Pakistani nation observes third death anniversary of Dr Ruth Pfau

Pakistani nation observes third death anniversary of Dr Ruth Pfau.

The third death anniversary of Dr. Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau, who devoted more than 55 years of her life to fighting leprosy in Pakistan, is being observed on Monday.

Pakistani nation observes third anniversary

She was a German–Pakistani Catholic nun of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, and a physician.

She moved from Germany to Pakistan in 1961.

Pakistanis hail Germany-born doctor and nun Ruth Pfau for her services for leprosy patients.

Pfau was born on September 9, 1929, in Leipzig, Germany, to Lutheran parents, Walter and Martha Pfau.

She was the fourth of five daughters, and also had a baby brother.

As a teenager, she barely survived World War II; on the night of December 4, 1943, at the age of 14, she witnessed a bombing that destroyed her house.
Later, she was inspired to become a doctor after her baby brother became ill and died.

After the war, at the age of 19, she followed her father to Wiesbaden in West Germany, where she pursued an education in medicine at the University of Mainz in Marburg.

While a student, she met an elderly Dutch Christian woman, a concentration camp survivor, who had dedicated her life to “preaching love and forgiveness”.

After rejecting a marriage proposal from a fellow student, she was baptised in the Evangelical tradition in 1951, before her conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1953.

Following her conversion, she joined the Society of Daughters of the Heart of Mary in 1957 at the age of 28.

GTV