In India, School Principal Works to Changes Lives of the Poor

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• JIM LEHRER:

  Now, the story of a Catholic school principal who is changing children's lives in Calcutta, India. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro has that story. A version of his report aired on the PBS program "Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly."

  SISTER CYRIL MOONEY, principal of Loreto Day School: Left, left, left, right, left, left, left…

  FRED DE SAM LAZARO, NewsHour correspondent: With her habit, her whistle, she's the sergeant of this morning drill, in many ways the old-fashioned parochial school principal who can strike terror in encounters like this…

• SISTER CYRIL MOONEY:

  Are you aware that you tried to cheat?

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  … encounters the student will carry well into adulthood.

• SISTER CYRIL MOONEY:

  So now say to me, "Yes, Sister, I'm very sorry. I did cheat."

• YOUNG FEMALE STUDENT:

  Yes, Sister, I am very sorry. I did cheat.

• SISTER CYRIL MOONEY:

  You did cheat, right? Look at the tears. Are you sorry? OK. It shouldn't happen again, all right? Once the tears come, you know that the contrition is there, you know?

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  And so you think she's cured, basically?

• SISTER CYRIL MOONEY:

  She won't do it again. None of them ever do it a second time when they're caught.

• FRED DE SAM LAZARO:

  Sister Cyril Mooney has transformed the lives of thousands of children in this school and across the city of Calcutta.

  She grew up in Ireland, where she joined the Loreto Order and went to India in 1956. She got a PhD in zoology and began teaching in the elite English-language Loreto schools begun during colonial days.

  But she found the quiet, comfortable life discomforting.

• SISTER CYRIL MOONEY:

  I was appalled by the poverty almost outside our gate.