ASIA/INDIA - The permission to stay for good has been confirmed for a Montfortian missionary who has been committed to looking after, for over thirty years, as Mother Teresa, leprosy patients and sufferers

Bangalore (Agenzia Fides) - Sister Jacqueline Jean McEwan, known as "Sister Jean", is an English missionary Montfortian Catholic nun who has been committed to looking after leprosy patients and people suffering from Bangalore. Compared to Mother Teresa for her great commitment and devotion to the people who suffer most, the religious woman’s formal request to renew her permit to stay in the country was inexplicably denied by the government. The news began to arouse great distress among those with whom she has always worked and who know her. On 27 July, the Indian Minister of Interior, Palaniappan Chidambaram, announced that the 63 -year old English nun "can stay as long as she wants", adding that the previous report was the result of an error, perhaps due to failure to complete the documents submitted . "It makes no sense that I return in the UK when my people are here", Sister Jean said to the newspaper Times of India, declaring her firm intention to stay in Bangalore among those who are her "friends and family ... the sick of leprosy. " The failure to grant the visa would have ended her valuable work at Bangalore's Sumanahalli Society, where she has been involved in looking after the sick and lepers in the country since her arrival in 1982. Sister Jean lives and works at the Sumanahalli Society, a structure with four clinics and a rehabilitation center for people with HIV and AIDS as well as other disabilities such as leprosy. Despite the Indian government had declared the disease "eliminated" by the standards of WHO, 130 000 Indians contract this disease every year. The structures of the Society Sumanahalli provide treatment and care to 340 patients, while Sister Jeans’ mobile clinic assists other thousand lepers in the slums of Bangalore. Father George Kannanthanam, head of the establishment, said in a statement to the Guardian that Sister Jean "knows by name every single person suffering from leprosy, despite the difficulties of Indian names". According to the priest there is no other person capable of assisting patients as prepared and committed as the nun English. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 07/30/2011)