Nuns help rebuild lives at Ludgerovice home for women
The village of Ludgerovice is a small village on the outskirts of Ostrava, in the former coal and steel heartlands of North Moravia. Turn right off the main road, go past the local church, and you'll see a building called the Saint Euphrasia Home. There, an organisation called the Sisters of the Good Shepherd provide material and moral support to women and children whose worlds have fallen apart. RP recently visited the home, to see the nuns of the congregation at work. Alena Skodova reports:
The first community of Sisters of the Good Shepherd in the Czech Republic was established in Ostrava in 1992, on the initiative of Archbishop Jan Graubner. Ostrava is an industrial city with severe unemployment and numerous social problems, and so the sisters' help to women and children is badly needed. In 1997, work was completed on the Ludgerovice shelter. It's managed by an international team, and one of them is Sister Prisca from Sri Lanka: Women in the home have all kinds of problems ranging from serious diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, to various kinds of addiction. Sister Doris, who is Maltese, works with young Roma mothers and their children, and she explained to us how she saw the situation of the Roma minority in the Czech Republic: The congregation's motto is: "One human being is worth more than the whole world", and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd seem to live by it.
