{"id":326456,"date":"2014-05-28T03:16:56","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T01:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/6th-klaus-hemmerle-award-goes-to-ruth-pfau\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:57:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:57:17","slug":"6th-klaus-hemmerle-award-goes-to-ruth-pfau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/6th-klaus-hemmerle-award-goes-to-ruth-pfau\/","title":{"rendered":"6th Klaus Hemmerle Award goes to Ruth Pfau"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20140527-02\"Ruth Pfau is a medical doctor who generously devoted her efforts and service to Pakistan, working for peace in a way that has reached far beyond feild of health assistance. Evangelical Bishop Christian Krause called her a Christian woman who has \u201covercome the abysses between men and women in a society dominated by men; between rich and poor, between tradition and modernity, between foreign cultures.\u201d She is a religious sister who has brought the experience of Christ\u2019s love to people of all backgrounds and religious convictions,\u201d said President of the Pakistan Bishops Conference, Archbishop Joseph Coutts, as he thanked her in name of the Pakistani Church. With the help of the German Leprosy and Tuberculosis Relief Association (DAHW) Ruth Pfau has built a hospital in the city of Karachi. Because of her work in the management of leprosy and tuberculosis she was appointed Secretary of State by the Pakistan government. For more than twenty years she has been working in collaboration with the Christoffel Mission offering assistance to the blind, and gaining the esteem of a nearly entirely Muslim society. Appreciation for this woman who was born in 1929 was also expressed by the Bishop of Aquisgrana, Heinrich Mussinghoffe and by Focolare president Maria Voce, who called her a \u201cwitness of God\u2019s love and builder of a more just and fraternal society.\u201d Every two years this award is conferred by the Focolare Movement in honour of the spiritual patrimony of Hemmerle. What does Ruth Pfau have in common with the theologian Klaus Hemmerle who was once bishop of Aquisgrana and a contemporary of Ruth? Television journalist and theology professor Michael Albus answers this question in the keynote address he gave at the Dome Church of Aachen (Aquisrana) where the award ceremony was held on May 8th. \"20140527-01\"<\/a>\u201cShe had the courage to dare to take the plunge, to decide to help without hesitation, wherever there was need: without theoretical, political or even theological justification. And without asking \u2013 as happens in our capitalistic world \u2013 how she would be repaid.\u201d This is what these two people have in common, along with their desire to build \u201ca Church that salvages God in the world, from dying of cold,\u201d as St Martin reminds us. Then Ruth spoke: \u201cWe can help one another to be better people and full of humanity,\u201d she stated. For her, one sign of this humanity is \u201cwasting time.\u201d She was taught that lesson during her time in Asia. You very rarely find it in a hospital or house for the elderly in Germany. For her, this signals a loss of humanity. She was pleased to accept the award because it gave honour to this \u201cwasting time\u201d, although the motivation for the award highlighted her ability to \u201cbuild bridges and create unity through her radical devotion to the poor, based on her faith which she lived with strength and conviction in an environment charged with conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Klaus Hemmerle Award has been conferred on Dr Ruth Pfau, German woman religious, who for many years has been working in Pakistan in the battle against infectious dieseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}