Pakistan Held a State Funeral for a German Nun

           Pakistan held a state funeral this weekend for Ruth Pfau, a German Catholic nun who was known as the “Mother Theresa of Pakistan” for her efforts to rid the Muslim state of leprosy, the first Christian to receive such an honor.  She died in Karachi, Pakistan on August 10 at the age of 87.

Pfau was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1929.  After the Second World War, she and her family escaped Communist East Germany to West Germany.  After discontinuing her medical studies at Gutenberg University, she joined the Society of Daughters of the Heart of Mary in 1949.  The order intended to send her to India, but visa problems forced to remain in Karachi, where she then devoted the last fifty years of her life.  There she labored to evangelize, as well as to eradicate leprosy and tuberculosis.  Pfau was honored with a number of awards for her work.

Theresa of Calcutta, who was canonized a Catholic saint last year, was an ethnic Albanian Catholic nun from Macedonia who founded a religious order that ministered to the poor and the dying in India.  The Hindu state gave her a state funeral after her death in 1997.  Theresa was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. 

May Sister Ruth Pfau rest in peace.  May her legacy be one not only of health, love and peace, but of better relations between adherents of different religions.