Mother Teresa

The Nobel Peace Prize 1979

Biography

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje,

Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. Her family was of Albanian
descent. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of
God. She knew she had to be a missionary to spread the love
of Christ. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home in
Skopje and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community
of nuns with missions in India. After a few months' training
in Dublin she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she
took her initial vows as a nun. From 1931 to 1948 Mother
Teresa taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta, but the
suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent
walls made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she
received permission from her superiors to leave the convent
school and devote herself to working among the poorest of
the poor in the slums of Calcutta. Although she had no
funds, she depended on Divine Providence, and started an
open-air school for slum children. Soon she was joined by
voluntary helpers, and financial support was also
forthcoming. This made it possible for her to extend the
scope of her work.
On October 7, 1950, Mother Teresa received permission from
the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of
Charity", whose primary task was to love and care for those
persons nobody was prepared to look after. In 1965 the
Society became an International Religious Family by a
decree of Pope Paul VI.
Today the order comprises Active and Contemplative
branches of Sisters and Brothers in many countries. In 1963
both the Contemplative branch of the Sisters and the Active
branch of the Brothers was founded. In 1979 the
Contemplative branch of the Brothers was added, and in
1984 the Priest branch was established.
The Society of Missionaries has spread all over the world,
including the former Soviet Union and Eastern European
countries. They provide effective help to the poorest of the
poor in a number of countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, and they undertake relief work in the wake of
natural catastrophes such as floods, epidemics, and famine,
and for refugees. The order also has houses in North
America, Europe and Australia, where they take care of the
shut-ins, alcoholics, homeless, and AIDS sufferers.
The Missionaries of Charity throughout the world are aided
and assisted by Co-Workers who became an official
International Association on March 29, 1969. By the 1990s
there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40
countries. Along with the Co-Workers, the lay Missionaries
of Charity try to follow Mother Teresa's spirit and charism in
their families.
Mother Teresa's work has been recognised and acclaimed
throughout the world and she has received a number of
awards and distinctions, including the Pope John XXIII
Peace Prize (1971) and the Nehru Prize for her promotion of
international peace and understanding (1972). She also
received the Balzan Prize (1979) and the Templeton and
Magsaysay awards.
From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1971-1980, Editor-in-Charge Tore
Frängsmyr, Editor Irwin Abrams, World Scientific
Publishing Co., Singapore, 1997
This autobiography/biography was first published in the
book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and
republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always
state the source as shown above.
Angel Mother Teresa:
(CNN) -- "The other day I dreamed that I was at the gates of
heaven....And St. Peter said, 'Go back to Earth, there are no
slums up here.'"

These words, once spoken by Mother Teresa, vividly recall

the life of the late Roman Catholic nun and missionary
known as "the Saint of the Gutters." For Mother Teresa, who
devoted her life to the succor of the sick and the outcast,
earthly sufferers were nothing less than Christ in
"distressing disguise."

From an early age, the girl who would become Mother

Teresa felt the call to help others. Born August 26, 1910, in
Skopje (now in Macedonia), Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was the
daughter of Albanian parents -- a grocer and his wife. As a
public school student she developed a special interest in
overseas missions and, by age 12, realized her vocation was
aiding the poor.

She was inspired to work in India by reports sent home from

Jesuit missionaries in Bengal. And at 18, she left home to join
a community of Irish nuns with a mission in Calcutta. Here,
she took the name "Sister Teresa," after Saint Teresa of
Lisieux, the patroness of missionaries. She spent 17 years
teaching and being principal of St. Mary's high school in
Calcutta. However, in 1946, her life changed forever.

After taking a medical training course to prepare for her new

mission, she went into the slums of Calcutta to start a school
for children. They called her "Mother Teresa."
Through the years, Mother Teresa's fame grew, as did the
magnitude of her deeds...

Highlights of Mother Teresa's life

1910: Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu born August 27 in Skopje, in

what is now Macedonia, the youngest of three children of
an Albanian builder.

1928: Becomes novitiate in Loretto order, which ran mission

schools in India, and takes name Sister Teresa.

1929: Arrives in Calcutta to teach at St. Mary's High School.

1937: Takes final vows as a nun.

1946: While riding a train to the mountain town of

Darjeeling to recover from suspected tuberculosis, she said
she received a calling from God "to serve him among the
poorest of the poor."

1947: Permitted to leave her order and moves to Calcutta's

slums to set up her first school.

1950: Founds the order of Missionaries of Charity.

1952: Opens Nirmal Hriday, or "Pure Heart," a home for the

dying, followed next year by her first orphanage.
1962: Wins her first prize for her humanitarian work: the
Padma Shri award for distinguished service. Over the years,
she uses the money from such prizes to found dozens of
new homes.

1979: Wins Nobel Peace Prize.

1982: Persuades Israelis and Palestinians to stop shooting

long enough to rescue 37 retarded children from a hospital
in besieged Beirut.

1983: Has a heart attack while in Rome visiting Pope John

Paul II.

1985: Awarded Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian

award.

1989: Has a second and nearly fatal attack. Doctors implant

a pacemaker.

1990: Announces her intention to resign, and a conclave of

sisters is called to choose successor. In a secret ballot,
Mother Teresa is re-elected with only one dissenting vote --
her own -- and withdraws request to step down.

1991: Suffers pneumonia in Tijuana, Mexico, leading to

congestive heart failure, and is hospitalized in La Jolla,
California.

1993: Breaks three ribs in fall in May in Rome; hospitalized

for malaria in August in New Delhi; undergoes surgery to
clear blocked blood vessel in Calcutta in September.
1996: November 16, receives honorary U.S. citizenship.

1996: Falls and breaks collarbone in April; suffers malarial

fever and failure of the left heart ventricle in August; treated
for a chest infection and recurring heart problems in
September. Readmitted to hospital with chest pains and
breathing problems November 22.

1997: March 13, steps down as head of her order.

Among the 124 Awards Received some were:

Padmashree Award (from the President of India) August

1962
Pope John XXIII Peace Prize January 1971
John F. Kennedy International Award September 1971
Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding
November 1972
Templeton Prize for "Progress in Religion" April 1973
Nobel Peace Prize December 1979
Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India) March 1980
Order of Merit (from Queen Elizabeth) November 1983
Gold Medal of the Soviet Peace Committee August 1987
United States Congressional Gold Medal June 1997
At the time of Mother Teresa's death, The Sisters of the
Missionaries of Charity numbered 3,914 members, and were
established in 594 communities in 123 countries of the world.
Her work continues under the guidance of Sister Nirmala,
Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity Sisters. The
order has grown over 4,000 members in 697 foundations in
131 countries of the world.

Early life
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu / (Albanian Gonxha for "rosebud")
was born on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, now the capital of
the Republic of Macedonia. Although she was born on
August 26, she considered August 27, the day she was
baptized, to be her "true birthday." Although some sources
state that she was 10 when her father died, in an interview
with her brother, the Vatican documents her age at the time
as "about eight". She was the youngest of the children of a
family from Shkodër, Albania, born to Nikolle and Drana
Bojaxhiu. Her father was involved in Albanian politics. In
1919, after a political meeting, which left Skopje out of
Albania, he fell ill and died when Agnes was about eight
years old. After her father's death, her mother raised her as a
Roman Catholic. According to a biography by Joan Graff
Clucas, in her early years Agnes was fascinated by stories of
the lives of missionaries and their service, and by age 12 was
convinced that she should commit herself to a religious
life. She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a
missionary. She never again saw her mother or sister.

