Mother Teresa

MOTHER TERESA
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MOTHER TERESA
A Biography
Meg Greene
GREENWOOD BIOGRAPHIES
GREENWOOD PRESS
WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT . LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greene, Meg.
Mother Teresa : a biography / Meg Greene Malvasi.
p. cm.—(Greenwood biographies, ISSN 1540–4900)
Includes index.
ISBN 0–313–32771–8 (alk. paper)
1. Teresa, Mother, 1910– 2. Missionaries of Charity—Biography. 3. Nuns—India—
Calcutta—Biography. I. Title. II. Series.
BX4406.5.Z8G74 2004
271'.97—dc22 2004009232
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 2004 by Meg Greene
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004009232

ISBN: 0–313–32771–8
ISSN: 1540–4900
First published in 2004
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with the

Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Series Foreword vii

Preface ix
Introduction xi
Timeline: Significant Events in Mother Teresa’s Life xiii
Chapter 1 Skopje 1
Chapter 2 Answering the Call 13
Chapter 3 A New Direction and a New Journey 29
Chapter 4 Out of a Cesspool—Hope 39
Chapter 5 “Rigorous Poverty Is Our Safeguard” 53
Chapter 6 Kalighat 67
Chapter 7 Shishu Bhavan and Shantinagar: Places of Peace 79
Chapter 8 The Growth of a Miracle 91
Chapter 9 Blessings and Blame 105
Chapter 10 “The Most Obedient Woman in the Church” 123
Bibliography 143
Index 147
Photo essay follows page 66.

SERIES FOREWORD
In response to high school and public library needs, Greenwood devel-

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The result is an intriguing mix of the well known and the unexpected, the
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ture. Readers will find a wide array of subject choices from fascinating
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viii SERIES FO REWO RD
thorough account relates family background and education, traces per-

sonal and professional influences, and explores struggles, accomplish-
ments, and contributions. A timeline highlights the most significant life
events against a historical perspective. Bibliographies supplement the ref-
erence value of each volume.
PREFACE
Writing about Mother Teresa can be both a frustrating and challenging

exercise. On the surface, she appears almost one-dimensional, living a
simple life devoted to her calling and her faith. Closer inspection, how-
ever, reveals a personality so rife with contradictions that it is difficult to
explain her motives and purposes. What is the reality? What finally can a
biographer conclude about the life of Mother Teresa?
In many ways, Mother Teresa defies the biographer’s art. Her life is not
interesting. There are, or seem to be, no great adventures, no great crises,
no great sorrows, no great turning points. Most biographies of her are so
reverential and so one-dimensional, that it is easy to forget that she was a
human being and did not from birth belong to the ages. Even a list of her
numerous accomplishments and awards does little to capture her inner
life. She did not appear to suffer from the terrible internal conflicts, hard-
ships, or adversities that often mark a great and memorable life. Rather,
her life was mundane and ordinary, and she never pretended it to be oth-
erwise. Perhaps, though, her very ordinariness provides a starting point for
the biographer. How did this unexceptional woman captivate and console
so many that she has come to take her place among the monumental per-
sonalities of the age?
Mother Teresa, however, was something of an artful dodger. When
asked about most any topic, but especially herself, she uttered platitudes
and pieties that sounded almost meaningless. She concealed herself be-
hind them. Yet, coming from her, these expressions had a ring of truth.
That may be because the story of Mother Teresa is not the story of a great
life in the modern sense. Mother Teresa was not a celebrity. On the con-
x PREFACE
trary, hers was a life lived on a different principle. She devoted herself to
an old-fashioned sense of calling. She worked among the poor of Calcutta
because she believed it is what God required of her. She would have done
the same work in anonymity if she herself had lived and died in obscurity.
It is that devotion that makes the life of Mother Teresa so interesting.
INTRODUCTION
Modern popular culture promotes celebrity: people who are well known
for being well known. Stirring up controversy or scandal and then talking
or writing about it enhances celebrity status. Yet, the cult of celebrity does
not and cannot adequately explain the hold that a tiny nun from Albania
had, and retains, on the conscience of the world.
For a woman who neither sought nor expected recognition, Mother
Teresa has exercised an enormous influence around the world. Her mis-
sionary work on behalf of the poorest of the poor in India was larger than
life, giving rise to questions about how her own experiences prepared her
to carry it out and to accomplish all that she did. By all accounts, Mother
Teresa was intelligent but passive and self-effacing. She had been an ade-
quate but undistinguished teacher, a commonplace woman, and an ordi-
nary nun, prone to knocking over candles during religious services. Yet,
Mother Teresa had one attribute that set her apart in a world often for-
getful of God: a deep, abiding faith.
Yet, even Mother Teresa, it seems, could not escape the cult of
celebrity, though she tried always to use it to the advantage of the poor
whom she served. Until the last decade of her life, Mother Teresa enjoyed
universal acclaim as a living saint. Although she appeared indifferent to
the attention, she was aware of it and, for example, allowed the media to
publish poignant photographs of her working among the poor and the
dying to illustrate their plight. Her interview with British journalist Mal-
colm Muggeridge in 1968 exposed her world to the rest of the world. The
public reaction to her work was more than she ever imagined. Donations
poured in. But for all the publicity the interview with Muggeridge gar-
xii INTRODUCTION
nered for her mission, it may also have set her on the slippery slope that is
the price of success: Mother Teresa was becoming famous and all that she
did, every word that she uttered, was now for public consumption. For
good or ill, she was no longer a devout nun laboring in obscurity.
In its appetite for a saintly celebrity, the media scrutinized every aspect
of Mother Teresa’s life and work. When charges of wrongdoing surfaced,
public opinion, the fickle engine that drives the cult of celebrity, turned
against Mother Teresa. Some were dismayed; others were angry and dis-
appointed. Cynics everywhere rejoiced that another icon had been
smashed. Common faults and foibles were magnified in the public persona
of Mother Teresa that the media now brought before the court of public
opinion. How could a saint also be stubborn, controlling, and unrealistic?
Perhaps Mother Teresa had made a devil’s bargain. She had allowed her-
self to become well known to publicize her cause, while personally shun-
ning the worldly trappings that accompany celebrity. Suddenly, she
seemed not only cranky and demanding, but also hypocritical. At the
same time, her unswerving belief in the doctrines of the Catholic Church
and her traditional view of the subordinate role of women within it made
her a target of liberal doctrinaires. Nevertheless, with all the twists and
turns that celebrity brings, Mother Teresa was unswerving in her belief
that she was an instrument of God.
So, for all her apparent simplicity, and with all that has been said and
written about her, it is still easy to misunderstand Mother Teresa. People
in the United States and Europe mistook her for a social reformer, deter-
mined to rid the world of poverty and injustice. They were disappointed
to find out that she was not intent to bring about social change. She
doubtless wanted to help and comfort the poor. More important, Mother
Teresa sought to bear witness, to show that even on the wretched streets
of Calcutta under the worst imaginable conditions, one could encounter
God’s grace and love.
In 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa, the final stage on
her journey to sainthood. For many who admired her, canonization was a
mere formality; Mother Teresa was already a saint. But her beatification
has not silenced critics. Many have, in fact, become more strident, hoping
to delay or halt her canonization. There is thus considerable justification
for additional study of her life and her work. This biography, then, is not
only an examination of Mother Teresa’s life, but of the beliefs that shaped
it. The two are so closely intertwined that not to examine them together
is to risk missing some essential aspect of this ordinary extraordinary
woman.
TIMELINE: SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
IN MOTHER TERESA’S LIFE
1900 Nikola Bojaxhiu (father) and his bride, Drana

(mother), move to Skopje in Macedonia; Nikola
starts a prosperous construction business and moves
his wife to a home near the Vardar River.
1905 Aga Bojaxhiu, sister, is born.
1908 Lazar Bojaxhiu, brother, is born.
26 August 1910 Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) is born.
1913 The Balkan Wars end; Macedonia is divided be-
tween Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria.
1919 Nikola Bojaxhiu dies of suspicious causes.
1925 Gonxha first becomes interested in mission work,
particularly in India.
29 November 1928 Leaves home to join the Loreto Sisters; she travels
to the convent at Rathfarnham near Dublin, Ire-
land.
6 January 1929 Gonxha is sent to India to begin her novitiate in
Darjeeling.
24 May 1931 After two years as a novice, Gonxha takes her first
vows; she takes the name Teresa.
24 May 1937 Sister Teresa takes her final vows in Loreto School,
Darjeeling, India.
1938–1948 Begins teaching geography at St. Mary’s High
School in Calcutta, where she will also serve as
principal of the school.
xiv TIMELINE
10 September 1946 Inspiration Day; while riding a train, Sister Teresa

