AUSTINTOWN — A local pastor and church organization have helped those in India battling leprosy by taking part in the Leper Project, which involved the construction this year of a special hospital in Tenali.

A Struthers resident, the Rev. Michael Pangio, founder / president of Abundant Ministries Fellowship Church Outreach Center in Austintown, said he and his wife, the Rev. Joann Pangio, have been part of mission work since the 1980s in Africa and Asia.

The Youngstown native has pastored the Austintown church for 10 years.

In 2018, Michael Pangio went to India for a leadership conference and learned the Abundant Ministries Church in Tenali had a doctor, Dr. Jangam Syam, who used to work for Mother Teresa in Calcutta helping lepers.

After Mother Teresa died, Syam was later transferred to Tenali and assigned to work with lepers.

“What happens there are the lepers are not permitted to go to the hospital. He was given a motorcycle and had to go to 70 villages assigned to him to help the lepers. There is medication that he has that does not heal the leper of the leprosy, but it stops it from being contagious,” Pangio said.

Leprosy is a disease that eats away at a person’s flesh.

Pangio said while in most places of the world leprosy is eliminated, in India there are more than 100,000 new cases per year.

Pangio said Syam told the Rev. Pamula Isaiah, director of the Abundant Ministries Church in Tenali, that something needed to be done for the lepers, so a tent outreach ministry at the villages was started.

“They would feed them and bring them blankets and clothes and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Pangio said.

Pangio has been to India since the late 1980s, and was there in 2018 and 2019, but was not able to return this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. India, he explained, has the second-largest population in the world behind China so there is concern of spread of COVID-19.

UNIQUE FACILITY

“When I saw the lepers in the villages I knew I had to do something for them. I and Rev. Isaiah knew we had to do more to help the lepers so we (Abundant Ministries) bought land and built a lepers’ hospital in Tenali. It is the only one in that entire state and only lepers can go there. We are also building a church nearby,” he said.

Pangio said the Abundant Ministries Lepers Hospital is a 40-bed unit mainly for lepers in the last stages of their lives. There is also an outpatient clinic where 35 to 55 lepers are treated each day, he said.

Dedication of the hospital was held in November.

Pangio plans to return to India when the coronavirus pandemic has lifted. The hospital, clinic and church will be overseen by Isaiah.

“We are treating them for their wounds and fitting them for prosthetics. The government is providing the medication for free to help with their treatment which helps them to become noncontagious. They have to get an inoculation every month, for 12 months, to help stop the leprosy from being contagious,” Pangio said.

He said because of the caste system in India lepers are ignored.

“We purposely focused on reaching them and helping them,” Pangio said. “We will be feeding 100 lepers per day that are residents in the hospital and going to the outpatient clinic for treatment,” he said.

NEW CHURCH

The second phase of the project is the construction of a church for them.

“The foundation has been laid for the church and pastors have been set in place to minister to the lepers and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them in the hospital, clinic and church.” he said.

Pangio said Abundant Ministries also has constructed Christian schools and orphanages in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America in addition to 2,000 Christian churches. He said Bible schools also have been created for people to receive training for the ministry.

“We focus on Third World countries and reaching people through the churches, and this has been a real help to many people,” he said.

Pangio said oftentimes, members of local church congregations contribute financially and also go on the mission trips.

‘We try to focus our ministry on places in the world where Christianity is struggling,” he said.

Recent projects by the church organization also include a completed orphanage project and Christian school project in Liberia.

bcoupland@tribtoday.com