Agnes initially went to the Loreto

Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English, the
language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach school children
in India. She arrived in India in 1929, and began
her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains.
She took her first religious vows as a nun on May 24, 1931.
At that time she chose the name Teresa after Therese de
Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries. She took her
solemn vows on May 14, 1937, while serving as a teacher at
the Loreto convent school in eastern Calcutta.
Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was
increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in
Calcutta. A famine in 1943 brought misery and death to the
city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August
1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.

Missionaries of Charity
On September 10, 1946, Teresa experienced what she later
described as "the call within the call" while traveling to the
Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual
retreat. "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while
living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been
to break the faith." She began her missionary work with the
poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a
simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border,
adopted Indian citizenship, and ventured out into the
slums. Initially she started a school in Motijhil; soon she
started tending to the needs of the destitute and
starving. Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian
officials, including the Prime Minister, who expressed his
appreciation.
Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with
difficulties. She had no income and had to resort to begging
for food and supplies. Teresa experienced doubt, loneliness
and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life
during these early months. She wrote in her diary:
“ Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the ”
poverty of the cross. Today I learned a good lesson. The
poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While
looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms
 and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in
body and soul, looking for a home, food and health.
Then the comfort of Loreto [her former order] came to
tempt me. 'You have only to say the word and all that
will be yours again,' the Tempter kept on saying ... Of
free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to
remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my
regard. I did not let a single tear come.
Teresa received Vatican permission on October 7, 1950 to
start the diocesan congregation that would become
the Missionaries of Charity. Its mission was to care for, in
her own words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the
crippled, the blind, the lepers, and all those people who feel
unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people
that have become a burden to the society and are shunned
by everyone." It began as a small order with 13 members
in Calcutta; today it has more than 4,000 nuns
running orphanages, AIDS hospices, and charity centers
worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled,
aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of
floods, epidemics, and famine.
In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying
in space made available by the City of Calcutta. With the
help of Indian officials she converted an
abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the
Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat,
the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought
to the home received medical attention and were afforded
the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals
of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus
received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the
Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who
lived like animals to die like angels — loved and
wanted." Mother Teresa soon opened a home for those
suffering from Hansen's disease, commonly known as
leprosy, and called the hospice Shanti Nagar (City of
Peace). The Missionaries of Charity also established several
leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing
medication, bandages and food.
As the Missionaries of Charity took in increasing numbers of
lost children, Mother Teresa felt the need to create a home
for them. In 1955 she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan,
the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for
orphans and homeless youth.
The order soon began to attract both recruits and charitable
donations, and by the 1960s had
opened hospices, orphanages, and leper houses all
over India. Mother Teresa then expanded the order
throughout the globe. Its first house outside India opened
in Venezuela in 1965 with fivesisters. Others followed
in Rome, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968; during the 1970s the
order opened houses and foundations in dozens of countries
in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States. Her
philosophy and implementation have faced some criticism.
While noting how little evidence Mother Teresa's critics
were able to find against her, David Scott wrote that Mother
Teresa limited herself to keeping people alive rather than
tackling poverty itself. She has also been criticized for her
view on suffering: according to an article in the Alberta
Report, she felt that suffering would bring people closer to
Jesus. The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in
the Homes for the Dying has been criticised in the medical
press, notably The Lancet and the British Medical Journal,
which reported the reuse of hypodermic needles, poor living
conditions, including the use of cold baths for all patients,
and an anti-materialist approach that precluded the use of
systematic diagnosis.
The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963,
and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976.
Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-
Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-
Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. In answer to
the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also
began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests, and in 1984
founded with Fr. Joseph Langford the Missionaries of
Charity Fathers to combine the vocational aims of the
Missionaries of Charity with the resources of the ministerial
priesthood. By 2007 the Missionaries of Charity numbered
approximately 450 brothers and 5,000 nuns worldwide,
operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.

International charity
In 1982, at the height of the Siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa
rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by
brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli
army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by Red
Cross workers, she traveled through the war zone to the
devastated hospital to evacuate the young patients.
When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the
late 1980s, she expanded her efforts to Communist countries
that had previously rejected the Missionaries of Charity,
embarking on dozens of projects. She was undeterred by
criticism about her firm stand against abortion
and divorce stating, "No matter who says what, you should
accept it with a smile and do your own work."
Mother Teresa traveled to assist and minister to the hungry
in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl, and earthquake
victims inArmenia. In 1991, Mother Teresa returned for the
first time to her homeland and opened a Missionaries of
Charity Brothers home inTirana, Albania.
By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100
countries. Over the years, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of
Charity grew from twelve to thousands serving the "poorest
of the poor" in 450 centers around the world. The first
Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was
established in the South Bronx, New York; by 1984 the order
operated 19 establishments throughout the country.
The spending of the charity money received has been
criticized by some. Christopher Hitchens and the liberal
German magazine Stern have said that money that was
donated with the intention of it being spent on the keeping
of the poor was spent on other projects instead.

Declining health and death

Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome in 1983, while
visiting Pope John Paul II. After a second attack in 1989, she
received an artificial pacemaker. In 1991, after a battle
with pneumonia while in Mexico, she suffered further heart
problems. She offered to resign her position as head of the
Missionaries of Charity. But the nuns of the order, in a secret
ballot, voted for her to stay. Mother Teresa agreed to
continue her work as head of the order.
In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell and broke her collar bone.
In August she suffered from malaria and failure of the
left heart ventricle. Her hadheart surgery, but it was clear
that her health was declining. On March 13, 1997, she
stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity and
died on September 5, 1997. The Archbishop of Calcutta,
Henry Sebastian D'Souza, said he ordered a priest to
perform an exorcism on Mother Teresa with her permission
when she was first hospitalized with cardiac problems
because he thought she may be under attack by thedevil.
At the time of her death, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of
Charity had over 4,000 sisters, an associated brotherhood of
300 members, and over 100,000 lay volunteers, operating 610
missions in 123 countries. These included hospices and
homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and
tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counseling
programs, personal helpers, orphanages, and schools.

Global recognition and reception

Reception in India
Mother Teresa had first been recognised by the Indian
government more than a third of a century earlier when she
was awarded the Padma Shriin 1962. She continued to
receive major Indian rewards in successive decades
including, in 1972, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for
International Understanding and, in 1980, India's highest
civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.
Her official Biography was authored by an Indian Civil
Servant, Navin Chawla and published in 1992-“Mother
Teresa- The Authorized Biography” ISBN-10: 0756755484,
ISBN-13: 978-0756755485.
Indian views on Mother Teresa were not uniformly
favourable. Her critic Aroup Chatterjee, who was born and
bred in Calcutta but lived in London, reports that "she was
not a significant entity in Calcutta in her lifetime". Chatterjee
blames Mother Teresa for promoting a negative image of his
home city. Her presence and profile grated in parts of the
Indian political world, as she often opposed the Hindu
Right. The Bhartiya Janata Party clashed with her over the
Christian Dalits, but praised her in death, sending a
representative to her funeral. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
on the other hand, opposed the Government's decision to
grant her a state funeral. Its secretary Giriraj Kishore said
that "her first duty was to the Church and social service was
incidental" and accused her of favoring Christians and
conducting "secret baptisms" of the dying. But, in its front
page tribute, the Indian fortnightly Frontline dismissed these
charges as "patently false" and said that they had "made no
impact on the public perception of her work, especially in
Calcutta". Although praising her "selfless caring", energy
and bravery, the author of the tribute was critical of Mother
Teresa's public campaigning against abortion and that she
claimed to be non-political when doing so. More recently,
the Indian daily The Telegraph referred to her as "the Saint of
the Gutters", also mentioning calls for "Rome to investigate
whether she did anything to alleviate the condition of the
poor or just took care of the sick and dying and needed them
to further a sentimentally-moral cause".
Mother Teresa lay in state in St Thomas, Kolkata for one
week prior to her funeral, in September 1997. She was
granted a state funeral by the Indian Government in
gratitude for her services to the poor of all religions in India.