receives her call to help serve the poorest of the
poor.
15 August 1947 India becomes free from British rule; three nations
are formed as a result of Indian independence:
India, Pakistan, and Ceylon.
1948 Sister Teresa requests permission to leave the
Loreto Order to live alone and work with the poor
in Calcutta; her first act is to open a school in the
slum of Motijhil; on April 12, she receives permis-
sion from Pope Pius XII to remain a nun who will
report directly to the archbishop of Calcutta; in
August, she travels to Patna where she works with
the American Medical Missionary Sisters for three
months of intensive medical training; she returns
to Calcutta in December; she will also become a
citizen of India.
1949 Moves in with the Gomes family at 14 Creek Lane
in February; in March, Subashni Das, a young Ben-
gali girl, becomes the first to join Mother Teresa.
7 October 1950 The new congregation of the Missionaries of Char-
ity is approved.
1952 Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity
move to their new motherhouse located at 54A
Lower Circular Road; in August, Mother Teresa
opens Nirmal Hriday, the first home for the dying,
next to the temple at Kalighat.
1953 The first group of Missionaries of Charity take their
first vows; Shishu Bhavan, the first home for aban-
doned and handicapped children, is opened.
1957 Mother Teresa begins working with lepers of Cal-
cutta.
1959 The first houses outside of Calcutta are opened.
1960 Mother Teresa travels outside of India for the first
time since coming there in 1929.
1963 The Missionaries of Charity Brothers is established.
1965 Shantinagar, the Place of Peace for Lepers, is
opened.
1969 The International Association of Co-Workers of
Mother Teresa becomes officially affiliated with the
Missionaries of Charity.
TIMELINE xv
1979 Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1983 Suffers heart attack while visiting in Rome.
1985 Receives Medal of Freedom from the United
States, the highest civilian award given.
1987 The Missionaries of Charity establish hospices for
people with AIDS.
1989 Suffers second heart attack; doctors implant pace-
maker.
1991 Prepares to step down as head of Missionaries of
Charity because of poor health; she is re-elected
with one dissenting vote—her own.
1994 Documentary film Hell’s Angel is broadcast on the
BBC Channel Four.
1996 Granted honorary American citizenship.
1997 Sister Nirmala elected to succeed Mother Teresa as
leader of Missionaries of Charity; Mother Teresa
dies after having a heart attack at the Motherhouse
in Calcutta.
Chapter 1
SKOPJE
Located in Macedonia, in a region that was formerly part of Albania, the

city of Skopje was a bustling commercial center at the beginning of the
twentieth century. The city, which straddles the Vardar River, rises ap-
proximately 800 feet above sea level. The summers are long and dry, the
winters damp, cold, and foggy. Not large by contemporary standards,
Skopje had a population of 25,000 at the turn of the century.
Founded during the third century B.C. by the Dardanians, early descen-
dants of modern-day Albanians from Illyna in the western Balkan Penin-
sula and Thracians who lived north of ancient Greece, Skopje, then
known as Skupi, later came under the control of the Romanians. By the
sixth century, the area fell under the domination of a Slavic people
known as the Beregheziti. It was they who gave the city its current name.
By the ninth century, owing in part to the weakness of the Byzantine
Empire, with its capital in Constantinople (now Istanbul in modern
Turkey), Albania came under the dominion of a succession of foreign
powers including the Bulgarians, Norman crusaders from France, the
Angevins of southern Italy, the Venetians, and the Serbs. The Serbian oc-
cupation that began in 1347 was especially hard, prompting huge num-
bers of Albanians to migrate to Greece and the Aegean islands.
A few decades later the Albanians confronted a new threat. The Turks
expanded their empire, known as the Ottoman Empire, to include the
Balkan Peninsula. Invading Albania in 1388, the Ottoman Turks, by the
middle of the fifteenth century, had succeeded in occupying the entire
kingdom. The Turks may have occupied the land, but they had less suc-
cess governing the Albanian people. In 1443, Gjergj Kastrioti, also
2 MOTHER TERESA
known as Skenderbeg, rallied the Albanian princes and drove the Turks
out. For the next 25 years, operating out of a mountain stronghold, Sken-
derbeg frustrated every Turkish attempt to regain Albanian territory. His
brave fight against one of the mightiest powers of the time won esteem
throughout the Western world, as well as securing military and financial
support from the Kingdom of Naples, the papacy, Venice, and Ragusa (a
province in Sicily located on the southwest side). With Skenderbeg’s
death in 1468, however, Albanian resistance gradually eroded, allowing
the Turks to reoccupy the kingdom by 1506, again incorporating it into
the Ottoman Empire. Even after his death, however, Skenderbeg’s legacy
of resistance strengthened Albanian solidarity, kept alive a sense of na-
tional identity, and served as a source of inspiration in the ongoing strug-
gle for national unity and independence.
A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE
The Turks established their dominion over Albania just as the Renais-
sance was beginning in Italy. Turkish domination of the Balkans cut the
region off from contact and exchanges with Western Europe. As a conse-
quence, Albania had no chance to participate in, or benefit from, the em-
phasis on human capabilities and accomplishments that characterized the
Renaissance. Not only did the Balkans miss out on the Renaissance, but
the Turks’ conquest of Albania also caused great suffering and vast de-
struction of the economy and commerce as well as traditional art and cul-
ture. To escape persecution, about one-fourth of the Albanian population
fled to southern Italy, Sicily, and the northern part of the Dalmatian coast.
Countless others who remained converted to Islam, the religion of the
Ottoman Empire.
Although the Turks ruled Albania for more than four hundred years,
they failed to extend their authority throughout the kingdom. In the
highland regions, the Turks exercised only a formal sovereignty. Beyond
the reach of the government and the military, the Albanian highlanders
refused to pay taxes, to serve in the army, or to surrender their weapons.
They did, however, attempt to appease the Turks by offering an annual
tribute to Constantinople. Even those Albanians who did fall under Turk-
ish sway proved difficult to manage. They rose in rebellion time and again
against their conquerors.
To quell Albanian resistance, which was motivated as much by the de-
fense of Christianity as by the desire for independence, the Turks initiated
a systematic effort to convert Albanians to Islam. By the end of the sev-
enteenth century, approximately two-thirds of Albanians had embraced
SKOPJE 3
Islam. Like their counterparts who had earlier converted, these men and
women became Muslims not primarily from religious conviction but to es-
cape the exploitation and violence directed toward Christians. Those
who refused to convert, for example, endured a crushing tax burden from
which Muslims were exempt. The so-called process of Islamization aggra-
vated the religious fragmentation of Albanian society, which had began
during the Middle Ages. The residue of this religious division persisted
into the nineteenth century when leaders of the Albanian national move-
ment used the rallying cry “the religion of Albanians is Albanianism” to
overcome religious division and foster a sense of national unity.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire was
weakening. Turkey, known as “The Sick Man of Europe,” was having
trouble maintaining its hold on its many possessions. Sensing an opportu-
nity to break free of Ottoman domination, the Albanians, along with
other Balkan peoples, sought to attain their independence. In 1878, the
leaders of the Albanian independence movement met in Prizren, a town
in Kosovo, to found the Albanian League of Prizren. The league had two
main goals. First, to unify Albanian territory, which the Turks had split
into four provinces: Kosovo, Shkodra, Monastir, and Janina. Initially, the
League of Prizren advocated not Albanian independence, but the cre-
ation of an autonomous Albanian state within the Ottoman Empire. Sec-
ond, the league initiated a movement to promote Albanian cultural
nationalism, emphasizing a distinctly Albanian language, literature, art,
and education. Although the Turks suppressed the League of Prizren in
1881, the nationalist spirit of the league lived on. Inspired by the league,
Albanian leaders met in the town of Monastir in 1908 to adopt a national
alphabet. Based mostly on Latin, this alphabet supplanted several others,
including Arabic and Greek, then in use. It is impossible to overestimate
the value of an Albanian national language to the drive for national iden-
tity and independence.
In addition to repression, however, Turkish leaders promised to reform
their administration of Albania to give the Albanians greater power to
determine local affairs. When in 1908, however (the same year in which
the Albanians adopted a national alphabet), a group called the Young
Turks, bent on modernizing and strengthening the empire, seized control
of the Turkish government, they ignored previous commitments to the
Albanians. Frustrated at this turn of events, Albanians took up arms and
in 1912 forced the Turks, in effect, to grant Albania near independence.
Alarmed at the prospect of an independent Albania, Albania’s Balkan
neighbors, who had already made plans to partition the region, declared
war on Turkey in October 1912. To prevent the annihilation of the coun-
SKOPJE 5
his travels. Then, too, the Bojaxhiu household was often crowded with
the visitors who regularly stopped by to talk business or politics with
Nikola.
Drana Bojaxhiu, or Nana Loke (“Mother Soul”), as the children called
her, was a traditional Albanian housewife who looked after her husband
and children. During the day, she cooked, cleaned, and mended clothing.
As soon as Nikola returned home, though, all work stopped. Drana put on
a clean dress, combed her hair, and made sure the children were present-
able to greet their father.
Like her husband, Drana was a stern taskmaster and had little patience
with foolish behavior. One of the few stories that Gonxha told about her
early life illustrated her mother’s attitude toward what she considered fri-
volity. One evening as the children were chattering, their conversation
grew sillier. Drana listened but said nothing. At last she left the room and
turned off the main electric switch, plunging the house into darkness.
Gonxha concluded: “She told us that there was no use wasting electricity
so that such foolishness could go on.”1 Drana passed this trait on to her
youngest daughter; as an adult, Mother Teresa objected to wasted time
and wasted words.
Agnes Gonxha resembled her mother in other ways. A bit plump like
Drana, Agnes also had her mother’s oval face and distinctive nose; she
was unmistakably her mother’s daughter. Her brother recalled that
Gonxha was also generous and helpful, even though her behavior some-
times got her into trouble. Gonxha, for instance, helped Lazar to scale the
cupboard and steal their mother’s jam or desserts. Needless to say, Drana
did not approve.
FAITH AND FATHERLAND—FE Y ATDHE

