Priest Expands Century-Old Cemetery For Leprosy Patients To Protect Their Dignity
27/6/08
Whenever a person with leprosy dies here, five men spend several hours finding a place to dig a grave in a 108-year-old cemetery. “Many times we dig up remains of dead people because they have been buried without coffins or headstones,” Bui Van Son told UCA News. Son and the other men, who are children of leprosy patients, provide grave-digging service for patients from the state-run Van Mon Center for People with Leprosy in Thai Binh province’s Vu Thu district, 110 kilometers southeast of Ha Noi.The center, erected by foreign missioners in 1900 and confiscated by the government after northern communists defeated colonial French troops in 1954, sits 500 meters from the cemetery.