Reception in the rest of the world

President Ronald Reagan presents Mother Teresa with

the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White
House ceremony, 1985
In 1962, Mother Teresa received the Philippines-
based Ramon Magsaysay Award for International
Understanding, given for work in South or East Asia. The
citation said that "the Board of Trustees recognizes her
merciful cognizance of the abject poor of a foreign land, in
whose service she has led a new congregation". By the early
1970s, Mother Teresa had become an international celebrity.
Her fame can be in large part attributed to the
1969documentary Something Beautiful for God, which was
filmed by Malcolm Muggeridge and his 1971 book of the
same title. Muggeridge was undergoing a spiritual journey
of his own at the time. During the filming of the
documentary, footage taken in poor lighting conditions,
particularly the Home for the Dying was thought unlikely to
be of usable quality by the crew. After returning from India,
however, the footage was found to be extremely well lit.
Muggeridge claimed this was a miracle of "divine light"
from Mother Teresa herself. Others in the crew thought it
was due to a new type of ultra-
sensitive Kodak film. Muggeridge later converted to
Catholicism.
Around this time, the Catholic world began to honor Mother
Teresa publicly. In 1971, Paul VI awarded her the first Pope
John XXIII Peace Prize, commending her for her work with
the poor, display of Christian charity and efforts for
peace. She later received the Pacem in Terris Award
(1976). Since her death, Mother Teresa has progressed
rapidly along the steps towards sainthood, currently having
reached the stage of having been beatified.
Mother Teresa was honored by both governments and
civilian organizations. The United Kingdom and the United
States each repeatedly granted awards, culminating in
the Order of Merit in 1983, and honorary citizenship of the
United States received on November 16, 1996. Mother
Teresa's Albanian homeland granted her the Golden Honor
of the Nation in 1994. Her acceptance of this and another
honor granted by the Haitian government proved
controversial. Mother Teresa attracted criticism, particularly
from the left, for implicitly giving support to
the Duvaliersand to corrupt businessmen such as Charles
Keating and Robert Maxwell. In Keating's case she wrote to
the judge of his trial asking for clemency to be shown.
Universities in both the West and in India granted
her honorary degrees. Other civilian awards include
the Balzan Prize for promoting humanity, peace and
brotherhood among peoples (1978), and the Albert
Schweitzer International Prize (1975).
In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
"for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty
and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace." She
refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to
laureates, and asked that the $192,000 funds be given to the
poor in India, stating that earthly rewards were important
only if they helped her help the world's needy. When
Mother Teresa received the prize, she was asked, "What can
we do to promote world peace?" She answered "Go home
and love your family." Building on this theme in her Nobel
Lecture, she said: "Around the world, not only in the poor
countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more
difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street,
hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have
satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is
shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person
that has been thrown out from society - that poverty is so
hurtable [sic] and so much, and I find that very difficult."
More specifically, she singled out abortion as 'the greatest
destroyer of peace in the world'.
Towards the end of her life, Mother Teresa attracted some
negative attention in the Western media. The
journalist Christopher Hitchens has been one of her most
active critics. He was commissioned to co-write and narrate
the documentary Hell's Angel about her for the
BritishChannel 4 after Aroup Chatterjee encouraged the
making of such a program, although Chatterjee was
unhappy with the "sensationalist approach" of the final
product. Hitchens expanded his criticism in a 1995 book, The
Missionary Position.
Chatterjee writes that while she was alive Mother Teresa and
her official biographers refused to collaborate with his own
investigations and that she failed to defend herself against
critical coverage in the Western press. He gives as examples
a report in The Guardian in Britain whose "stringent (and
quite detailed) attack on conditions in her orphanages ...
[include] charges of gross neglect and physical and
emotional abuse", and another documentary Mother Teresa:
Time for Change? broadcast in several European
countries. Both Chatterjee and Hitchens have themselves
been subject to criticism for their stance.
The German magazine Stern published a critical article on
the first anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. This
concerned allegations regarding financial matters and the
spending of donations. The medical press has also published
criticism of her, arising from very different outlooks and
priorities on patients' needs. Other critics include Tariq Ali, a
member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review,
and the Irish-born investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre.
Her death was mourned in both secular and religious
communities. In tribute, Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of
Pakistan said that she was "a rare and unique individual
who lived long for higher purposes. Her life-long devotion
to the care of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged was
one of the highest examples of service to our humanity." The
former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said:
"She is the United Nations. She is peace in the
world." During her lifetime and after her death, Mother
Teresa was consistently found by Gallup to be the single
most widely admired person in the US, and in 1999 was
ranked as the "most admired person of the 20th century" by
a poll in the US. She out-polled all other volunteered
answers by a wide margin, and was in first place in all major
demographic categories except the very young.
Spiritual life
Analyzing her deeds and achievements, John Paul II asked:
"Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and
perseverance to place herself completely at the service of
others? She found it in prayer and in the silent
contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred
Heart." Privately, Mother Teresa experienced doubts and
struggles over her religious beliefs which lasted nearly fifty
years until the end of her life, during which "she felt no
presence of God whatsoever," "neither in her heart or in the
eucharist" as put by her postulator Rev. Brian
Kolodiejchuk. Mother Teresa expressed grave doubts about
God's existence and pain over her lack of faith:

Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing

but emptiness and darkness … If there be God—please
forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there
is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return
like sharp knives and hurt my very soul … How painful is
this unknown pain—I have no Faith. Repulsed, empty, no
faith, no love, no zeal, … What do I labor for? If there be no
God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You
also are not true.
With reference to the above words, the Rev. Brian
Kolodiejchuk, her postulator (the official responsible for
gathering the evidence for her sanctification) indicated there
was a risk that some might misinterpret her meaning, but
her faith that God was working through her remained
undiminished, and that while she pined for the lost
sentiment of closeness with God, she did not question his
existence. Many other saints had similar experiences of
religious doubt, or what Catholics believe to be spiritual
tests, such as Mother Teresa's namesake, St. Therese of
Lisieux, who called it a "night of nothingness." Contrary to
the mistaken belief by some that the doubts she expressed
would be an impediment to canonization, just the opposite is
true; it is very consistent with the experience of canonized
mystics.
Mother Teresa described, after ten years of doubt, a short
period of renewed faith. At the time of the death of Pope
Pius XII in the fall of 1958, praying for him at a requiem
mass, she said she had been relieved of "the long darkness:
that strange suffering." However, five weeks later, she
described returning to her difficulties in believing.
Mother Teresa wrote numerous letters to her confessors and
superiors over a 66-year period. She had asked that her
letters be destroyed, concerned that "people will think more
of me -- less of Jesus." However, despite this request, the
correspondences have been compiled in Mother Teresa: Come
Be My Light (Doubleday). In one publicly released letter to a
spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, she wrote,
"Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me, the
silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not
see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in
prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me —
that I let Him have [a] free hand."
Many news outlets have referred to Mother Teresa's writings
as an indication of a "crisis of faith." Some critics of Mother
Teresa, such as Christopher Hitchens, view her writings as
evidence that her public image was created primarily for
publicity despite her personal beliefs and actions. Hitchens
writes, "So, which is the more striking: that the faithful
should bravely confront the fact that one of their heroines all
but lost her own faith, or that the Church should have gone
on deploying, as an icon of favorable publicity, a confused
old lady who it knew had for all practical purposes ceased to
believe?" However, others such as Brian Kolodiejchuk, Come
Be My Light's editor, draw comparisons to the 16th century
mystic St. John of the Cross, who coined the term the "dark
night of the soul" to describe a particular stage in the growth
of some spiritual masters. The Vatican has indicated that the
letters would not affect her path to sainthood. In fact, the
book is edited by the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, her
postulator.
In his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Benedict
XVI mentioned Teresa of Calcutta three times and he also
used her life to clarify one of his main points of the
encyclical. "In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we
have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God
in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving
service to our neighbour but is in fact the inexhaustible
source of that service." Mother Teresa specified that "It is
only by mental prayer and spiritual reading that we can
cultivate the gift of prayer."
Although there was no direct connection between Mother
Teresa's order and the Franciscan orders, she was known as
a great admirer of St. Francis of Assisi. Accordingly, her
influence and life show influences of Franciscan spirituality.
The Sisters of Charity recite the peace prayer of St. Francis
every morning during thanksgiving after Communion and
many of the vows and emphasis of her ministry are
similar. St. Francis emphasized poverty, chastity, obedience
and submission to Christ. He also devoted much of his own
life to service of the poor, especially lepers in the area where
he lived.
Miracle and beatification

Statue of Mother Teresa on display at the Parish of Nuestra

Señora del Rosario (Our Lady of the Rosary) in Real del
Monte, Hidalgo,Merxico.
Following Mother Teresa's death in 1997, the Holy See began
the process of beatification, the second step towards
possible canonization. This process requires the
documentation of a miracle performed from
theintercession of Mother Teresa. In 2002, the Vatican
recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the
abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, following the
application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture.
Monica Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the
picture, curing the cancerous tumor. It is claimed that some
of Besra's medical staff and, initially, Besra's husband
insisted that conventional medical treatment eradicated the
tumor. An opposing perspective of the claim is that Monica's
medical records contain sonograms, prescriptions, and
physicians' notes that could conceivably prove whether the
cure was a miracle or not. Monica has claimed Sister Betta of
the Missionaries of Charityis holding them. The publication
has received a "no comments" statement from Sister Betta.
The officials at the Balurghat Hospital where Monica was
seeking medical treatment are claiming that they are being
pressured by the Catholic order to declare the cure as a
miracle.
Christopher Hitchens was the only witness called by
the Vatican to give evidence against Mother Teresa’s
beatification and canonization process, as the Vatican had
abolished the traditional "devil's advocate" role, which
fulfilled a similar purpose. Hitchens has argued that "her
intention was not to help people", and he alleged that she
lied to donors about the use of their contributions. “It was by
talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she
wasn't working to alleviate poverty,” says Hitchens. “She
was working to expand the number of Catholics. She said,
‘I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it
for Christ. I do it for the church.’" In the process of
examining Teresa's suitability
for beatification and canonization, the Roman Curia(the
Vatican) pored over a great deal of documentation of
published and unpublished criticisms against her life and
work. Vatican officials say Hitchens' allegations have been
investigated by the agency charged with such matters,
the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and they found no
obstacle to Mother Teresa's beatification. Due to the attacks
she has received, some Catholic writers have called her
a sign of contradiction. The beatification of Mother Teresa
took place on October 19, 2003, thereby bestowing on her the
title "Blessed". Unless dispensed by the Pope, a
second miracle is required for her to proceed
to canonization.
Commemor
 AP

Mother Teresa prays during a religious service in 1977

Heroes & icons

Mother Teresa
In fighting for the dignity of the destitute in a foreign
land, she gave the world a moral example that bridged
divides of culture, class and religion
By BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Monday, June 14, 1999

The Bengali chauvinist in me got a thrill: "This is Peter
Jennings, tonight live from Calcutta." For the first and only
time in my life, the great city I was born and raised in hit the
big time. Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their
culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that
has been famously "dying" for more than a century. They
resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels
any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world "another
Calcutta." And why were the American media in Calcutta?
For the funeral of an 87-year-old Albanian immigrant by the
name of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

In this era of "ethnic cleansing," identity politics and

dislocation of communities, it is heartening that one of the
most marginalized people in recent history — a minority
Albanian inside Slavic Macedonia, a minority Roman
Catholic among Muslims and Orthodox Christians — should
find a home, citizenship and acceptance in an Indian city of
countless non-Christians. She blurred the line between
insider and outsider that so many today are trying to
deepen.

Bojaxhiu was born of Roman Catholic Albanian parents

in 1910 in Shkup (now Skopje), a town that straddled the
ethnic, linguistic, religious and geological fault line in
the then Turkish province, later Yugoslav republic, now
absurdly unnameable independent state of FYROM (the
Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). When she
was seven, her father was murdered. Bojaxhiu chose
emigration over political activism and at the age of 18
entered the Sisters of Loreto's convent in Ireland as a
novice. The Sisters of Loreto, a teaching order, sent her to
Bengal in 1929. She spoke broken English and had yet to
take her first vows.
India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU
Vol. 14 :: No. 19 :: Sept.20 - Oct. 3,1997
COVER STORY
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
With its steady focus on those who live in poverty and
dispossession, the Missionaries of Charity addresses a
special need of the modern world.

PARVATHI MENON
in Calcutta and Titagarh

IT is work as usual for the group of seven Sisters and 30

volunteers on a Tuesday morning at Nirmal Hriday, the
Home for Dying Destitutes established in 1952 by Mother
Teresa at Kalighat, one of Calcutta's most congested areas.
Four days have passed since Mother Teresa's death. Her
familiar fragile figure, draped in a white sari with blue
border - the livery of her congregation, the Missionaries of
Charity - lies in a glass casket in St. Thomas' Church.
Thousands of mourners file past for a last view of her.
Preparations are on for a state funeral and public Mass.

But in Nirmal Hriday, there is no time to pause and consider

this, nor indeed to allow it to delay the urgent tasks at hand.
"Mother longed to be here in Nirmal Hriday," said soft-
spoken Sister Dolores, who is in charge of the centre. "It was
her first love and her heart was here. But work must go on -
birth and death are part and parcel of life."

RATNA DAS
Nirmal Hriday, the Home for Dying Destitutes established
by Mother Teresa at Kalighat in 1952.