All the Bojaxhiu children learned early the idea “Faith and Father-
land,” or “Fe Y Atdhe.” This ideal became deeply embedded in their
thinking, and remained strong throughout their childhood. The strong
nationalist pride of the Albanian people, personified in their father,
Nikola Bojaxhiu, became a constant in their lives. Lazar remembered his
father telling him and his sisters never to forget whose children they were
and from what background they came. Besides opening his home to polit-
ical discussion, Nikola also provided financial assistance to the cause of
Albanian independence. November 28, 1912, when Gonxha was only
two years old, marked a joyous day in the Bojaxhiu household. On that
day the Albanians declared their independence, and Nikola and other pa-
triots played and danced well into the night.
6 MOTHER TERESA
Nikola may have passed on to his children a sense of ethnic identity

and nationalist pride; however, it was Drana who nurtured the children’s
spiritual growth. Almost every evening, the Bojaxhiu family gathered in
the living room to recite the rosary. Drana also oversaw the children’s
evening prayers. A devout Catholic who went to Mass almost every day,
Drana not only made sure her children practiced their religion but also in-
corporated it into their everyday lives. This was easier said than done.
The Roman Catholic community in Albania was small; fewer than 10
percent of the population declared themselves Roman Catholic. Al-
though few in number, the Roman Catholic community in Skopje and
throughout Albania was close-knit.
Not only did Drana practice religious devotion, she also believed
deeply in the spiritual value of good works. She was always available to
help those in need. In this practice, her husband supported her and
Gonxha aided her. On any given day, Nikola left with Drana enough
money to help the poor children or adults who came to the house. Com-
monly, the less fortunate not only received a hand out from the Bojaxhiu
family, but also took meals with them, reminding the children that the
needy were also part of their larger human family. “Some of them are our
relations,” Drana once told her children, “but all of them are our people.”2
One of the strongest of Lazar’s memories is of his mother taking in a
woman stricken with a tumor and nursing her back to health. Besides tak-
ing strangers into her home, Drana visited the poor in theirs, taking them
food, money, and medicine. On these occasions, Gonxha often accompa-
nied her mother, helping her as she made her way from family to family of-
fering both spiritual and material comfort. Drana’s Christian charity
offered a powerful example, helping to mold Gonxha’s spiritual life and to
shape her destiny.
When the time came for the children to begin school, they attended
classes held in Sacred Heart Church. For four years, the Bojaxhiu children
studied in the Albanian language. At the fifth year, they began to learn in
Serbo-Croatian. Upon leaving the church school, the children went to
public schools where all the instruction was given in Serbo-Croatian.
Early on, Gonxha distinguished herself as a gifted and disciplined student.
TRAGEDY
Nikola’s participation in Albanian politics continued even after inde-
pendence. When, in 1919, Albanian leaders tried to acquire Kosovo,
Nikola traveled to a political gathering in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. While at-
tending a banquet, Nikola fell seriously ill. Alarmed at her husband’s con-
SKOPJE 7
dition, Drana sent Gonxha to find the parish priest. He was not at home.
Growing more desperate and not knowing what to do, Gonxha went to
the Skopje railway station hoping to find a priest. Luck was with her. She
did locate a priest who agreed to see her father. The situation was grave.
Nikola was dying. The priest arrived at his bedside in time to administer
Extreme Unction, today known as the Sacrament of the Sick, which
Catholics receive when they are expected to die. Just as the priest finished
performing the rite, Nikola began to hemorrhage (bleed internally) and
was rushed to the hospital. Emergency surgery failed to save him.
Gonxha’s robust and outgoing father was dead at the age of 45. The doc-
tors and family were convinced that his political enemies had poisoned
him, though no conclusive evidence ever emerged to prove the allega-
tion.
Overnight, life in the Bojaxhiu household changed. Following Nikola’s
death, his partner took over the business and left nothing for the family.
In addition, even though Drana had the right to estates that her family
owned, she had no documents to prove her claim, nor did she have the
time, inclination, energy, or money to pursue the matter through the
courts. Only the family home remained.
Nikola’s death devastated his wife; Drana fell into deep, prolonged, and
often incapacitating grief. Responsibility for the younger children fell in-
creasingly on the shoulders of the oldest, Aga. After several months,
Drana began to emerge from her mourning. At least the family had a place
to live, though Drana wondered how, with her husband’s resources gone,
she could provide for her children.
“HOME IS WHERE THE MOTHER IS”

Fortunately, Drana Bojaxhiu was possessed of an entrepreneurial spirit
and soon set about rebuilding her life and supporting her children. She
handcrafted embroidery and was soon not only selling her handiwork, but
marketing the various types of cloth and carpets for which Skopje was fa-
mous. Lazar remembered accompanying his mother to the textile factories
where Drana met with the managers who sought her advice on designs
and materials to boost sales.
As the family’s financial status improved, the Bojaxhiu household once
more became a place where the poor could come for a meal and some-
times a bed. As soon as she could, Drana again began to set aside money
to help those in need and, despite her busy schedule, still found time to
visit the poor. At least once a week she called on an elderly woman whose
own family had abandoned her. File, a poor alcoholic woman, also bene-
8 MOTHER TERESA
fited from Drana’s care and largess. Six orphan children came to live in
the house. Drana continued to impress upon her children the importance
of helping the less fortunate. When you do good, she told the children, do
it quietly, without calling attention to your own virtue.
Drana always found creative ways in which to instruct her children.
Summoning them one day, she asked them to inspect a basket in which a
number of good apples rested. She then placed a rotten apple in the bas-
ket and covered it. The following day, she had the children inspect the
apples. They discovered that many of the apples, so luscious the day be-
fore, were now beginning to rot. The moral was simple but profound: it
takes only one corrupt person to corrupt many others. She then reminded
her children to stay clear of bad company lest they suffer the same fate as
the good apples in the basket. Drana’s influence on her children was ex-
traordinary, especially after their father’s death. Despite her need to work
and manage a business, and despite her devotion to the poor, Drana still
spent time with her children, who benefited immeasurably from her guid-
ance. So powerful was Drana’s presence that Gonxha recalled “Home is
where the mother is.”3
FINDING THE PATH

As the children grew older, Drana insisted that they become more in-
volved in the activities of their local parish church. Besides her mother,
the Sacred Heart church exercised the most influence on young Gonxha.
The church was not only important for its religious teaching, but, as a
center of Albanian culture and identity, also reinforced the nationalism of
the Bojaxhiu family.
Of the three children, Gonxha most readily became involved with the
church. She early showed a tendency for religious devotion. When she
learned to play the mandolin, it was the church to which she offered her
talent. Along with her sister, Aga, Gonxha joined the choir; together the
girls earned a reputation for their clear voices and frequently sang solos.
“I was only twelve years old . . . when I first felt the desire to become a
nun,” Mother Teresa recalled.4 Much beyond that information, she re-
vealed little about the circumstances that prompted her vocation.
Throughout her life, Mother Teresa maintained that her religious experi-
ence was private. She would not discuss it. What made her calling ex-
traordinary was that at age 12 Gonxha had never seen a nun. Yet, her
desire to pursue a religious life did not come as a surprise to her mother. Of
her three children, Gonxha suffered from the poorest health with a
chronic cough and weak chest. Drana believed that if her youngest was
SKOPJE 9
not the first to die, she would be called to God in another way. Although
at 12 Gonxha believed she had received her life’s calling, she did nothing
more about it. For the next six years, she continued her schooling and par-
ticipated in church activities. There was, for the moment, no more talk
about becoming a nun.
FATHER JAMBREKOVIC
Father Franjo Jambrekovic, a young Jesuit priest of Croatian descent,
arrived at the Sacred Heart parish in 1925. He was destined to exert a
great influence on Gonxha. Among the many innovations that Father
Jambrekovic carried out was the introduction of a parish library in which
Gonxha soon passed countless hours reading. Father Jambrekovic also es-
tablished the Sodality of Children of Mary, a Catholic organization for
young girls that the Jesuits had created. Gonxha joined. Finally, Father
Jambrekovic started a Catholic youth group that sponsored walks, parties,
concerts, and other outings for the boys and girls of the parish.
Most important for Gonxha, Father Jambrekovic passed on to the
members of Sacred Heart news of the missionary efforts that the Jesuits
had undertaken. In 1924, he explained, a group of Yugoslav Jesuits had
gone to Bengal, India. From their outpost, the missionaries wrote impas-
sioned letters describing the horrible conditions under which the poor
and the infirm lived. Father Jambrekovic read some of these letters to in-
terested parishioners. On occasion, a missionary came to Sacred Heart to
discuss the Jesuits’ work in India and to solicit donations. Father Jam-
brekovic was enthusiastic in his support of these efforts, and spoke often
about them. Gonxha assisted by pointing out to the younger children the
location of India on a world map. After the arrival of Father Jambrekovic,
she also became more active in the prayer groups of the sodality, which of-
fered prayers for the success of Catholic missions. She told a cousin who
was earning extra money by giving mandolin lessons to send the money to
the poor in India.
The zeal with which Father Jambrekovic spoke of the Jesuit missions in
India sparked a renewed sense of devotion in Gonxha. She was already
immersed in church activities, singing in the choir, helping to organize
parish festivals, and teaching the younger children their catechism. Her
love of teaching and her deep religious fervor prompted her to consider
the possibility of doing missionary work. As a young girl, she had dreamed
of working with the poor of Africa. The more she heard about the mis-
sions in India, however, the more she was drawn to the possibility of work-
ing there.
10 MOTHER TERESA
By the late 1920s, Gonxha had grown into an attractive young woman,
mature beyond her years. A good student, neat and clean in appearance,
self-disciplined, and well organized, she had already earned a reputation
in the community for her friendliness and willingness to help anyone.
Like her mother, she cared for anyone in need.
But Gonxha was struggling with her decision to become a nun. A gifted
writer and poet, she often carried a small notebook with her in which to
record her poetry and reflections. She continued to play music with her
friends and, at times, entertained thoughts of becoming a writer or a mu-
sician. Many of her friends regretted that she did not pursue these careers,
for her talent was unquestioned.
Trying to decide what do to with her life, Gonxha turned to Father
Jambrekovic for advice. During their discussions, she asked how one knew
whether the calling to serve God was genuine. Father Jambrekovic ex-
plained that if one was truly called, that person would feel such deep joy
at the decision that there could be little doubt. In later years, Mother
Teresa acknowledged that there was no doubt in her mind about her deci-
sion, stating simply that God had made the choice for her.
By 1928, when she was 18, Gonxha was spending more time at the
shrine of the Madonna of Letnice, located a short distance from Skopje
on the slopes of Black Mountain. There she prayed for guidance. The
place had a special meaning to Gonxha. Among the highlights of the
parish year was the annual pilgrimage to the chapel of the Madonna.
When Nikola was alive, the family often made the journey in a horse-
drawn carriage, joining many others on their pilgrimage. After her hus-
band died, Drana made the journey twice a year: once with a group and
once alone and on foot. Gonxha had always looked forward to this trip,
but because of her health, Drana sometimes kept her at home. It was at
the Shrine of the Madonna that Gonxha sought affirmation of her deci-
sion to become a nun.
One day, after returning home from a visit to the shrine, Gonxha in-
formed her mother that she had made up her mind to become a nun. Be-
cause of her interest in missionary work, she intended to apply to the
order of the Loreto Sisters, an Irish branch of the Institute of the Blessed
Virgin Mary who worked with the Jesuits in Bengal. Drana shut herself in
her room. When she came out the next day, she gave her daughter her
blessing, but also warned her that in choosing to become a nun, she must
turn her life over to God without doubt, without fear, without hesitation,
and without remorse.
By this time, Gonxha’s brother, Lazar, had been away from home for
several years, attending school in Austria and then later joining the newly
SKOPJE 11
formed Albanian army as a Second Lieutenant. When Lazar received the

