TOP STORY: MOTHER TERESA: Mother Teresa has left her mark on Calcutta and the world

c. 1996 Religion News Service CALCUTTA, India _ It was nearly 50 years ago that Mother Teresa rescued the first emaciated woman from the filth-strewn streets of this city. The woman was lying face-down in the gutter. Half her face had been eaten away by insects and rats. Far worse horrors are the norm here […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

CALCUTTA, India _ It was nearly 50 years ago that Mother Teresa rescued the first emaciated woman from the filth-strewn streets of this city. The woman was lying face-down in the gutter. Half her face had been eaten away by insects and rats.

Far worse horrors are the norm here in Calcutta, which India’s late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi called the”city of the dying.” And now, as Mother Teresa lies near death in a Calcutta hospital, it’s easy to imagine that the first home she established for the dying would be shrouded in a pall of gloom. And yet within its dimly lit rooms, where a few parrots chirp in cages, there is a palpable sense of hope and love as sisters in blue-bordered white saris care for patients with tuberculosis, pneumonia and other serious illnesses.


Mother Teresa has left her mark on this city, where rickshaws are still pulled by hand, and millions of refugees from Bangladesh live destitute in overcrowded slums. It was here that the lone, sari-clad nun known as Sister Teresa established the Missionaries of Charity in 1948, a religious order dedicated to the poorest of the poor.

Born Agnes Bojaxhiu to an Albanian Catholic family in Skopje, in the former Yugoslavia, on August 26, 1910, she left her home in 1928 to join the Sisters of Loreto, an order of Irish missionary nuns. At 19, she arrived in India and, after six years of training, made her final vows. Donning the white robe, rosary and black veil of the Loreto sisters, she took the name Teresa, in honor of Therese of Lisieux, the French Carmelite nun and patron of missionaries, who was declared a saint in 1925.

But in 1948, heeding an inner call to perform a different kind of service, Sister Teresa received permission from the church to leave the Sisters of Loreto and establish a new and revolutionary religious community. Setting aside the European-style habit of the Loreto sisters, she donned the blue-and-white sari favored by the lowest-caste Indian women. Thus the Missionaries of Charity were born.”If the rich people can have the full service and devotion of so many nuns and priests, surely the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low can have the love and devotion of us few,”she wrote in her diary at the time.”`The Slum Sister’ they call me, and I am glad to be just that for His love and glory.” Working alone at first, and later joined by other women, Mother Teresa first established a home for the dying, then expanded her efforts to abandoned infants and children, the elderly, the ill and the destitute.

Today, Missionaries of Charity here and around the world live an ascetic life of prayer and service to others. For years the Calcutta motherhouse didn’t have a phone and still has no fax machine or computers. Yet today, the Missionaries of Charity are among the best-known religious orders in Christendom, a multinational organization with 500 centers in more than 100 countries, with 3,000 sisters, a religious order for priests and brothers, and tens of thousands of ancillary helpers.

The Missionaries of Charity operate schools, dispensaries, and homes for abandoned children, for lepers, AIDS sufferers and for the destitute and dying.

The order’s first non-Indian house was set up in Venezuela in 1965. In 1988, Mother Teresa established a home in the shadow of the Vatican to serve the homeless, many of whom are Gypsies, who wander the streets of Rome. Today, Missionaries of Charity operate in cities around the world, from the Bronx to Beirut, and in areas from Belfast in Northern Ireland, to Israel’s Gaza Strip, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and has traveled the world, preaching a straightforward gospel of love, service and respect for life. A staunch traditionalist and supporter of Pope John Paul II, she also has been outspoken in her opposition to abortion and the death penalty, often writing letters of intercession for criminals awaiting execution.


But as widely as she has been praised, Mother Teresa has not been immune from criticism. A 1994 British TV documentary,”Hell’s Angel,”attempted to destroy her saintly image, criticizing her staunch opposition to birth control and abortion as a factor contributing to overpopulation and misery. She came under more attacks for her reported friendship with deposed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude”Baby Doc”Duvalier and his wife, Michelle.

British author Christopher Hitchens joined the fray with his 1995 book,”The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice”(Verso), attacking Mother Teresa for receiving contributions from former savings and loan czar Charles Keating and for writing a personal letter on Keating’s behalf in 1992 to Judge Lance Ito, on the eve of Keating’s sentencing for misusing funds of investors in Lincoln Savings and Loan.

In 1983, Mother Teresa fell seriously ill for the first time, in 1989 had a pacemaker installed, and in 1993 suffered a severe heart attack. A year later, she was bitten by a rabid dog she had stooped to pet in the street outside the Calcutta motherhouse.

Such setbacks might have disheartened lesser mortals. But in an interview earlier this year, Mother Teresa’s morale appeared unaffected as she chatted with a visitor on a bench outside her chapel, her fingers gnarled, her misshapen feet in rough sandals.”Father forgive them for they know not what they do. Jesus said the same thing,”she said, referring to the media attacks.”I don’t know what these journalists in London were thinking when they made their program attacking me. My own life isn’t important. It’s the work that matters. Let them come and work in one of my homes for the dying and let them see the saris that our sisters wear that are sewn by lepers at our homes.” Mother Teresa said she was too busy to worry about such things,”as long as somebody is dying of hunger, or a child is crying through lack of attention.”As the Father has loved me, we will love one another,”she said.”If I stop to think about what is happening in the world, that is time taken away from my work. A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves. The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, the fruit of service is peace.” She spoke of her pride of a new Missionaries of Charity program that has removed more than 37 mentally retarded girls from a Calcutta prison. The girls now reside with nuns in the Tengra district of the city, where they are being taught handicrafts.”We now have 15 centers operating in Russia, and hope to soon have our first in China. I recently was in Shanghai, and hope to start a home there to help children in need,”she said, adding that it was”very beautiful”the way her homes have been helping AIDS sufferers in America to die in peace.

She has also been criticized for her traditional Catholic views, including her commitment to the anti-abortion campaign, ideas that are regarded as anathema by those who point to the spiraling population in the Third World.”Every month, hundreds of homeless babies are brought to my homes,”she said.”Birth is life. God gives life and to take away that life is murder. The evil of abortion is seen when babies are brought to my homes who have been deformed after the mothers took abortion drugs.” India has not been an easy country in which to do missionary work. A major mail fraud was recently discovered, she said, that for years had diverted checks sent to her and deposited in accounts abroad. Mother Teresa praised the Indian government for its help over the years _ donations are untaxed and the national airline gave her free air tickets.”I have had some very large donations from wealthy people, but most of those who give are ordinary people. The other day I had a letter from a church in America and inside was a letter from someone who had enclosed a check for $3. A gift of one rupee means as much to me as milk brought to help feed our homeless children.”Every day some miracle happens. If I want to open a new home, it has never taken me more than one month to raise the money. We don’t rely on government grants for our work and the sisters don’t accept anything for their work: purity of love and concern in action all for the glory of God.”

MJP END MURPHY

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