10 nuns care for 88 women with special needs: Now they need our help

The Monastery of St. Petka of Izvor near Paracin, in addition to being a well-known and long-standing Orthodox shrine, is also home to dozens of people with special needs, who are cared for by only ten nuns.

The St. Petka Monastery is the only one in Serbia that has an institution for persons with mental disabilities and is therefore recognizable among the monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church, currently caring for 88 people.

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Appeals on social networks and various portals informing that the wards and the nuns had been starving for months turned out to be fake news. They do need help, but most of all they need people who would help care for the women with special needs, while you can find out how to help with money donations on the monastery's official website.

"They need love and attention the most"

"You need to have a lot of faith, patience and love to be able to care for people with developmental disabilities. They all like to be approached, to be caressed, this is the most important thing to them. They don't care about other very important things in ordinary life, but they are eager for love and attention. In a nutshell, we calm them down and live with them as a family. Then they come to life, they are in a good mood, laugh, it keeps them alive and gives them hope for life," Mother Glikerija, who takes care of the Home in Izvor and the St. Petka Monastery said a few years ago.

She told the daily Blic today that people of good will have already collected everything they need and thanked them for that - and that there is no need for further donation of products, but that those who feel they want to contribute can do so by donating money.

Since 2003 this monastery has been under the authority of the Social Welfare Center in Paracin, and before that it was a working unit of the Kuline Home near Nis.

War orphans found their home here

The Home was formed in 1946, and the tradition of caring for vulnerable and infirm persons in the St. Petka Monastery started in 1942 with the acceptance of orphans.

Initially, the occupants were located in the monastery's residence, while a building of the Home was built in 1966 in the monastery 's estate.

A few days ago, Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs Zoran Djordjevic visited the St. Petka Monastery. He spoke with nurses and nuns about the ways the ministry could help them.

Minister Djordjevic said that this monastery is a true example of care giving, but that the ministry wants, within its competences and capabilities, to help and thus improve the work of these nurses and nuns, and in that way improve the living conditions for the wards.

"In addition to the material assistance that we will provide, we agreed to build a facility here in the future where excess clothing could be collected, and we also discussed solving some of their ongoing problems, such as heating and the like," said Djordjevic and stressed that he believes that such difficulties would no longer exist.

(Telegraf.rs/Blic)