news of his younger sister’s decision to become a nun, he wrote to her ask-
ing whether she was sure about her decision. Gonxha replied, “You think
you are important because you are an officer serving a king with two mil-
lion subjects. But I am serving the King of the whole world.”5
All too soon, the time came for Gonxha to leave. She was to travel first
to Paris, where the Mother Superior of the Loreto Sisters was to interview
her to determine whether Gonxha was acceptable to the order. On Au-
gust 15, 1928, the Feast of the Assumption, Gonxha traveled for the last
time to the shrine of the Madonna of Letnice. Later, she attended a con-
cert by the Sodality group, which was given partly to honor her, and had
her photograph taken. That evening, guests came to the Bojaxhiu home
to wish her farewell. Many of her friends and family brought gifts; one of
those she most treasured was a gold fountain pen that a cousin gave to her.
The next day, Gonxha went to the Skopje railway station. Her mother
and sister traveled with her as far as Zagreb; friends gathered to wish the
Bojaxhiu women a safe journey. Gonxha cried and waved her handker-
chief from the train window in farewell. The threesome made the most of
their time in Zagreb. Finally, on October 8, Gonxha, accompanied by an-
other young woman, Betika Kanjc, who also hoped to join the Loreto Sis-
ters, boarded the train to Paris. As Gonxha made her way to the train, her
mother and sister returned to Skopje. Waving goodbye, Gonxha bid
farewell to her mother, whom she never saw again.
NOTES
1. Eileen Egan, Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa—The Spirit and the
Work (New York: Image Books, 1986), p. 9.
2. Kathryn Spink, Mother Teresa (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1997),
pp. 6–7.
3. Spink, Mother Teresa, p. 6.
4. Navin Chawla, Mother Teresa: The Authorized Biography (Rockport, Mass.:
Element, 1992), p. 3.
Chapter 2
ANSWERING THE CALL
As the train pulled away from the Zagreb station on its way to Paris,
Gonxha must have thought about the consequences of her decision. Not
only was she leaving family and friends, she was also leaving the only home
she had ever known. If the Loreto Sisters accepted her application it would
mean lifetime separation from her family and her country. She could prob-
ably never even visit her homeland again. The chances of her family visit-
ing her were equally remote; travel was expensive and there would be little
opportunity for her mother, brother, or sister to come to India. Whether
she felt sad and lonely as the train rolled on toward Paris, Gonxha knew
that she had made the right choice. Her life belonged to God.
THE INSTITUTE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

The order that Gonxha hoped to join has a long and difficult history.
In 1609, an English woman named Mary Ward established the Institute of
the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), with which the Loreto Sisters are affili-
ated. Ward believed passionately in the equality of women, and deter-
mined that they should be educated accordingly. In creating the IBVM,
Ward envisioned women living and acting in the world. She did not want
members of the Institute to live cloistered lives, as was the tradition for
Catholic women’s religious orders. Rather, inspired by the Gospels,
women would carry the love of Christ to those most in need of it: the
poor, the downtrodden, and the helpless. Ward also saw this woman-
centered order as being relatively free from the governance of male hier-
archy that dominated the church.
14 MOTHER TERESA
Ward took as her model the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Founded in
1539 by Ignatius Loyola, a former soldier turned priest, the Jesuits were
not only missionaries but teachers. Loyola believed that by offering reli-
gious and moral instruction, by making devotional life accessible to the
young, and by preaching a message of service to others, the Jesuits offered
the greatest service to God and His holy church.
Ward’s interest in Catholic education arose in part because of the con-
tinuing religious persecution of Catholics in England after King Henry
VIII broke with the church in 1534; as a result, English Catholics often
fled and sought their religious education on the continent. Ward and her
associates established their first school at St. Omer, France. While there,
Ward and her group became known to the locals as the English Ladies, a
description still applied throughout much of Western Europe. Despite fac-
ing continuous financial difficulty, Ward in time established houses and
schools in Bavaria (Germany), Austria, and Italy. To communicate with
these different convents, Ward traveled between countries mostly on foot.
Although successful, Ward’s vision came at a price. Her ideas about
women’s role in religious life were so novel, especially in the Catholic
world, that in 1631, church authorities suppressed the Institute. Charged
with heresy, Mary was herself imprisoned by the Inquisition and briefly
excommunicated, or banned, from the Roman Catholic Church. Only
through the intervention of Pope Urban VIII was she eventually freed
and reinstated to full church membership, her organization now operating
under papal protection.
In 1639, Ward returned to England where the climate toward Catho-
lics had improved during the reign of King Charles I, who had married a
Catholic princess and was himself sympathetic to Catholicism. Ward re-
mained in England until she died in Yorkshire in 1645. Upon her death,
the Institute was in shambles. Embroiled in a civil war against his politi-
cal and religious enemies—a war he was destined to lose, and with it his
kingdom and his head—Charles could offer the order scant protection.
Radical English Protestants, known as the Puritans, who prevailed in the
civil war against Charles, disbanded Ward’s houses and schools in En-
gland. In 1650, the year after Puritan leaders had executed Charles, the
Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary again fled England, seeking refuge in
Catholic France. Not until 1677 did they return to Yorkshire under the
protection of Charles II, the son of Charles I who had been restored to the
throne in 1660. Like his father, Charles II was sympathetic to Catholi-
cism. It was only through the perseverance of Ward’s followers, and the
protection that both the Vatican and the English crown extended, that
the IBVM survived to continue the work that she had inspired.
ANSWERING THE CALL 15
THE LORETO SISTERS

