. “They revere Christ as one of their hundreds of deities,” she said.
The woman ascetic said she has not asked anyone to convert to Christianity. “I feel that conversion has no value unless you experience the pain (Christ) has incurred for us,” she added.
Initially, the head priest of a nearby Hindu temple resented his devotees visiting the Christian ascetic, but a “near miracle” changed it.
She and the temple shared a rivulet that passes through her hut, but it dried up one summer. She dug behind her hut and found water at a depth of 4.27 meters.
People from various places queued up to drink the water they considered holy, and the Hindu priest apologized before he left the temple.
Father Kannatt said the ascetic came down to his parish in 2014 on the request of the local bishop. Since then she has stayed on the campus of St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Junagadh.
“I was very much comfortable and at peace in the company of wild animals and birds,” she said in another interview in 2017.