CNA Staff, Jul 23, 2020 / 15:32 pm
Sister Ruth Lewis, a Pakistani nun who dedicated her life to helping underprivileged people with disabilities, died Monday following coronavirus complications.
Sister Ruth, head of Dar-ul-Sukun, a Karachi home for children with disabilities, died at age 77 at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi July 20. She was sent to hospital July 8 and placed on a ventilator after contracting the coronavirus.
She was a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Christ the King and helped establish Dar-ul-Sukun in 1969 alongside Sr. Gertrude Lemmens, a Dutch nun who founded the organization. Lewis led the organization after Lemmens' death in 2000.
"She took care of such children all her life. The children whom their own families abandoned, children who were called monsters because of deformities and chronic disability, children whose sight could traumatize a layman, children whom people visited to cherish their fully functional body and brain," Dar-ul-Sukun said in a July 21 statement on Facebook.