Recognizing the need for Catholic education in their homeland, Irish
church officials invited the IBVM sisters to establish a school in Dublin.
However, the Institute was not in a position to send Sisters immediately,
but arranged that a young local woman, Frances Ball, would join the or-
ganization and recruit other Irish women. In 1814, Ball traveled to York,
returning to Dublin in 1821. Now known as Mother Teresa, Ball settled at
Rathfarnham House with two companions. Because the three women
lived together in Rathfarnham House, Mother Teresa decided to call their
order “Loreto” after the Italian village to which the home of the Holy
Family (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph) was supposed to have been miraculously
transported. The name stuck, and eventually the order became known as
“Loreto Sisters,” although the official title remains the Institute of the
Blessed Virgin Mary.
Early in 1841, a German missionary asked Mother Teresa to send
members of her order to India. By then, generations of Irish, having en-
listed in the British Army, were stationed in India, which was part of the
British Empire. Many had married and started families. If, however, one
or another of the parents died or if they deserted their family, scores of
Irish children were lost to the Catholic Church. Beginning in 1834, the
Jesuits began arriving in Bengal near Calcutta to deal with this problem.
They established St. Xavier’s School in which they taught Catholics,
Hindus, and Muslims alike. It soon became apparent, though, that the
community needed a separate school for the daughters of Irish Catholic
military families.
When first approached about the possibility of sending nuns to India to
staff the girls school, Mother Teresa gently but firmly refused. There were
too many children in Ireland in need of assistance. There was also a short-
age of nuns. Her German visitor countered that in refusing to send mem-
bers of her order to India, Mother Teresa was, in effect, refusing to provide
a Christian education for those children. Mother Teresa relented. The
priest could make his case before the entire community; they would de-
cide whether to accept the mission to India.
In the end, seven sisters decided to go to India, marking the beginning
of Loreto missionary work there. On August 23, 1841, the seven, accom-
panied by two priests and six postulants, or novice nuns, set sail. Almost
four months later, they disembarked in Calcutta. The little band took pos-
session of the house at 5 Middleton Row, where they were to live and
teach. The sisters prepared the once lavishly furnished house into simpler
living quarters and classrooms. The 67-foot dining room became the
school hall.
16 MOTHER TERESA
The sisters then traveled to the local orphanage near the cathedral of
Our Lady of the Rosary to meet with church officials and the children. Fi-
nally, on January 10, 1842, the Loreto School opened its doors to board-
ers and day students. As became the custom with the Loreto Sisters,
students whose families could afford to do so paid tuition. Their monies,
combined with other donations, enabled the sisters to provide a free edu-
cation for children of the poor and to operate an orphanage and a widow’s
asylum.
The initial reports that Mother Teresa received from India were enthu-
siastic. Streams of volunteers now offered to go to India to aid the Loreto
Sisters of Calcutta. Even when a number of the nuns died of cholera, the
flow of volunteers did not stop. It was this pioneering and courageous
group of teachers that Gonxha Bojaxhiu soon hoped to join.
RATHFARNHAM HOUSE
Upon their arrival in Paris, the two girls were taken to the Villa Moli-
tor to see Mother Eugene MacAvin, the sister in charge of the Loreto
House in Paris. There they were interviewed with the help of an inter-
preter from the Yugoslavian embassy. Both Gonxha and Betike were ap-
proved and then sent on to Dublin where they would stay at the Loreto
Abbey at Rathfarnham House.
The two arrived at Rathfarnham, a simple red-brick building, in Sep-
tember; Gonxha was somewhat comforted upon seeing the statue of the
Blessed Mother in the courtyard. The two young women, wearing the
long white habit, or dress, and black veil of the Loreto nuns, spent most of
the next six weeks studying English, the language in which they were to
teach. In order to help them become more comfortable with the language,
the two were instructed never to speak in their native tongue, something
that both Betike and Gonxha obediently followed. Unlike the native-
speaking novitiates, Gonxha and Betike received little other instruction
and had little opportunity to get to know many of the other sisters and
postulates staying at Loreto Abbey. From all accounts, though, it appeared
that Gonxha had inherited her father’s flair for languages and was further
helped in her studies by Mother Mary Emmanuel McDermott who was
another postulant at Loreto Abbey. At the end of six weeks, on December
1, 1928, the two women set sail for India and their new life. Upon their
arrival there, the two would begin their novitiate, that is the period of
study and prayer which every nun takes before her final vows.
The sea voyage proved long and arduous, winding its way through the
Suez Canal, then the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and finally the Bay of
Bengal. Christmas was celebrated aboard the ship with three other Fran-
ciscan nuns, also missionaries bound for India. The group sang Christmas
carols around a small paper crib made quickly for the celebration. Their
only regret was that there was no priest aboard to celebrate mass. But that
all changed when the ship made port at Colombo, where a priest would
accompany the nuns for the rest of the voyage.
On January 6, 1929, the ship made port at Calcutta. But at this point,
Gonxha had little chance to become acquainted with her surroundings.
After just a few days, on January 16, she was sent to the Loreto Novitiate
located in Darjeeling, a fashionable hill resort about 400 miles north of
Calcutta.
LIFE IN THE LORETO CONVENT

Life at the Loreto Convent for Gonxha Bojaxhiu was disciplined and
rigorous. Entering a Catholic convent during the early twentieth century
was like being plunged into another world, one that was isolated and rel-
atively contained. For the next two years, dressed in the black habit and
veil of the order, Gonxha kept up with her English studies as well as learn-
ing the Bengali language. Under the watchful eye of the novice mistress,
who oversaw the novitiates’ training, the young women went weekly to
confession. Dinnertime was spent listing to one of the sisters reading
about the lives of the saints, or from the rules of Loreto. Every day from 9
to 11, Gonxha and the other novitiates taught at St. Teresa’s School, a
one-room schoolhouse affiliated with the convent. Here 20 small boys
and girls met to receive instruction. She quickly earned a reputation for
being hard working, cheerful, and charitable in her dealings with others.
On March 24, 1931, Gonxha Bojaxhiu took her first vows—a lifetime
promised to chastity, poverty, and obedience to God as a sister of Loreto.
As was the custom, Gonxha had chosen a new name for herself to sym-
bolize her new life with God. Her choice was an inspired one based on the
late-nineteenth-century French nun Thérèse Martin who received her
call to serve Christ at a young age and was especially interested in mis-
sionary work. She entered the Carmelite order at the age of 15, and
throughout her life, Thérèse dedicated her prayers and service toward mis-
sionaries and their success. She hoped one day to become a missionary
herself to serve with the Carmelite convent in Hanoi, Indochina (now
Vietnam). Unfortunately, her dream was never realized, as she was struck
down by tuberculosis at the age of 24.
Throughout her short life, Thérèse Martin strove to honor God in
what she called her “little way,” that is a life given to the Lord in complete
18 MOTHER TERESA
trust and self-surrender, much like a child with a loving parent. In 1927,
Pope Pius XI canonized Thérèse Martin who now became St. Thérèse of
the Child Jesus, and the patron saint of missions. In light of Gonxha’s own
life, her choice came as no surprise.
Unfortunately, there was a problem with her choice. There was al-
ready one nun in the convent with the name Marie-Thérèse. Not want-
ing to change her chosen name, Gonxha merely decided to go by the
Spanish spelling “Teresa.” Still the name change caused some confusion
throughout her life, as she was thought to have taken the name of the
great Spanish saint, Teresa of Avila. Whenever asked, however, she al-
ways patiently explained her choice. For the sisters in the Loreto Con-
vent, however, the new Teresa soon had a nickname that further
distinguished her: Bengali Teresa, an acknowledgment of her ability to
speak the language so well.
BENGALI TERESA
Not long after taking her vows, Gonxha Bojaxhiu, now called Sister
Teresa, took the train from Darjeeling to Calcutta. There, she was to
begin teaching at St. Mary’s School, located in the eastern district of
Calcutta. It was to be her place of residence and work for the next 17
years.
During the 1920s, the contrast between the cities of Darjeeling and
Calcutta was startling. In Darjeeling, one breathed clear mountain air,
and a walk in a flower-filled meadow was not far away. It was a city of re-
fined culture, of modern European architecture and imported luxury, a re-
treat for those unaccustomed to the heat and humidity of India. Calcutta,
while a dynamic and cosmopolitan city, serving as the political capital of
British India, was another story. The city teemed with humanity, over-
crowded and spilling into the streets and alleys throughout. It was on one
hand a city enriched by the culture and arts of India; on the other, it was
a cesspool of human misery and degradation.
Upon her arrival, Sister Teresa was taken to the eastern district of the
city where the school and living quarters for the Loreto nuns was located.
Here the Loreto Sisters worked with the Daughters of Saint Anne, a local
congregation of nuns founded by the Loreto Sisters in 1898. These nuns,
who were Bengali women, wore not the long black habit and veil of the
European order, but the traditional sari, the dress worn by Indian women.
For the hot summers, the sari worn was white; blue was used for the cooler
autumn and winter months.
ST. MARY’S SCHOOL

