c. 1996 Religion News Service

CALCUTTA, India (RNS)-In his classic 1985 work,”City of Joy,”author Dominique Lapierre profiled Polish priest Stephan Kovalski, who set out to live among the poorest of Calcutta’s poor.

But Kovalski’s real identity is the Rev. Francis Laborde, who, more than 30 years after he eschewed the comforts of the West to live in an insect-ridden and rat-infested hovel in a Calcutta slum, is still at work in the city.”God lives among the poor, and so it is among the poor that one finds God,”declared Laborde, a Parisian who a few years ago became an Indian citizen.

Laborde has shunned publicity despite the reincarnation of”City of Joy”as a Hollywood film. But his achievements nonetheless have won recognition, in large part for a series of projects that have helped transform the district of Howrah, located across the River Hooghly from Calcutta.

Calcutta, which is presently suffering from a severe malaria epidemic, is not the safest place to live, as Laborde can attest-he contracted several serious illnesses while evangelizing in the slums.

Still, the weathered 68-year-old Laborde regularly travels by motor scooter from his parish church in the city to visit the slum projects he set up. As he carried a visitor on the back of his scooter, Laborde pointed to vendors selling bright flowers that will garland idols in Hindu temples.”The offerings to gods-marigolds, roses and jasmine-are turned into garlands on every street corner,”he said, shaking his head.”But there is no sign of any concern for the common good amid all this human agony and despair.” Laborde was weaving through Calcutta’s chaotic traffic to visit one of his projects, Howrah Southpoint, which cares for abandoned handicapped children. It is near the slum nicknamed the”City of Joy,”where Laborde settled in 1965 and lived for many years while helping the poor.

Lapierre’s book sold more than 5 million copies in the first few years. So great was its impact that Pope John Paul II invited Lapierre to the Vatican to discuss its message. According to the author, the pope told him:”It is an inspiration for the world.” Lapierre changed the names and some identities of the protagonists in”City of Joy,”and to ensure their anonymity, the author said he also changed”certain situations.” Laborde said he hadn’t seen the 1992 movie rendition of”City of Joy,”and thus couldn’t comment on the film, in which Patrick Swayze stars as Dr. Max Loeb, a dispirited Jewish American doctor who experiences a spiritual rebirth by working in the slums.

But the priest said that in reality the person who helped him was a Catholic physician from Lebanon.”When Dominique Lapierre prepared the book, it consisted of 20 percent interview with me, 40 percent of interviews with others, and 40 percent was pure imagination,”he said.”I don’t want to criticize the book, as it had a real spiritual impact, but I know at least one woman who felt hurt by the way she was depicted. The book made a dramatic impact on Lapierre’s life and his mission as a writer, and he has involved himself deeply in the problems of the poor. And what he has done has had a positive effect. He is a very gifted writer and has done a lot to help our home for the handicapped.” Laborde joined Le Prado, a Catholic society started last century.”Le Prado’s aim is to evangelize among the poor, and its work with (the) poor includes some missionary activities overseas, such as in South America, Africa and Asia. I was asked to go to Calcutta, which is the capital of poverty in the world,”he said.

After arriving in India, Laborde stayed in a slum area in Madras (“I can still recall the stench of excrement”), and then moved into a tiny hut in a Calcutta slum.

He eschewed his priestly robes in favor of casual clothes, wearing a cassock only during Masses he held in the slums for the small Catholic community. His mission included helping lepers who lived there.

After nearly nine years in the slums, Laborde moved on to a new project, devoting 17 years to helping an aborigine tribe, the Oraon, that had settled in a slum area of Calcutta.

Laborde gets help from a loyal band of volunteers who have been with him from the start. They include Margaret Anthony, who is partially blind. She can still recall her amazement on hearing that a foreign priest had chosen to make his home among the huts in the disease-ridden alleys awash with slime.”In the late 1960s, Father Laborde started a school in the slums which I joined at the age of 9,”said Anthony, who is from a Catholic family.”It was my first chance to get an education. When Father Laborde set up a project to help poor people like myself, I wanted to be part of it.” For 17 years she has visited homes the size of rabbit hutches to check on the health of slum families.

Elena Tirkey, another Catholic, was helped by Laborde in the mid-1960s at a time when her widowed mother was struggling to raise four children.”He was like a messiah to us,”said Tirkey, who now helps run Howrah Southpoint.”These slums truly are a `city of joy.’ The poor here have almost nothing and yet they are happy and help one another.”

MJP END MURPHY