And work proceeds, in a brisk and no-nonsense fashion, as it

would on any other morning. The acrid smell of disinfectant
on human excretions fill the high-ceilinged wards where lie
the emaciated, skin-and-bone inmates of Nirmal Hriday.
They are the desperately poor, victims of malnourishment
and illness, those who inhabit the crevices of the big city of
Calcutta. Nirmal Hriday has offered them a place of repose,
where they can get free basic medical attention, often for
festering body sores and gangrene, or for infectious diseases
like tuberculosis; where they are given nutritious food;
where they, unimaginably, are the guests of honour, caringly
ministered to.

RATNA DAS
The weaving section at the Gandhiji Prem Nivas Leprosy
Centre at Titagarh.

There are 50 men in the male ward and 87 in the female

ward, numbers that vary every day. "Most of them have
been picked up in a sick or even dying condition," said Sister
Dolores. "Many get better and leave, knowing that they can
come back. Some are here for their last moments but die here
with dignity, love and care." As she speaks, she makes way
for two young women volunteers who carefully manoeuvre
a stretcher on which lies the slight figure of a corpse
wrapped in white that they are taking to the mortuary.
There is a flurry of quiet but purposive activity. Inmates are
being fed (some nasally) and bathed; beds are being cleared
of linen, blankets and rubber sheets that are changed and
taken away for washing; plates, dishes and trays are
removed; cooking starts for the afternoon meal. By half past
ten, dressing trays are ready, medicines are administered,
and intravenous drips started for those who need them.

"Mother gave us our fourth vow - to give ourselves to the

poorest of the poor," said Sister Dolores. "For us this is not
just social work; we see Jesus in each person we care for, we
see Him in our work."

All priests and nuns must adhere to the vows of chastity,

poverty and obedience, but it is the fourth vow, to give
"Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest of the poor",
that is unique to the congregation of the Missionaries of
Charity, and which is its foundational principle. This
mission came to Mother Teresa in 1946 as a special
inspiration, described by her as a "Call within a Call."

THE range of activities carried out by the Missionaries of

Charity includes child welfare and adoption centres,
educational instruction, family visiting, day creches, feeding
programmes and soup kitchens, homes for alcoholics, night
shelters and 'natural' family planning centres. Medical-cum-
social activities include dispensaries, leprosy clinics and
rehabilitation centres, homes for the abandoned, crippled
and mentally retarded children, for unwed mothers, for sick
and dying destitutes and for AIDS patients.

With a steady focus on those who live on the periphery of

society - in poverty and dispossession, those who fall
outside any social support mechanism, be it a job, personal
assets, the public distribution system, or in many cases, the
family as well - they address a special need of the modern
world. It is the 'poorest of the poor' focus that has galvanised
her dedicated workforce and spurred the rapid worldwide
expansion of Mother Teresa's mission.

According to Navin Chawla, Mother Teresa's biographer,

476 centres had been established by 1990 in more than a
hundred countries, including Cuba. That year, there were
4,000 Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity.

RATNA DAS
At Prem Dan, one of the shelter homes run by the
Missionaries of Charity.

Seven years on, the numbers have swelled. According to

Sister Nirmala, the new Superior-General, there are now 580
centres around the world and 4,000 Sisters.

Securing precise information on the Missionaries of Charity

is not an easy task. Although the organisation does not shun
publicity, it does not seek it either. Nor does it consider
publicity necessary for its work or for the purpose of fund-
raising. The Missionaries of Charity has no brochures or
pamphlets describing its work or recording its
achievements, so information must be gleaned the hard way,
by visits to the centres and interviews with the inmates and
the Sisters who run them.

After Mother Teresa's death, Mother House, the

administrative heart of all the centres or "houses" of the
Missionaries of Charity, virtually shut itself off as an
information source, and Sisters were under strict
instructions not to talk to the media until the funeral was
over. In a centre this correspondent visited, the sister-in-
charge firmly sent a television camera crew from Argentina
out, unmoved by their pleas and promises to "tell the people
in our country of your good work."

IT is upon charity that all of Mother Teresa's work for the

poor depends. Most of the centres she has started are not
self-supporting, neither is self-sufficiency an aim in most of
these centres - except at the level of encouraging, even
assisting, cured individuals to get on with the business of
life. One of the many criticisms levelled against Mother
Teresa's kind of charity-dependent work is that it
institutionalises - even glorifies - poverty. Charity blinds the
poor to the real causes of their poverty and reduces their
sense of self-worth, just as it salves the conscience of the rich.

But so long as iniquitous societies and economic systems

generate appalling levels of poverty, the centres that have
been the focus of Mother Teresa's work answer to an
objective need, regardless of how small they are and where
they raise resources. This idea has, in fact, been supported
by the Left Front Government. Jyoti Basu, West Bengal's
Marxist Chief Minister, in his condolence message, made
particular mention of how Mother Teresa helped the State by
her work with the destitute; but for her, he noted, many
street children would have turned criminal.

The knowledge and conviction that her work responded to a

real need allowed Mother Teresa to justify donations from
the most dubious and repressive of individuals and
organisations. "Money," she told her biographer Navin
Chawla, "I never give it a thought. It always comes."

And yet, as is well known, she laid down strict conditions on

the acceptance of charity. She did not accept government
funding or Church maintenance. This was not because of
any ideological objection, but, according to Chawla, for the
rather odd reason that it would involve keeping detailed
accounts and distract at least one Sister from "real work" -
that of giving herself to the poor.

RATNA DAS
Shishu Bhavan, a home for abandoned children.

Mother Teresa specifically forbade her order and her

supporters from fund-raising activities. She also did not
allow charity money to be invested. Coming from a person
whose entire set-up was run on donations, these strict rules
may appear surprising. However, far from discouraging
donations, they have proved to be sound strategy, as the
Missionaries of Charity has not been short of funds.The
Missionaries of Charity, according to one account, received
donations of Rs.392 in 1951. There are no estimates of the
volume of donations to the congregation today, but the
donations are known to run to millions of dollars.

"I think Mother Teresa never believed in fund-raising

because she believed work was important and that money
should come only from people who want to give," said Bill
Canny, a representative of the St. Thomas' Church, Calcutta.
A visit to her centres also make clear why self-sufficiency
cannot become the avowed goal of many of them. To Nirmal
Hriday or Prem Dan, yet another of Mother Teresa's homes,
come persons broken in body and spirit, who, even if they
live a few more months or years, are beyond rehabilitation.
For them such a centre is a last resort, an indication that they
have given up or have lost the fight.

BUT this is not the picture in all her centres. The Gandhiji
Prem Nivas Leprosy Centre, which stretches across a narrow
10-km strip along the Titagarh-Khardah railway line, was set
up by Mother Teresa in 1958. It began as a mobile clinic
under a tree in the midst of an ostracised, crime-ridden
community of the leprosy afflicted. In 1960, the Titagarh
Municipality donated the land on which the buildings now
stand. Very early in her mission to work with destitutes, she
was drawn to the plight of the leprosy-afflicted amongst
destitutes because of the social stigma attached to leprosy.
The disease is easily treated, but battling the stigma was an
uphill task.

