Maria Grabis

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Sister Maria Theresia Grabis SDS (* 1927 near Breslau , Lower Silesia Province ; † October 17, 2015 in Alexandria , Egypt ) was a German Roman Catholic nun . She was internationally known as the "mother of the garbage people " in Cairo .

Life

Maria Grabis was one of seven children of a Silesian farming family. After her father was arrested by the Gestapo , her mother fled with all of the children. At the age of 14, Grabis was already involved in a Salvatorian convent . At the age of 20 she joined the order of the Salvatorian Sisters and learned to be a seamstress .

From 1950 she worked abroad. She lived in Rome for nine years and in Jordan for three years , and from 1966 in Egypt . She got involved in women's projects in Middle Egypt. Since 1969 she has worked closely with the Greek Catholic community in Cairo, and later also with the Protestant and Catholic pastors abroad. She founded numerous household centers and literacy groups in Cairo, such as the sewing and embroidery school with a sister group in Aklmin near Sohag (1966–1969) and sewing and household centers for illiterate women in Old Cairo, Garden City , Agouza and Fagallah (since 1969 ).

Since 1979 Grabis lived in the Moytamadeia garbage settlement in a district of Cairo with Copts and Muslims who live as Zabbalin (garbage collectors and separators). With the support of the Protestant pastor abroad Johannes Unkrig and the Catholic pastor abroad, Father Gumbert Ludwig OFM , she founded a cooperative under Egyptian law under state resistance .

The cooperative set up a school ( "Peace School" ), where 500 students from the poorest backgrounds of garbage collectors and separators receive training. The “Sister Maria Kindergarten” allows children to be fetched from the rubbish dumps and looked after. A sewing school teaches women how to sell the products they make and thus earn a living. In 1995 Sr. Maria built a health and holiday center on the Sinai in Ras Sudr on the Red Sea , financed by donations , where hundreds of people from the garbage settlement can spend short stays every year. In Germany the relief fund Sr. Maria Kairo eV was founded. In 1998 Grabis commissioned the German Catholic chaplain abroad, Joachim Schroedel , to continue her work as her representative and deputy chairman of the cooperative.

She last lived in the Pelizaeus retirement home of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Charles Borromeo in Alexandria, Egypt, where she also died in October 2015.

Honors

  • Federal Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (awarded on December 8, 1996 by Federal President Roman Herzog in Bellevue Palace)
  • Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2005)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Joachim Schroedel : "Mother of the Cairo garbage people, Sr. Maria Grabis, deceased" , explicit.net, October 21, 2015
  2. ↑ a b "The Initiator" , Johanneum Lüneburg , accessed on October 21, 2015
  3. ↑ "Sister Maria's Garbage Town Project Moytamadea" ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 21, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.itservices-rw.de
personal data
SURNAME Grabis, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grabis, Maria Theresia (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic nun
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH near Breslau , Province of Lower Silesia
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 2015
Place of death Alexandria , Egypt