Dr. Pfau, who had converted to Roman Catholicism and become a nun, discovered her calling to help lepers coincidentally. By chance, she visited a leper colony in Karachi, where she met one of the thousands of Pakistani patients afflicted with the disease. “I could not believe that humans could live in such conditions,” she told the Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune in 2014. She soon transformed it into the hub of a network of 157 medical centers that treated tens of thousands of Pakistanis infected with leprosy. Dr. Pfau wrote four books about her work in Pakistan, including “To Light a Candle” (1987), which was translated into English.

Source: New York Times August 15, 2017 19:41 UTC