The school was hidden from the everyday world by high gray walls and
tall iron gates. Upon passing through the entrance gates, one came upon
a complex of buildings with playing fields and well-tended lawns. The
campus comprised several buildings of varying architectural styles. Besides
an administrative building and smaller gray classroom building was St.
Mary’s School. There were also quarters for the nuns and for those stu-
dents who boarded at the school, mostly orphans, girls from broken
homes, and children with only one parent.
The school had already established a reputation for itself. Established
in 1841, as one of the six Loreto schools in Calcutta, the Calcutta school
in Entally educated orphans, the sons and daughters of the affluent and
foreign families living in the city. All children wore the same uniform;
there was no distinction by the sisters of the rich from the poor, the Euro-
pean from the Indian, Catholic from non-Catholic. The school was also
known for educating “Loreto Girls,” that is young Indian women who
graduated from Loreto College and who would go on to positions in edu-
cation and social welfare within Calcutta and India. Not only did teach-
ers and welfare workers graduate from Loreto College, but in time the first
woman judge of the Delhi High Court, a judge of the High Court of Cal-
cutta, and several members of the Indian Parliament all received degrees
from Loreto. In all, some 500 children and young women were in atten-
dance at the Loreto schools at Entally.
Here Sister Teresa took her place, teaching alongside the Daughters of
St. Anne. She taught history and geography. She also became more com-
fortable in her use of the Bengali language as St. Mary’s classes were
taught in both English and Bengali. She soon added another language,
Hindi. Her classrooms varied: sometimes, she taught in what once had
been a chapel and was now broken into five class areas; other times, she
taught in what was once the stables, or outside in the courtyard.
Though the Loreto Sisters might have been sequestered behind the
walls of their school and convent, they were not sheltered from the over-
whelming poverty of the area; for the poor conditions of the area were
found in the shabby environment of the school itself. Everyday, before be-
ginning the day’s lessons, Sister Teresa rolled up the sleeves of her habit,
found water and a broom, and proceeded to sweep the floor, much to the
delight and amazement of her students, as only people of the very lowest
caste performed menial duties such as these. When Teresa saw where the
children ate and slept, she was distressed at the terrible condition there.
20 MOTHER TERESA
Yet, she also found solace and comfort through the happiness and grati-
tude of her young charges. Merely placing a hand on a dirty forehead or
holding the hand of a small child brought her great joy. Many of the chil-
dren took to calling her “Ma” which meant “Mother,” a term that she
treasured.
According to one former student, among the tasks Sister Teresa will-
ingly took on was the organization of classes for the primary school chil-
dren. Sister Teresa also made sure that the children received baths; for
many, this was a real treat and something to look forward to. Prizes were
awarded at the end of the school year for the students; in many cases, the
most coveted were bars of soap.
Former students remember Sister Teresa as an engaging teacher. When
teaching Sunday School catechism lessons, she often told stories of her
own childhood in Skopje. Her geography classes were exciting; many stu-
dents believed that she made the world come alive for them in a way not
seen or felt before. This is, perhaps, ironic because Sister Teresa had seen
little of the world herself and would not leave the area she resided in for
over 30 years.
By all accounts, Sister Teresa again showed her willingness to work
hard. She needed her fortitude; the days at St. Mary’s were long. Each day
began at half past five in the morning. Upon awakening, the sisters would
pray and read their prescribed lessons in the prayer book, or from the
Scriptures or New Testament. All were expected to attend morning mass
at six o’clock. Classes were held from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M., with tea held after-
ward. Other hours at St. Mary’s were used for looking after the small chil-
dren there. There were also other duties awaiting them: papers and
lessons to be corrected and a children’s recreation hour to be supervised.
Sister Teresa also oversaw the children’s evening meals and bedtime. Self-
discipline was essential if one was to accomplish everything in a timely
fashion. Failure to do so indicated an inability to stay within the order.
Throughout her time at the school, Sister Teresa showed herself to be
a pious but not overly demonstrative woman. She was charitable and did
not tolerate unkindness from anyone, whether a child or an adult. Taking
a firm attitude toward her young charges, Sister Teresa rarely displayed her
temper at wrongdoing. In spite of the backbreaking work, she always had
a smile and a kind word for people. She was no stranger to humor either:
when told a good joke or funny story, Sister Teresa clasped her waist in
both hands and would often bend over with laughter.
Although the sisters of Loreto took vows to live in poverty, Sister
Teresa somehow managed to acquire those things that no one else
wanted. Her sheets had more patches and darns than the others. She
often wore ill-fitting second-hand shoes, which over time would misshape
and deform her feet. Yet she never complained, maintaining a humble and
steady demeanor. She was, by all appearances, an ordinary nun, carrying
out her religious duties. Neither was she particularly intelligent: her edu-
cation at best was adequate. Some at the convent remember her more for
her inability to light the candles at the Benediction service. As one sister
who lived with her during this period recalled, “She was very ordinary. We
just looked upon her as one of our Sisters who was very devoted and ded-
icated.”1 It was this very ordinariness that made the journey Sister Teresa
embarked upon so extraordinary.
Sister Teresa also helped with the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, the
same organization that had so heavily influenced her life in Skopje. Work-
ing with Father Julien Henry, a Belgian Jesuit priest, Sister Teresa partici-
pated in the meetings, prayers, and study club sponsored by the group. In
addition, Sister Teresa, working with Father Henry, helped the girls of so-
dality aid the poor.
On the other side of the convent wall was the slum area (bustee) known
as Motijihl, or Pearl Lake, named for a discolored sump-water pond lo-
cated in the center of the area. It was from this pond that the residents
drew their drinking, cooking, and washing water. Surrounding the pond
were the wretched, mud-floor huts of the poor who lived in the neighbor-
hood. It was an area desperately in need of comfort. For Father Henry, this
was an opportunity to teach the older girls of St. Mary’s about works of
service. Every day during the school week, the priest met with the girls
whose ages ranged from the early teens to their early twenties.
On Saturday, the girls left the walls of their compound and ventured
into Motijihl in groups to visit with these families, often bearing small
items for the children of the poor. Other groups traveled to the Nilratan
Sarkar Hospital to visit the sick, where they comforted family members or
wrote letters for those unable to do so. Although Sister Teresa took great
stock in the efforts of her students, she could not join them because of the
rule of enclosure practiced by the Loreto nuns. But perhaps the most im-
portant outcome of these efforts was the indirect link forged between the
poor of Calcutta and Sister Teresa.
On May 24, 1937, Sister Teresa traveled to Darjeeling to take her final
vows. During the ceremony, Teresa solemnly committed herself to the
Loreto Sisters and to a lifetime of poverty, chastity, and obedience in ser-
vice to the Lord. Upon her return to Calcutta, she once again plunged
into her busy days and teaching, much to the delight of several young
children who feared that she had gone away for good. Nothing had
changed, save Sister Teresa’s name. She was now to be addressed as
22 MOTHER TERESA
Mother Teresa, the name she would go by for the rest of her life. At the
age of 27, her destiny seemed to be fulfilled. At the same time, India was
in the midst of trying to fulfill its own destiny.
THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

The India that Mother Teresa came to was no longer the bright and
glittering jewel in the British Empire’s crown. By 1929, the British had
been in India for a little over three centuries and had governed it exclu-
sively for over 70 years. Now in the early years of the twentieth century, a
growing unrest among Indian natives for self-government was increasing
and British control over its largest colony was waning.
The British presence in India is a long and dramatic story. Beginning in
the late fifteenth century with the early sea voyages of Portuguese ex-
plorer Vasco da Gama, India became a prized possession eagerly sought by
many European countries. The Portuguese were the first to claim India,
her people, and her natural resources for their own. Over the next two
centuries, the Dutch, British, and French challenged the Portuguese for
the Indian trade.
Of all the European nations to lay claim to India, Britain eventually
won and stayed. Beginning in 1600, with the creation of the British East
India Company, the British established trading posts in the key cities of
Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Despite an encroaching French presence,
the English held fast. By 1757, the British had established a strong
foothold in the country.
What began as a trading empire gradually grew into political rule. That
the conquest came about as the result of a private trading company en-
gaging in conflict chiefly through the use of native Indian soldiers, known
as Sepoys, seemed to matter little. By 1849, the rule of the British East
India Company was extended over virtually the whole of the subconti-
nent by conquest or treaties.
Despite the use of natives as soldiers, the British took a rather high-
handed approach to their new possession. Missionaries introduced Chris-
tianity and English customs, but not all Indians were eager to give up their
traditional ways. As a result, a great wave of unrest began building, and
exploded in 1857, when a rumor was circulated among the company’s In-
dian soldiers that the rifle cartridge-papers they had to tear with their
teeth were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The cow is sacred to Hin-
dus, and the pig is abhorred by Muslims. The rumor provoked the great
Sepoy Revolt, or Indian Mutiny, of 1857 in which hundreds of British
were killed. By the time the mutiny was quelled, the East India Company
no longer controlled British India, and a year later, the British Crown
took over the administration. Almost two decades later, in 1876, Parlia-
ment ruled that India should be designated part of the British empire; the
following year Queen Victoria was crowned empress of India.
THE BRITISH RAJ

For the next quarter century following the Indian Mutiny, British rule,
or raj, of India was at its peak. Haunted by the horrific memory of the
mutiny, the British government enacted a series of measures to avoid an-
other conflict from taking place. To oversee the day-to-day administration
of the colony’s provinces, a viceroy of India was appointed by the crown.
However, Hindu and Muslim princes continued to govern almost 600 na-
tive states, which were for the most part autonomous. However, they were
forbidden to make war on one another, and to keep an eye on things, the
viceroy appointed an agent to each royal state whose job it was to advise
the ruler.
British rule brought internal peace and economic development to
India. The British not only built roads and railways, but canals, irrigation
works, mills, and factories. They introduced Western law and police sys-
tems, modernized cities, and built schools. Despite these efforts at nation
building, many Indians resented the aloof and exacting attitude of the
British government. A growing number of Indian intellectuals, many of
whom were the products of an English education, began dreaming of a
free India. In 1885, the Indian National Congress was created; its estab-
lishment marked the beginnings of a growing and organized protest for In-
dian independence.
TOWARD A FREE INDIA

