Saint-Mother from India

HAS Mother Teresa’s death left a vacuum in the order of the Missionaries of Charity? The question surprises Sister Deena, a nun, at the Missionaries of Charity House at the Mallik Bazar area of AJC Bose Road in Kolkata. “Vacuum? Mother has left so much for us,” she answered spontaneously.

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As you look at the pictures of Mother Teresa, several thoughts would puzzle you: are mothers saints? Can the inward journey be an honest path defined by external influences? Is life a celebration or grieving over what must happen as against what actually exists? 

Mother Teresa had emptied herself of arguments. Her only karma was: serve the poor, the unwanted, the uncared for, the sufferers. Regardless of the manner her order, the Missionaries of Charity, or the highest Catholic Church in Rome, deifies her, she is already a saint: a frail, 5-foot tall woman, nearly bent over double because of osteoporosis, smiling, her face aglow. 

Thousands of people are expected for the canonization ceremony Sunday for the Mother nun who was fast-tracked for sainthood just a year after she died in 1997. St. John Paul II, who was Mother Teresa’s greatest champion, beatified her before a crowd of 300,000 in St. Peter’s Square in 2003.

In Kolkata, the Missionaries of Charity House is abuzz with activity, something not very unusual: several bare-footed nuns emerge from a hall after a session of prayer. They put on their sandals and quietly walk in their living quarters. After a meal, they will get busy, as always, in various works. An ecclesiastical life is a demanding one and entails hard work. This must be all the more true for the members of the Missionaries of Charity whose founder Mother Teresa scripted an exemplary success story in her line of work. 

Teresa, who was of Albanian origin, was a member of the Loreto Convent when she first came to India in 1929. In August 1948 at the age of 38, she left Loreto to found her own order. By end December 1948, she managed to open a dispensary and start a school at the Motijheel area of Kolkata with the help of volunteers.

In March 1949, Subhashini Das, a girl who had been Teresa’s student at the St. Marys’ School in Kolkata, joined her. Then came Magdalene Polton who took the name of Sister Gertrude. On October 7, 1950, the then Archbishop formally established the Missionaries of Charity as a religious congregation in the archdiocese of Kolkata. Next year Teresa took Indian citizenship, 22 years after she had landed in the country.

The following year (1952), Teresa opened her first home for the dying in Kalighat area of Kolkata. The first Missionaries of Charity house outside Kolkata was in Ranchi, opened in May 1959. This was followed by opening of house in Delhi, Mumbai, Jhansi and other Indian cities. In February 1965 the congregation came directly under the authority of the Pope. This meant the Missionaries of Charity could open missions in other countries and the first mission was opened in Venezuela four months later in July 1965.

By 1970, twenty years after it came into existence, the Missionaries of Charity was having branches in 120 countries of the world. Nuns at the Mothers House at AJC Bose Road in Kolkata will tell you about how Teresa (after leaving Loreto) went to Patna to stay with the Medical Mission of Sisters there to learn nursing and how to give injections. out to do.

Teresa’s popularity in the West is traced to Malcolm Muggeridge’s 1971 film on her (Something Beautiful for God). However, in India she was given recognition much before that. Teresa was awarded Padma Shri in 1962, the Bharat Ratna in 1980 which followed her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She received about 700 awards in her lifetime. She is one of only two people — the other was Winston Churchill — to have received honorary US citizenship during their lifetimes.