Dear friends of Brother Ephrem, dear friends of the Austrian Doctors!
Our feelings are mixed. We are sad because one of our dearest comrades-in-arms for a better and fairer world, Brother Ephrem Tirkey, passed away on January 22, 2021 in Kolkata. However, we are also deeply grateful for his contribution to a better and fairer world and also for the fact that he was able to fall asleep peacefully after several months of serious illness. The grief over his death becomes easier when you consider his fulfilled and unique life.
Brother Ephrem was born in 1938 as the youngest child of small farmers in Orissa. As the last-born, he was given the chance of an education and was allowed to go to the nearest missionary school to become a priest. However, he decided to become a teacher, and so it was that he joined the Franciscan order and became a teacher there. A very good teacher. Because of his abilities, he was soon principal, most recently in Mumbai. When he was forbidden to teach children from poor backgrounds together with the children of the Indian elite, he decided to leave the safe haven of church structures. He was fascinated by the work of Mother Theresa, came to Calcutta and met Br. Laborde and Br. Gaston from the Prado Order. Coming from Europe, they had settled in the slums of Calcutta to give help to people who had been forgotten by everyone and to share their simple lives with them in the slums. The story of these two men is recorded and filmed in the book “The City of Joy”. Ephrem became part of this group, became a Prado friar by papal dispensation and left the Franciscan order.
Still a teacher at heart, his vision was to provide children with an education. He knew from his own experience that it was the basis for a self-determined life.
“How is that supposed to work?” Werner Waldmann asked him when he met him during a medical mission in Calcutta. “Lord knows,” Ephrem replied wisely and modestly.
Br. Ephrem had faith, faith in life, faith in making the seemingly impossible possible, faith in God. And so, over the years, the St. Francis Assisi School, one of our partner schools, was born. Finally, a place to become human for over 600 children. Year after year, for almost 30 years now. Many other social projects followed, most recently a home for girls suffering from tuberculosis from our medical projects.
Ephrem’s joy in helping was unbroken until the end, his laughter remains unforgettable!
Perhaps you would like to hear Br. Ephrem’s laughter again?
Perhaps you have time to watch the movie “The School of Brother Ephrem“? It pays off!