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Indian troops were called
upon to aid the British and their allies against the Germans. Although In-
dians did so, in the wake of the war, nationalist agitation increased. The
British Parliament, recognizing that something had to be done to appease
the nationalists, passed a reform act in 1919, which provided for the cre-
ation of provincial councils that allowed Indians to participate in helping
form policy with regard to agriculture, education, and public health. But
the provincial councils were not enough for the extreme nationalists,
such as those under the leadership of Mohandas K. Gandhi. This group
soon gained control of the Indian National Congress. In addition, Gandhi
preached resistance to the British by noncooperation, or nonviolent resis-
24 MOTHER TERESA
tance in most every aspect of daily life. This meant boycotting all British-
made goods, refusing to send children to British schools and colleges, ig-
noring British courts of law, and rejecting British titles and honors.
Noncompliance extended to British elections and the British tax system.
By withdrawing their support, the Indian people hoped to stop completely
the British in India and allow for the creation of an independent Indian
nation. Hundreds of thousands responded to Gandhi’s plea and joined his
civil disobedience campaigns, and the Indian National Congress quickly
gained a mass following.
The situation in India was a powder keg waiting to explode. In 1927,
rioting broke out when the British Parliament placed no Indians on a
commission created to investigate the government of India. Soon after,
the British imprisoned Gandhi and his associates but could not silence
their message. In 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the
Congress. Like Gandhi, Nehru was passionately devoted to the cause of
independence. Finally in 1935, the British Parliament passed the Gov-
ernment of India Act, which provided for elected legislatures in the
provinces, but restricted the number of eligible voters based on property
and educational requirements. Amid this growing agitation between the
British colonial government and Indian peoples, Mother Teresa arrived
to do her work.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Nonviolent resistance to the British in India continued to grow. By
1939, anti-British feelings intensified as the Indian people watched
Britain once more plunge into hostilities with the Germans. The Parlia-
ment, as it had during World War I, declared a state of war with Germany
on behalf of the Indian people without consulting them.
The consequences of British actions were horrendous in India, result-
ing in the Great Famine of 1942–1943. The transportation system was
now taken over by the British military; even the small river crafts used to
deliver rice to Calcutta from the paddies of Bengal were pressed into ser-
vice. Burmese rice, which accounted for 10 percent of the staple food for
Bengal, was cut off, causing a shortage. The Indian government, preoccu-
pied by the war, saw the problem as one that needed to be solved locally.
Prices started to rise and both black marketers and money lenders pros-
pered. Poor families in the rural areas, depleted of their meager savings,
sold their land. With no food to eat, thousands fled the region for Cal-
cutta, flocking to the city’s already overburdened soup kitchens. Housing
for the poor was already overstretched, and thousands of people died in
the streets everyday. Adding to the overcrowding and chaos were the
swarms of refuges fleeing the Japanese. The noise of the streets was si-
lenced only when people sought shelter from Japanese bombs. In the end,
the Great Famine claimed the lives of at least two million, though some
figures put the number of deaths closer to four or five million. The death
toll was so high, that the traditional funeral pyres lit for the dead, known
as ghats, never stopped burning in some areas.
The nuns at Entally felt the war’s effects, too. The number of war ba-
bies or small infants left at the doorsteps of Loreto multiplied. At one
point, Mother Teresa was faced with the problem of how to feed 24 babies
by bottle. Orphans fleeing the Japanese came to the convent and school
looking for refuge. The convent also opened its doors to other Catholic
missionaries escaping from the Japanese.
In time, the British requisitioned the Entally convent and school as a
British military hospital; the dormitories, which once housed orphans,
were now taken over by sick, wounded, and dying British soldiers. The
Sisters of Loreto evacuated, taking with them their students and other or-
phans, and relocated to hotels in Darjeeling, Shillong, and Lucknow.
Mother Teresa stayed in Calcutta in a building located on Convent Road.
There she continued to teach and care for her young charges.
A CLOSE COMPANION
In 1937, Mother Teresa had taken on more responsibilities; she was put
in charge of the St. Teresa’s Primary School as well as Sunday school
classes for the children. During the war, she also took on the responsibili-
ties of headmistress when Mother du Cenacle became ill in 1944. That
she stayed in the city during the war made a tremendous impact on her
students, for it was Mother Teresa’s wish that the lives of the children not
be any more disrupted than necessary. The school may have been moved
to a different location for the time being, but Mother Teresa worked to
make sure that the children’s daily routine stayed as intact as possible.
It was during this period that Mother Teresa met a man who would
serve as her spiritual advisor and companion for the next 45 years. Father
Celeste Van Exem was a Belgian Jesuit who came to India in 1944. An ex-
pert in Arabic and the Muslim faith, he came to Calcutta with the specific
intention of working with the city’s Muslims. On July 11, 1944, he and
two other priests moved into a house in Baithakana, located not far from
Mother Teresa’s small community on Convent Road. When asked
whether he would celebrate Mass for Mother Teresa, Father Van Exem re-
called how he initially refused, stating that he was “called to India to work
26 MOTHER TERESA
for the Muslims and not for Sisters. I was a young priest who wanted to
work with intellectuals; I did not want to be busy with nuns.”2
The following day, though, Father Van Exem met with Mother Teresa.
His initial impression was of a very simple nun, concerned with the plight
of the poor, but for the most part unremarkable. However, Mother Teresa
came away with a much higher opinion of the priest, for not long after, she
asked him to become her spiritual advisor. Again, Father Van Exem de-
murred, saying that he had no desire to become a nun’s spiritual father and
that he considered the request a diversion from what he believed to be his
true reason for being in Calcutta. But he told Mother Teresa that she
needed to put her request in writing to the archbishop of the city. The arch-
bishop granted Mother Teresa’s request. In obedience to the bishop, Father
Van Exem reluctantly assumed the role of Mother Teresa’s spiritual father
and director. She would turn to him often for spiritual advice and direction.
WAR’S END AND TROUBLED TIMES

By 1945, the war ended and Mother Teresa and her charges moved
back to the convent at Entally. During this period, Mother Teresa had
written home to her mother describing her life in Calcutta. By now,
Drana had moved to Tirana, Albania, where both Aga and Lazar lived.
Drana reminded her daughter that she went to India to work with the
poor; Drana also asked her daughter to recall the woman whom Drana
had taken in, when no one else would. Perhaps this advice spurred
Mother Teresa to rethink her duties in the convent.
No sooner had the hostilities ended with Japan, when India and Cal-
cutta were once more plunged into hostilities and bloodshed. The Indian
National Congress had been busy making preparations for India’s even-
tual independence from British rule. Working with the Congress was the
Muslim League, under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a lawyer.
The League was pressing the Congress for the establishment of a separate
homeland for India’s Muslims to be called Pakistan. The new country was
to be formed from a partition of India.
On August 16, 1946, the Muslim League called a meeting—what
members referred to as Direct Action Day—in Calcutta in the Maidan.
The speeches given by league members inflamed an already passionate
crowd. As a result, for the next four nights, the city was the scene of
bloody riots between Hindus and Muslims. Life came to a grinding halt as
the city was pitched into terror. Militants set fire to shops with people still
inside. Sewers were filled with the bodies of the dead. Men, women and
children, cut by the deadly blades of knives, were left in the streets to
bleed to death. Entrails spilled onto sidewalks already red with blood;
most everywhere one looked there were dead bodies, while vultures cir-
cled overhead. By the end, at least 5,000 persons had perished and an-
other 15,000 were wounded.
For Mother Teresa and the children, the riots also meant no food de-
liveries. Faced with the prospect of her 300 students going hungry, Mother
Teresa broke one of the cardinal rules of the order: she left the convent
and went into the streets alone to search for food. Years later, Mother
Teresa described the scene:
I went out from St. Mary’s Entally. I had three hundred girls in
the boarding school and nothing to eat. We were not supposed
to go out into the streets, but I went anyway. Then I saw the
bodies on the streets, stabbed, beaten, lying there in strange
positions in their dried blood. . . . A lorry [truck full] of soldiers
stopped me and told me that I should not be out on the
street. . . . I told them that I had to come out and take the risk.
I had three hundred children with nothing to eat. The soldiers
had rice and they drove me back to the school and unloaded
bags of rice.3
In the aftermath of the riots, Mother Teresa became weak and ill and was
directed to rest every afternoon for three hours. Her superiors feared that
her condition might make her susceptible to tuberculosis, a malady that
claimed many nuns in Calcutta. Father Van Exem remembered this pe-
riod as the only time he ever saw his spiritual charge cry, frustrated at her
weak condition and inability to carry out her duties.
Finally it was decided that Mother Teresa needed a spiritual renewal
and a physical reprieve from the work at the convent and school. She was
ordered to travel to the convent in Darjeeling for a retreat, which would
allow her to rest and meditate. On September 10, 1946, a day that is now
celebrated annually by the Missionaries of Charity as Inspiration Day,
while traveling to Darjeeling on a dusty, noisy train, Mother Teresa expe-
rienced another call. Later she would have little to say about the experi-
ence, much as she did when she first received her calling to become a nun.
But to one writer, many years later, she offered her memories of that train
ride: “It was on the tenth of September 1946, in the train that took me to
Darjeeling, . . . that I heard the call of God. The message was quite clear: I
was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.”4
Many years later she also stated that the call was quite clear, “It was an
order. To fail it would have been to break the faith.”5
28 MOTHER TERESA
NOTES
Element, 1992), p. 15.
2. Kathryn Spink, Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography (San Fran-
cisco: Harper & Row, 1997), p. 20.
Work (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1986), pp. 27–28.
4. Edward Le Joly, Mother Teresa of Calcutta: A Biography (San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1977), p. 9.
Chapter 3
A NEW DIRECTION AND A

NEW JOURNEY
Few would disagree that Inspiration Day was a turning point for Mother
Teresa. But there have been accounts of her life that have made erroneous
connections between her desire to leave Loreto and her calling on the
train to Darjeeling. One popular story stated that the killings and carnage
she viewed during the August 1946 riots were the sole inspiration for her
leaving. Another account incorrectly stated that she could view the slums
of Calcutta from her bedroom window, which led to her decision.
Mother Teresa was no stranger to the poverty in Calcutta. She had seen
it firsthand upon her arrival as a novitiate and later as a teacher instruct-
ing the children of the poor. But until her train ride to Darjeeling, Mother
Teresa firmly believed that she was carrying out God’s plan for her life and
that she would best serve God as a nun living in Loreto. That was now all
about to change.
THE FIRST STEPS

