Father Uribe honored

Selected as the recipient of the Father Lee Tae-suk Service Award

Father Luis Maria Uribe, center, smiles with children in this file photo.

By Kwon Ji-youn

Father Luis Maria Uribe, 69, was selected as the recipient of the Father Lee Tae-suk Service Award, the Lee Tae-suk Memorial Society said Monday.

Uribe, a blue-eyed Spanish priest, has spent the last 33 years caring for patients suffering from Hansen’s disease, since he began working in 1980 for the Sungsimwon, a nursing home for such patients located in South Gyeongsang Province. The facility is home to some 140 Hansen’s patients and 10 disabled children.

He came to Korea in 1976, and began caring for these patients because he knew that happiness was contagious.

Those suffering from Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, find it difficult to utilize public transportation due to prejudices, so Uribe drove them around and served as a mentor to their children by participating in their school events on behalf of their ailing parents. Since 1997, he has been responsible for his patients’ funeral arrangements as well.

“To these people, Father Uribe is not just a priest — he is family,” said a Sungsimwon staffer. “He has dedicated 33 years of his life to the health and welfare of those suffering from Hansen’s disease, just as the late Father John Lee Tae-suk did in Sudan. He gets along well with the patients, treating them like friends.”

The Father Lee Tae-suk Service Award pays tribute to a missionary who provided medical care in Sudan from 2001 to 2010. Lee died in January 2011 while caring for the poor in Africa.

The award, which was established in 2011, recognizes those who have devoted significant portions of their lives to help the underprivileged. The inaugural award went to Park Mu-yeol, who built the Koramtola Hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world.