Dr. Pfau, who had converted to Roman Catholicism and become a nun, discovered her calling to help lepers coincidentally.<\/p>\n
In 1960, she was waylaid in Pakistan by a passport foul-up en route to a posting in India by her Roman Catholic order, the Society of Daughters of the Heart of Mary. By chance, she visited a leper colony in Karachi, where she met one of the thousands of Pakistani patients afflicted with the disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe must have been my age \u2014 I was at this time not yet 30 \u2014 and he crawled on hands and feet into this dispensary, acting as if this was quite normal,\u201d she told the BBC in 2010, \u201cas if someone has to crawl there through that slime and dirt on hands and feet, like a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
The encounter stunned her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could not believe that humans could live in such conditions,\u201d she told the Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune in 2014. \u201cThat one visit, the sights I saw during it, made me make a key life decision.\u201d<\/p>\n