HOW IT ALL STARTED

Hundreds of children wander on the quays of Calcutta station

 

By Brother François Marie, fondateur des Pèlerins de la Charité.

 

It was already a few months that the call to leave everything to dedicate myself to the deprived had rung in me when following this exhortation, I landed in Calcutta to take part in the work of the Sisters of Mother Teresa within orphanages and dying people's homes of the city.

 

This day, while I was exceptionally sent to celebrate a mass in the outskirts of the city and when I was geting ready to join my orphanage of Daya-Dan, the taxi-scooter passes in front of the big railway station of Sealdah.

 

This was the way my eyes fall on a young boy with naked body, sitting on a pavement, feet in the gutter. The unfortunate one did not have more than the skin on bones and scrapped a banana skin with his teeth. My blood made only a turn, it was for me a real electric shock. I decide to jump out of my taxi, to bring him my help.

 

After three hours, spent to look after him, to wash and to dress him, I had made a new friend, Rajesh.

 

Thanks to this young boy, I discovered more than hundred children who roamed here and there on the platforms of the railway station and try to survive their sad fate.

Accompanied by my freshly met guide, the young Rajesh, I learn that some of them have the luck to be welcomed in a center. They are already saved in a way because there they receive what is essential to their dignity: affection, place to eat and a roof. But there are the others... Those who stay in the railway station cannot and must not be forgotten. 

 

A child in good health always has chances to get out there but it is another story for those who are sick, or handicapped, incapable of begging. Some of them already have lost a reason for hope. It was necessary to do something, but what? God did not take a long time to answer to me by specifying how I had to act.

 

A few days later, John, an American volunteer decides to join me and the idea to raise a family dedicated to these children without root and without roof was then imperative upon me.


This family will consist of five pillars, the foundations of our association, Pilgrims of Charity:

  • Join, live and serve these children by discovering their needs and by joining them where they are by pouring human and divine love, by listening to them.
  • To humanize railway platforms, slums, and for that our action is very simple.
  • Bring help and medical care.
  • Give the education through animations and living environment which join them (hygiene, prevention, nutrition and also learn to manage a budget).
  • Help them so that they find a place which welcomes them, this particularly for the handicapped children. For emergencies, the young people will be welcomed within the House of the Happiness. For a definitive accommodation, we work with the Brothers Missionaries of Charity, organization established in 1963 and totally dedicated in the service of the poorest.

 Les Pèlerins de la Charité | 7 Allée des Brigamilles | FR-18570 Trouy
e-mail: pilgrimsofcharity@gmail.com