By Lissy Maruthanakuzhy
Panaji, April 10, 2025: The Missionaries of Charities nuns is closing a home for the destitute that Mother Teresa started in Goa, western India.
The reason for closing the 49-year-old center in Panaji, the state capital, is the bad shape of the building that houses it.
“This 115- year-old house is beyond repair now. During monsoon the house gets flooded,” said Sister Rosaria, the superior of the center that now uses a tarpaulin to cover the leaking roof.
She said a trust called Assistancia (assistance in Portuguese) owned the building that was built by the Portuguese in 1910 as a home for the destitute. Volunteers managed the center until 1976.
As their volunteers could not manage the residents, most of them mental health patients, the Assistancia officials requested Mother Teresa to take up the home in 1976. “It was given on a lease of 90 years to the Missionaries of Charity,” said Sister Mira, one of nuns at the center who was then 20,
The center had three sections in the house: Unwed mothers, orphans and psychiatric patients. Unwed mothers lived in the house until they gave birth to the babies, who were later given for adoption through Caritas Goa. Gradually the first two sections closed down.
Sister Rosaria said they had given more than 500 children in adoption, “Many of the children are educated and settled in life. They would come here as it is their home. Now they are sad that we are closing down,” the superior said.
Ahead of the closure, the nuns moved the center’s 40 elderly residents to their other communities in Goa – Carambolim, Cotto de Fatorpa and Quepem. “The people of Panaji had been very generous in supporting this house in cash and in kind. The donations also helped us support our poorer communities in northern India,” she said.
Their last day at the center is on April 28, she added.
Local parishioners expressed sadness over the nuns’ departure. “That was a place where people in need could find help especially when they are stranded at Panaji,” said Agnes Pinto, a local benefactor.
She told Matters India that she had sent several such people to the nuns who welcomed them at any time of the day.
Daughters of St Paul Sister Rita Joseph, a parishioner, said she had found a young man on the road, hungry and distraught. “I requested the Sisters if they could attend to him. They sent a staff to bring him to their home. After some paperwork, they admitted him to one of their homes. The man was very grateful to the nuns for helping him,” she narrated.
Joseph Furtardo, a trustee of Assistancia, said he had met Mother Teresa when she came to Goa to open the Panaji house. “I am very sad that the sisters are leaving the place,” he told Matters India.
When a elected goverment can spend tax payers money to organuse events and festivals, i as a tax payer wishes to know why
they cannot rebuild this house to take care of the marginalised. Feel very disgusted of leaders whom t
Democracy has elected.
It’s. Very sad to hear this.
Many poor & needy people were taken care at this place.
Now where this people will go ?
Is this happening because there is no Our loving caring Mother Tresa to take care of them ?
Is there any way to Stop this 🙏 ?