KARACHI: Re: Baji Mariam 2 --
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Dear Fr. James:
We are posting your interesting subject message on the Catholic Goan Network (CGN) and invite you and other friends from back home to join CGN online by visiting:
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Please also check the KARACHI Country Webpage.
Thanks and God Bless:
Clare & Pat de Sousa
Maryland, USA
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In a message dated 11/6/2003 3:45:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, jimdes@cyber.net.pk writes:
04/11/03 (April 11, 03)
I came to know Mariam Bugeja in the late 90’s and that too by chance. I had heard a lot of a woman called Baji Mariam and of her work in Lahore, and I was looking forward to meeting her some day.
She had come to Karachi after having gifted the buildings that were put up by her for the rehabilitation of released prisoners (RP), separate buildings for men and for women and children, worth 11 lac. The way this amount came in and the money for the food and the maintenance continues to come in, is beyond the scope of world’s wisest economists’ budgeting and planing . It is based on Baji Mariam’s total faith and trust in God who is Love.
Mariam lives the Gospel, and she is a living witness to Matt. 6/25-34. When the Superior of the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide (SOC) in Lahore approached Baji Mariam to take over the work of caring for these RPs, since the special charism of their congregation was to look after the mentally disturbed/deranged, Baji Mariam just handed over/ gifted the entire property in Lahore to them.
Baji Mariam saw this as a call from God to come to the help of prisoners in Sindh and Baluchistan. That is how we were privileged to encounter and be inspired by this person. She began visiting the jails from Karachi to Quetta , getting prisoners released and in some cases sending them back to their country. When I met her she was busy working on the release documents of 62 Bangladeshi’s (all non- Christians) from the Karachi Jail, at the Police Head Office and the Bangladesh Consulate. When she had got the clearance from the Karachi Police Hdqtrs., something unheard of happened. The Superintendent of Police gave her a lac of rupees for their tickets !
I was chaplain to the Bengali Catholics from 1963- 1973 and was involved with their repatriation. I was in touch with the ICRC and UNHCR.up to 1973.
However there was one young man (Bengali) who approached me in the ’98 with very pathetic letters from his mother in Dinajpur BD pleading with him to come back home before she died. This young man Papu would come to me every week begging me to send him back to BD. There was no way it could be done as he had neither a Pakistani ID card nor any document stating he was a Bangladeshi. Baji Mariam got him the BD travel documents and he was able to go back to his family. Mariam even offered to pay for his ticket.
What happened to the 62 Bengalis? On the day fixed for their flight to BD they were brought straight from the Jail to the airport. Baji Mariam and a BD Consulate officer were at the airport. Baji Mariam’s compassionate heart’s eye noticed that the clothes on their persons and a cloth ‘theli’ with nothing in it were all their possessions. A Muslim woman had once met Mariam and given her, her visiting card. Baji Mariam phoned this person and said “ Yeh log khali hath jate hain”. Believe it or not, that woman drove to the airport and handed Baji Mariam 62 envelopes with a thousand rupees in each.
When Mariam came to Karachi she stayed in a room behind a small chapel in Ayub Goth basti from where she visited the jails. But there were some RPs who had no where to go. Here again Providence arranged a place to house them. The MSSP fathers, because of the shortage of personnel, left Karachi temporarily for their parishes and otherinstitutions in the Punjab. They allowed Baji Mariam to accommodate the RPs in their house in Gulshan e Iqbal. Last year they decided to come back and Baji Mariam had to vacate the place in a couple of months. The very day that she received this intimation, she had gone to visit Bishop Simeon and he told her that he had just received a call from Bishop Lobo asking him how he could get in touch with Baji Mariam. So he asked her to call Bishop Lobo from his office. When she called him he requested her to come to Pindi for the prisoners in Pindi, Kohat, and Peshawar. Bishop Lobo told her that he had a house for her in Peshawar. In a short time Mariam packed up and took her 20 RPs with her pets, in her words : kuta, bili, murghi, bandar, tota, sab ke sath ham Peshawar jate hain. Like Abraham she goes where the Lord wants her to be.
Another 20 or more RPs from the Pindi- Peshawar area are to be released from jail and they have no place to go to. The house in Peshawar cannot accommodate them. She hears that Lourdes Convent is for sale, a place where there is a chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament has been housed. Does the Lord not want this place to be in the possession of his people where they can come together in his house which for so many years has been the place of his Eucharistic Presence? These are some of the considerations that spur Baji Mariam to buy Lourdes Convent. Sixty lacs? Does that amount deter her? No. For one whose trust is in God. there is no obstacle.
Baji Mariam came down with Fr. Steiger to Karachi last week to negotiate the Lourdes Convent deal. I was present at Malir when Sr. Joyce informed Baji Mariam and Fr. Steiger that the lawyer had prepared the papers for the sale deed. At that time Baji Mariam had twenty three lacs in Fr. Steiger’s account, since she has no bank account. Three days after her return to Peshawar she phoned me and told me that on that day she had received a donation of eleven lacs and she now has thirty six lacs altogether. She must have received other donations amounting to two lacs before this eleven lac donation.
Sister, may I appeal to you to give her a donation of ten lacs? I’m also going to request Bishop Evarist for a ten lac donation from the Archdiocese, since Baji Mariam will put the property in the name of the Archdiocese. She has no possessions.
On Friday 7th , a group of young people is meeting and this letter will be read to them so that they come to know who this person Baji Mariam is and what she does. I’m confident that in a week’s time they will raise more than five lacs. I’m saying this because when I spoke to someone about Baji Mariam’s desire to buy Lourdes Convent she immediately said: “Father, I would like to give one lac. Can I give you a cheque?” When I asked Baji Mariam for her account number. I came to know that she has no bank account! From the US some one has sent me twenty thousand and here a donor has given one hundred dollars. So already there is one lac twenty five thousand in the pipe line in a week’s time another five lac will be there. So Baji Mariam should be able to transfer to Karachi this month.
Fr. James deSouza