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Concept
Gertrude Lemmens
Résumé
Sister Gertrude (Truus) Lemmens (14 July 1914 – 30 October 2000) was a Dutch nun and founder of Dar-ul-Sukun (Home of Peace), a home for the mentally handicapped, orphans and the aged in Karachi, Pakistan.
She received an award from the President of Pakistan in 1989 for her work.
She was the sister of Father Salesius Lemmens OFM who served the city of Karachi from the mid-1930s until his death from accidental drowning in 1942 on an outing with the handicapped children. Young Sister Gertrude was already engaged to marry her fiancé back in the Netherlands who was a university professor there. Her fiancé came after her to Karachi to convince her and to take her back with him. But Gertrude Lemmens strongly felt committed to her work in Karachi. She refused to go back and broke off the engagement. Later she once explained that her fiancé had felt terrible but he was not angry.
In October 1939, at the age of 25, Lemmens traveled from her hometown of Venray in the Netherlands to visit her brother, Father Salesius Lemmens OFM, who was a missionary priest serving what, at that time, were the Sindh and Baluchistan provinces of British India, but today are part of Pakistan. She had accompanied her brother for a month on his rounds of social work in under-privileged communities of Karachi. She came to be tremendously moved by how poor and needy some people were. After her return to her homeland, she felt compelled to live in a way which helped those in such poverty as she had seen. She returned to Karachi and joined the only indigenous religious institute of Sisters in the region, the Franciscan Missionaries of Christ the King.
She then made a commitment to the dispossessed of the country, touring the slums of Karachi and reaching out with her heart and mind to anybody who needed her help. She also taught at Christ the King School in Khudadad Colony in the morning and went out to do social work in the slums of the city in the afternoons. She learned Urdu language, the national language of Pakistan, to be able to communicate better with the local people.
Source officielle
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