There are more than 1,000 persons in Prem Nivas, according

to Brother Prashanto Sarkar, the Assistant Director of the
Centre. Of them 750 are cured and work in various
departments of the centre, at tasks such as spinning and
weaving, carpentry, making artificial limbs and tailoring.
Around 300 of the inmates are ward patients, under
treatment for leprosy. Brother Prashanto said that there were
also about 35,000 outpatients on Prem Nivas' registers,
people who came for medication and to have their wounds
dressed.
None of the activities in Prem Nivas is geared to the market.
The saris worn by the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity
are woven here, as are the sheets, bedspreads and cloth used
in the various centres. There is an artificial limb and crutch-
making centre, and a tailoring section where rubber and
plastic sheets are stitched, all for in-house use. Workers are
paid a wage of Rs.20 a day, but are also provided with food,
clothing, housing, medical care and medicine. "We have no
particular source of income to run all this," said Brother
Prashanto. "The average monthly expenditure is Rs. 10 lakhs
and Mother House provides us with the money we need."

Prem Nivas has truly transformed lives. Swapan Lal, 31,

who now looks after the weaving section, came here with
leprosy in 1987. His family was very poor and his sister soon
joined him. He was treated for five years and cured. He
decided to stay on in the centre and work, as did his sister
after she was cured. He married a woman who is also a
cured patient of leprosy. "I intend to live here," he said. "I am
happy and can serve others."

MOTHER TERESA categorised the work of her mission on

the basis of the type of service each centre demanded from a
Missionary of Charity. She was firm that Sisters had to go to
the streets, slums, villages and into homes. It was only in
respect of special centres - such as leprosy centres, the homes
for children (like Shishu Bhavan), the centres for the dying
and destitutes, and centres for the mentally retarded and
sick like Prem Dan - that she allowed Sisters to remain in
residence to run these centres with the help of novices and
volunteers.
Volunteers are indeed an important part of the life of such
centres. Drawn by what they have read, seen or heard of
Mother Teresa and her work, they come from all corners of
the world, at their own expense, to work in her centres. In
political Calcutta, many people view the work of volunteers
with some cynicism. Tenderly soaping down a dirty street
urchin at Howrah station may send a foreigner on a high,
but it does not make a dent on general levels of hygiene - so
the criticism goes. The reasons that draw such volunteers to
work in Mother Teresa's centres are usually intensely
personal and complex. Insofar as the Sisters are concerned,
volunteers provide a ready army of willing hands to work.

Silvia Del Conte, a law student from Italy, and her friend
Giorgia Masini, an architecture student, have come for just
15 days, but have thrown themselves into the work, whether
it is playing with disabled children at Sishu Bhavan or
washing soiled sheets at Nirmal Hriday. "I am not very
religious but I believe in humanity," said Sylvia. "You have
to do what you feel you know."

THERE are some basic rules laid down by Mother Teresa for
the Missionaries of Charity. The first is the Rule of Two -
Sisters have to move around in pairs, as it offers some
protection to them when they are in physical danger - in war
and riot situations, for example. Secondly, no one is allowed
to eat or drink outside the convent or workplace and each
person must carry her water along - a practical way of not
putting the burden of hospitality upon those who cannot
afford it, and of keeping healthy and free of infections. The
Sisters must travel as the poor do - walk, or if the distance is
far, use public transport. And finally, the Sisters and
Brothers must own only three sets of clothes, which must be
darned and patched before they are replaced.

THE Shishu Bhavans established all over India have become

the symbol of Mother Teresa's work. Hers has certainly been
a very important influence in breaking the prejudices
surrounding adoption that exist in India. But although
adoption remains an important part of the activities of these
centres, many of them provide continuous care and a
permanent home for hundreds of mentally retarded and
severely handicapped children. At the Shishu Bhavan in
Calcutta, there were 138 such children on the day I visited.
They were all in a nursery-cum-ward full of light and toys
and with bright pictures on the walls. Many of these
children are taken in adoption. The children on the adoption
track are in a large adjacent house with several rooms-
turned-nurseries. On the day of the visit, there were 300 of
them, infants and toddlers, dressed in royal purple, and
together making an ear-shattering racket.

Sixty-five Sisters and novices run Prem Dan. It was started

in 1973 in a godown donated by ICI. "We have nearly 350
inmates here right now," said Sister Denisa who is in charge
of the centre. "They suffer mostly from malnutrition,
tuberculosis, various kinds of physical handicaps, mental
problems; some have cancer. We have a doctor who looks in
once a month." Like all Mother Teresa's centres, Prem Dan is
clean, and enveloped with an air of calm. But it is perhaps
here that the limitations of the philosophy of service that
characterise Mother Teresa's centres make themselves most
apparent.
Mother Teresa has been criticised for not making high-
quality medical treatment available to the poor, using the
considerable influence she has. It is a point that Christopher
Hitchens raises in his book on Mother Teresa, The
Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice
(Verso, 1995; Indus, 1996). In the chapter "Good Works and
Heroic Virtues", he refers to the visit of Dr. Robin Fox, Editor
of the medical journal The Lancet, to one of Mother Teresa's
centres in Calcutta in 1994. Fox, astonished at the absence of
simple testing procedures, which could distinguish an
incurable from a curable disease, later wrote: "Such
systematic approaches are alien to the ethos of the home...
Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good
analgesia marks Mother Teresa's approach as clearly
separate from the hospice movement. I know which I
prefer."

While Hitchens' own conclusions from this are not

convincing (he writes that she runs a "haphazard and cranky
institution" as part of a deliberate agenda, that is, "the
promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and
subjection"), the lack of medical expertise does indeed strike
most visitors to Mother Teresa's care centres.

Medical treatment in Prem Dan, for example, is rudimentary

and inadequate for a centre of 350 inmates who suffer from a
range of medical disorders. A doctor comes just once a
month. With a little extra organisational effort, a centre like
Prem Dan could have linked up with a network of
specialised medical institutes in the city and even outside,
giving patients with curable ailments access to advanced
medical care.
WITH Mother Teresa's death, an era has come to an end.
Her successors in the Missionaries of Charity are well aware
of the void that she has left behind, but are not perturbed by
what lies ahead. There has been no mourning period as such
for the Sisters, and if Sister Nirmala, Mother's successor, has
been unavailable to the media (except for one press
conference) it is because she believes that work is more
important than public relations, even at a time like this.
Mother Teresa had prepared her congregation for her death
and used to say: "As long as we are faithful, and go where
God's work has to be done, we will be all right".

There is little doubt that Mother Teresa's legacy will endure.

She will be missed, not just by her colleagues in the
congregation, but by countless others - by Roma Ghosh and
Mira Adhikari from Titagarh, cured of leprosy, who thank
Mother "for making it possible for us to work, not beg"; by
Tamal, a young Bengali volunteer for whom "Mother was
like a magnet" and who continues to go to Nirmal Hriday
even though she is no more; by ancient, bleary-eyed, senile
Bhalu, an inmate of Prem Dan, who, clutching her rubber
doll in her arms, waits for Mother, the only person in the
world she recognises, and in honour of whose visits she
always wore a red dress. They will be the poorer for her loss.

Mother Teresa's business was : Money for a good

conscience. The donors benefitted the most from this. The
poor hardly. Whosoever believed that Mother Teresa
wanted to cahnge the world, eliminate suffering or fight
poverty, simply wanted to believe it for their own sakes.
Such people did not listen to her. To be poor, to suffer was a
goal, almost an ambition or an achievement for her and she
imposed this goal upon those under her wings; her actual
ordained goal was the hereafter.

Missionaries of Charity
Missionaries of Charity is a Roman Catholic religious order
established in 1950 by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which
consists of over 4,500 sisters and is active in 133 countries.
Members of the order designate their affiliation using the
order's initials, "MC." Member nuns must adhere to the
vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and the fourth
vow, to give "Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest
of the poor".
The Missionaries of Charity Brothers (active Branch) were
founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters
followed in 1976. In 1984, the Missionaries of Charity Fathers
was founded by Mother Teresa with Fr. Joseph Langford, to
combine the vocation of the Missionaries of Charity with the
ministerial priesthood. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics
constitute the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and
Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity.
Missionaries care for those who include refugees, ex-
prostitutes, the mentally ill, sick children, abandoned
children, lepers, AIDS victims, the aged, and convalescent.
They have schools run by volunteers to educate street
children, they run soup kitchens, as well as many other
services as per the communities' needs. They have 19 homes
in Kolkata (Calcutta) alone which include homes for women,
for orphaned children, and for the dying; an AIDS hospice, a
school for street children, and a leper colony. These services
are provided to people regardless of their religion or social
caste.
In 1990, Mother Teresa asked to resign as head of the
Missionaries, but was soon voted back in as Superior
General. On March 13, 1997, six months before Mother
Teresa's death, Sister Mary Nirmala Joshi was selected the
new Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity.
[edit]Foundation

In October 1957 Mother Teresa received Vatican permission

to start her own order, which the Vatican originally labeled
as the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, but
which later became known as the Missionaries of Charity,
whose mission was to care for (in Mother Teresa's words)
"the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind,
the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved,
uncared for throughout society, people that have become a
burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." It
began as a small community with 12 members in Calcutta,
and today it has over 4,500 nuns running orphanages, AIDS
hospices, charity centres worldwide, and caring for refugees,
the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless
and victims of floods, epidemics and famine in Asia, Africa,
Latin America, North America, Europe and Australia.

2005 Image of Mother Teresa's Home for the Dying in

Kolkata.
In 1965, by granting a Decree of Praise, Pope Paul VI granted
Mother Teresa's request to expand her congregation to other
countries. The congregation started to grow rapidly, with
new homes opening all over the globe. The congregation's
first house outside India was in Venezuela, and others
followed in Rome and Tanzania, and eventually in many
countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe, including Albania. In
addition, the first home of the Missionaries of Charity in the
United States was established in the South Bronx, New York.
By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100
countries and today is assisted by over one million co-
workers worldwide.
A 2005 article in the popular German Stern weekly quoted a
witness account according to which the order received about
US$50 million a year in donations on its New York account
alone.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta - My

Dedication to Missionaries of Charity
She Powerful Missionary The World has ever seen is Blessed
Mother Teresa. She was the greatest gift from Godto people
who had no one to help. Mother tried to give all support to
people who were suffering from all sorts of diseases in teh
streets of Calcutta. I am a true believer of Mother Teresa and
i am writing all about this as today is one of the memorable
days in my life Septemper 5 th. I have visited a Missionary
centre today,where i saw that missionaries were getting
ready for Holy Mass in the memories of Mother Teresa who
has left this world on September 5, 1997. I also say small
babies,new borns who were thrown away by their parents
soon after they were born. I took one baby in my hand and
that baby became very happy. All the activities she had
started in this world is continuing today also,providing help
to Children and aged. Let us Today pray with All well
wishers in the whole world and every one should take oath
to help the poor and suffering all over the world.
"On the happy occasion of your forthcoming Birthday, I join
all the Missionaries of Charity in thanking Almighty God for
the witness of your religious consecration and your untiring
service of the poorest of the poor. As a pledge of strength
and joy in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I gladly impart
my Apostolic Blessing."
- Pope John Paul II
April 22, 1996.

"At the end of our lives, we will not be judged by how many
diplomas we have received, how much money we have
made or how many great things we have done. We will be
judged by ‘I was hungry and you gave me to eat. I was
naked and you clothed me. I was homeless and you took me
in.’

Hungry not only for bread-but hungry for love.

Naked not only for clothing-but naked of human dignity
and respect.

Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks-but

homeless because of rejection.

This is Christ in distressing disguise."

In 1952 the first Home for the Dying was opened in space
made available by the City of Calcutta. Over the years,
Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity grew from 12 to
thousands serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centers
around the world. Mother Teresa created many homes for
the dying and the unwanted from Calcutta to New York to
Albania. She was one of the pioneers of establishing homes
for AIDS victims. For more than 45 years, Mother Teresa
comforted the poor, the dying, and the unwanted around the
world.

In 1966, the Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded.

Homes began to open in Rome, Tanzania, and Australia. In
1971, the first home in the United States was established in
the South Bronx, New York.

Mother Teresa gained worldwide acclaim with her tireless

efforts on behalf of world peace. Her work brought her
numerous humanitarian awards, including : the Pope John
XXIII Peace Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. In
receiving this award, Mother Teresa revolutionized the
award ceremony. She insisted on a departure from the
ceremonial banquet and asked that the funds, $6,000 be
donated to the poor in Calcutta. This money would permit
her to feed hundreds for a year.
She is stated to have said that earthly rewards were
important only if they helped her help the world’s needy.

Beginning in 1980, homes began to spring-up for drug

addicts, prostitutes, battered women, and more orphanages
and schools for poor children around the world. In 1985,
Mother Teresa established the first hospice for AIDS victims
in New York. Later homes were added in San Francisco and
Atlanta. Mother Teresa was awarded Medal of Freedom, the
highest U.S. civilian award.

In 1991, Mother Teresa returned for the first time to her

native Albania (know known as Serbia) and opened a home
in Tirana. By this year, there were 168 homes established in
India.

On February 3, 1994 at a National Prayer Breakfast,

sponsored by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives,
in Washington, DC, Mother Teresa challenged the audience
on such topics as family life and abortion. She said, "Please
don’t kill the child. I want the child. Give the child to me."

Mother Teresa traveled to help the hungry in Ethiopia,

radiation victims at Chernobyl, and earthquake victims in
Armenia. Her zeal and works of mercy knew no
boundaries.
In November of 1996, Mother Teresa received the honorary
U.S. citizenship.
THE DEATH OF MOTHER
The African National Congress has learnt with a sense of
deep shock and sadness of the passing away of Mother
Theresa on Friday 5 September.

Her death is a loss to the entire humanity and her absence

will be deeply missed in our efforts to build international
peace, a just, caring and equitable world order.

Humanity deserves people of the calibre of Mother Theresa

whose life commitment was to the poorest of the poor and
the peaceful co-existence among peoples of the world.

We express our hope that her noble legacy will not be in

vain but will find fertile ground among nations of the world
in their endeavour to create a better life for all.

The ANC is of the conviction that the current efforts to

create peace, nation building and reconciliation among our
people is inspired by the ideals of among other Mother
Theresa.

The ANC expresses its deepest condolences to members of

her community, the church, family, friends and colleagues
during these trying moments of their lives.

Mother Teresa: "Do It Anyway"

The verses below reportedly were written on the wall
of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta, India, and
are widely attributed to her.

Some sources say that the words below were written on the
wall in Mother Teresa's own room. In any case, their
association with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of
Charity has made them popular worldwide, expressing as
they do, the spirit in which they lived their lives.

They seem to be based on a composition originally by Kent

Keith, but much of the second half has been re-written in a
more spiritual way. Both versions are shown below.
___________________________________________

1. The version found written on the wall in

Mother Teresa's home for children in
Calcutta:
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-
centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish,

ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful

friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive

you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy

overnight. Create anyway.
 If you find serenity and happiness, some may be
jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do

good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.

Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was

never between you and them anyway.

-this version is credited to Mother Teresa

____________________________

2. The Original Version:

The Paradoxical Commandments

by Dr. Kent M. Keith

1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish
ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true
enemies.
Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
 6. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can
be shot down by the smallest men and women with the
smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed
overnight.
Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do
help them.
Help people anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked
in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

HER WORDS
A clean heart is a free heart. A free heart can love Christ with
an undivided love in chastity, convinced that nothing and
nobody will separate it from his love. Purity, chastity, and
virginity created a special beauty in Mary that attracted
God’s attention. He showed his great love for the world by
giving Jesus to her.

There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in

our lives - the pain, the loneliness. We must have the
courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your
own family.
Find them.
Love them.
Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God
speaks in the silence of the heart.

Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish

great things on the condition that you believe much more in
His love than in your own weakness.

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face,

in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting.
Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but
give your heart as well.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you
give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for
us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance.
It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no
that. But we are perfectly happy.

I pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, “Love

one another as I have loved you.” Ask yourself “How has he
loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?” Unless
this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it
will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.

Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little

things is a great thing.

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.

Quotes of Mother Teresa

"Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and share this joy
with all you meet especially your family. Be holy – let us
pray."

"I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she

was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her
only lament was: ‘My son did this to me.’ I begged her: You
must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he
was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to
him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: ‘I
forgive my son.’ Just before she died in my arms, she was
able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not
concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was
that her son did not want her. This is something you and I
can understand."

"When once a chairman of a multinational company came to

see me, to offer me a property in Bombay, he first asked:
‘Mother, how do you manage your budget?" I asked him
who had sent him here. He replied: ‘I felt an urge inside me.’
I said: other people like you come to see me and say the
same. It was clear God sent you, Mr. A, as He sends Mr. X,
Mrs. Y, Miss Z, and they provide the material means we
need for our work. The grace of God is what moved you.
You are my budget. God sees to our needs, as Jesus
promised. I accepted the property he gave and named it
Asha Dan (Gift of Hope).

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have

only today. Let us begin."

"Like Jesus we belong to the world living not for ourselves

but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength."

"There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is

important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I’ve
always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu,
a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a
better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example
to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are
Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs—all
different religions. But they all come to our prayers."

"There are so many religions and each one has its different
ways of following God. I follow Christ:
Jesus is my God,
Jesus is my Spouse,
Jesus is my Life,
Jesus is my only Love,
Jesus is my All in All;
Jesus is my everything."

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the

world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them
through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our
understanding love, give them peace and joy.
I heard the call to give up all and follow Christ into the
slums to serve Him among the poorest of the poor. It was an
order.
I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living
among them.

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened

because God did not take care of him or her.
It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give
that person what he or she needed.

You and I, we are the Church, no? We have to share with our
people. Suffering today is because people are hoarding, not
giving, not sharing.
Jesus made it very clear. Whatever you do to the least of my
brethren, you do it to me.
Give a glass of water, you give it to me. Receive a little
Child, you receive me.

Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush,

anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so
on, so that children have very little time for their parents.
Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home
begins the disruption of peace of the world.

If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your

strength lies.
Mother Teresa

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by

everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much
greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be

extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting
tired.
Mother Teresa

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

Mother Teresa

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Mother Teresa

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for
being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift

to that person, a beautiful thing.
Mother Teresa

God doesn't require us to succeed; he only requires that you

try.
Mother Teresa

Good works are links that form a chain of love.

Mother Teresa

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is

sending a love letter to the world.
Mother Teresa

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.

Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there
can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just

wish that He didn't trust me so much.
Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could
get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand
pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor.

Do you know your next door neighbor?
Mother Teresa

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we

belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent

out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in
it.
Mother Teresa

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

Mother Teresa

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent

out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in
it.
Mother Teresa

In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small

things with great love.
Mother Teresa

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

Mother Teresa

It is a kingly act to assist the fallen.

Mother Teresa

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you

may live as you wish.
Mother Teresa

It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.

Mother Teresa

It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love

that is put into them that matters.
Mother Teresa

Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole
world.
Mother Teresa

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

Mother Teresa

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes
are truly endless.
Mother Teresa

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the
beginning of love.
Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of

kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we
seek first the Kingdom of God - the rest will be given.
Mother Teresa

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not

enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love
them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.
Mother Teresa

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the
unwanted according to the graces we have received and let
us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
Mother Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most

terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but

how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at

home.
Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of

every hand.
Mother Teresa

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our

vocation is the love of Jesus.
Mother Teresa

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

Mother Teresa

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in

heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for
helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile.

Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to

you without leaving happier.
Mother Teresa

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my

high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit
me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or
impatience.
Mother Teresa

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but

rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a

mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you
and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than

the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are

happy to do it.
Mother Teresa

The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of

being unloved.
Mother Teresa

The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of

loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the
other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does
not determine the value of what we have done.
Mother Teresa

There are no great things, only small things with great love.
Happy are those.
Mother Teresa

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for
the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love
and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ,
and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Mother Teresa

There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation

in this world than for bread.
Mother Teresa

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live

well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I
see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we
could use.
Mother Teresa

We are all pencils in the hand of God.

Mother Teresa

We can do no great things, only small things with great

love.
Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and

restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature -
trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon
and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to
be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the

ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing
drop.
Mother Teresa

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can
do.
Mother Teresa

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry,

naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted,
unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must
start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
Mother Teresa

We, the unwilling,led by the unknowing,are doing the

impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much,for so
long,with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with
nothing.
Mother Teresa
Books By Mother Teresa
• A Simple Path - Author: Mother Teresa, Lucinda
Vardey (Compiler)

Mother Teresa has quietly but effectively devoted her

life to the world's disadvantaged, spreading her
message of hope from the slums of India to AIDS
clinics in the United States. In this extraordinary and
stimulating book, Mother Teresa shows readers how to
attain a strong clarity of purpose that will have a
positive effect on the world around them.

The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living - Author:

Mother Teresa, Jaya Chaliha (Compiler), Edward Le
Joly (Compiler)

A treasury of meditations, prayers, and reflections from

Mother Teresa, one for each day of the year.

• My Life for the Poor: Mother Teresa of Calcutta -

Author: Mother Teresa

In this collection of formal and informal interviews

Mother Teresa tells the story of her life.
 A
Term Paper
Of
Indian Ethos and Values
On
Importance Tenets from Christianity

SUBMITTED BY

DIVYA P SURTI
MBA – I
DIV – A
ROLL NO - 56

GIDC Rajju Shroff ROFEL

Institute of Management Studies
(GRIMS), Vapi
(2008-2009)