As Mother Teresa recalled “The message was clear, I knew where I be-
longed, but I did not know how to get there.”1 On her return from Dar-
jeeling, she immediately sought out Father Van Exem, showing him two
sheets of paper on which she had written down her plans. Upon returning
to his room at Baithakana, Father Van Exem placed the pieces of paper
underneath a picture of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Mother
Teresa had given to him as a Christmas gift. Two hours later, he returned
and read the papers. He found the key ingredients as to what she was sup-
posed to do: she was to leave Loreto, but she was to keep her vows. She
30 MOTHER TERESA
was to start a new congregation or order of nuns, who would work for the
poor in the slums. The members of this new congregation would have to
take a special vow of charity for the poor. There were to be no institutions,
hospitals, or clinics to help in this endeavor. Mother Teresa and her nuns
were to work and live among the poorest of the poor. Special attention,
too, was to be focused on those people who had no family or were un-
wanted in any way.
Father Van Exem did not even question Mother Teresa’s explanation.
Years later, he stated that he believed her new vocation was just as true as
her decision to leave Skopje and become a nun. To answer this latest call-
ing, it did not matter to Mother Teresa that she had already made one sac-
rifice in leaving her mother. Now she was fully prepared to make a second:
leaving the safe confines of the convent at Loreto and venturing out into
the streets of Calcutta to work with the poor.
When Mother Teresa returned to Loreto in October, she led a retreat
in which the seeds of her new venture began to sprout. Drawing on the
story of Jesus on the cross crying, “I thirst,” Mother Teresa put forth the
basic tenets that would guide her journey: “to quench the infinite thirst of
Jesus Christ on the Cross for love of souls.”2 The importance of this idea
was so great that as her organization grew and built chapels, each one
would be inscribed with the two words: “I thirst.” In creating the Mis-
sionaries of Charity, she expected those chosen not only to take vows of
chastity, poverty, and obedience, but to take an additional vow as well: to
offer themselves to the poorest of the poor.
Leaving the convent was not easy for Mother Teresa. It was, she ad-
mitted years later, the most difficult thing she had ever done, even
harder than leaving her family and homeland. Besides the emotional
turmoil, she still needed permission to leave. Upon consulting Father
Van Exem, Mother Teresa decided to pray about her decision for a few
months. In January 1947, Mother Teresa decided to write to Archbishop
Ferdinand Périer about her plans; Father Van Exem would follow up
with a visit.
If Father Van Exem thought that the archbishop would readily agree to
Mother Teresa’s plans, he was mistaken. Years later, Périer described the
first time he learned of Mother Teresa:
One day, as I was making the visit of the Entally convent,

someone told me that a young nun of the Community had
some queer ideas. Now, whenever anyone tried to put me on
my guard in this way, I always asked my self whether the hand
of God might not be there, and gave full freedom to the person
A NEW DIRECTION AND A NEW JOURNEY 31
to explain his or her case. If the religious is humble, obedient,

dutiful the impulse may come from God.3
Despite his open-mindedness, Archbishop Périer was not only against

the idea of a lone nun living among the poor on the Calcutta streets, but
he was also alarmed that one of his priests was apparently treating the
idea with some seriousness. Soon after his meeting with Van Exem, the
Archbishop ordered Mother Teresa transferred to Asansol, a city located
about 175 miles northwest of Calcutta. Here, she was to maintain the
kitchen as well as the garden; she would also continue teaching geogra-
phy. Father Van Exem then cautioned Mother Teresa to say nothing
more of her plans for the time being. The two kept up regular correspon-
dence by mail.
A RELUCTANT APPROVAL
While Mother Teresa was away from Entally, Archbishop Périer made
several inquiries about her. Keeping her identity a secret, he spoke with
Father Julien Henry of St. Teresa’s Church, who also served as the pastor
of St. Mary’s Church in Darjeeling and was a teacher of theology. The
archbishop carefully asked Father Henry what he thought of a European
woman dressed in the traditional sari of Bengali women, working among
the poor and dying in the city. The two also discussed whether she could
succeed and if such a new order would draw in young women to serve.
Then there were political questions to be considered: what would the re-
action of the public be to such an idea, when already there were individ-
uals trying to help the poor?
Father Henry believed that the archbishop’s proposal was, in theory,
possible. At the very least, it was a gamble, but Father Henry told the
archbishop it was a gamble worth taking. Excited at the prospect of some-
thing being done for the poor of Calcutta, Father Henry even asked his
congregation to pray for the success of such a program. But little did he or
anyone else realize that the person behind this idea was Mother Teresa.
The archbishop was not finished. In addition to speaking with Father
Henry, the archbishop sought the advice of the father general of the Soci-
ety of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), who in turn asked the provincial in India
for his thoughts. The archbishop also sought counsel from a specialist in
church law.
There was another difficulty to be considered as well. The Vatican did
not look favorably on the unnecessary growth of religious vocations for
women. As it was, there were already too many small orders of nuns. A
32 MOTHER TERESA
bishop applying for a new congregation had to demonstrate that the ex-
isting orders did not do the work for which the new one was being estab-
lished. In Calcutta, the order of the Daughters of St. Anne, with whom
Mother Teresa had worked while at the Loreto school, already ministered
among the poor. They also dressed in Indian style, slept in a dormitory, ate
simple food, and spoke Bengali. How would Mother Teresa’s new congre-
gation be different?
The archbishop asked Mother Teresa if she could work with the
Daughters of St. Anne. Mother Teresa did not think so. The Daughters
had their own way of doing things and their own traditions. What Mother
Teresa was proposing was quite different. Her congregation would be more
mobile; they would visit the poor where needed. And she did not want
just to work among the poor; she made it clear that she intended to work
among the “poorest of the poor.”4 She also wanted to start from scratch
and train her novices in her own way.
An entire year passed before the archbishop was satisfied with the in-
formation he had received. Only then did he give permission to Mother
Teresa to write to the mother general of the Loreto Sisters, asking for per-
mission to be released from the Order. In the letter that Father Van Exem
typed for her, Mother Teresa explained her reasons for seeking her release:
she wished to continue her vocation among the poor. In asking the
mother superior to leave, Mother Teresa requested exclaustration, which
simply meant that she would continue to live by her vows but would serve
as a Loreto Sister in a new setting.
However, when the archbishop read the letter, he insisted that Mother
Teresa change exclaustration to secularization. To be secularized meant that
Mother Teresa would no longer be a member of the Loreto Order, but she
would continue to honor her vows as a nun. Having to leave the Loreto
Order was a severe disappointment, but as Archbishop Périer explained,
she was to trust God fully and send the letter.
With a heavy heart, Mother Teresa posted the letter to the mother gen-
eral in Rathfarnham in early January 1948. Less than a month later, she
had her reply:
Since this is manifestly the will of God, I hereby give you per-
mission to write to the Congregation in Rome and for the in-
dult. Do not speak to the Provincial. Do not speak to your
Superiors. Speak to nobody. I did not speak to my own coun-
selors. My consent is sufficient. However, do not ask for the in-
dult of secularization, ask for the indult of exclaustration.5
The mother general could not have sent stronger support. Both Mother
Teresa and Father Van Exem were overjoyed with the response. Mother
Teresa now wrote another letter, this time to the office of the Vatican in
Rome. Although the mother general told her to consult no one, Mother
Teresa again gave the letter to Father Van Exem, who in turn gave it to
Archbishop Périer. The archbishop again stipulated that if the letter was
to be sent to Rome, Mother Teresa include her request for secularization.
Despite her fears about having to leave her religious order, Mother Teresa
was more worried about how to write to a cardinal. She asked Father Van
Exem for help; he simply replied that a “Dear Father” would suffice and
not to worry about titles, but to state her case clearly and simply. Finally
in February 1948, she sent the letter to Rome. In addition to Mother
Teresa’s request, Archbishop Périer also included a letter that outlined her
life and service in Calcutta.
Weeks and then months went by with no response from Rome. Finally
in July 1948, Archbishop Périer summoned Father Van Exem to his office.
He had received news from the Vatican that very afternoon. Rome had
granted Mother Teresa’s request for exclaustration. She would be allowed
to remain a member of the Loreto Order and work outside of the convent.
It was a wonderful victory for Mother Teresa and a vindication of the very
principals that the Loreto Sisters’ founder, Mary Ward, had been denied.
There was, however, one condition: Mother Teresa would remain outside
the cloister for a year, at which time, the archbishop would review her
progress and decide whether she would return to the convent.
The archbishop also made it clear to Father Van Exem that the news
from Rome was not to be given to Mother Teresa until after the school
week was completed. Despite Mother Teresa’s appeals to be told of the de-
cision, the archbishop was adamant: she would be told the following Sun-
day. An elated Father Van Exem agreed to the archbishop’s request.
On Sunday, August 8, 1948, Father Van Exem arose as usual and cele-
brated mass in the chapel at the Loreto convent. Following his usual cus-
tom, he gave the first sermon in Bengali, and then, after mass was
concluded, another sermon in Hindi. He then asked Mother Teresa to meet
with him in the convent parlor. When she arrived, he told her that he had
received news from Rome. According to his account, Mother Teresa turned
pale and requested to go to the chapel to pray. When she returned, he gave
her the good news: not only did Rome agree to her request to leave the con-
vent, but also that she continue her life as a Loreto Sister. She then signed
three copies of the permission: one for Rome, one for the archbishop, and
one for herself. She then asked, “Can I go to the slums now?”6
34 MOTHER TERESA
AN EMOTIONAL DEPARTURE
Despite Mother Teresa’s willingness to leave immediately to begin her
work, there was still much to be done to prepare for her departure. First,
she needed to inform the convent that she was leaving. Archbishop Périer
had feared a shocked reaction from the sisters. His fears were justified.
When the decree was made public, the mother superior took to her bed
for a week. Another sister wept uncontrollably; many were shocked at the
announcement or mystified as to why one of their own, particularly one
who seemed happy in her surroundings, would want to leave the convent.
Those close to Mother Teresa worried about her health and whether she
could sustain a rigorous life on the Calcutta streets. A notice posted on a
Loreto blackboard requested that the sisters not criticize or praise Mother
Teresa, but pray for her and her decision.
In preparation for her departure from the convent, Mother Teresa pur-
chased three saris from a local bazaar. Each one was white with three blue
stripes; this simple garment would become the distinctive habit of her
new order. The fabric was the cheapest available at the time, and was of
the kind usually worn by poor Bengali women. The blue stripes held a spe-
cial meaning for Mother Teresa, as the color is usually associated with the
Virgin Mary. Father Van Exem later blessed the garments, along with a
small cross and rosary, which had been placed on each garment in the St.
Mary’s chapel while Father Henry and another nun watched. Among the
last tasks that needed to be done required Father Van Exem’s help.
Mother Teresa needed to write a letter to her mother, explaining all that
had happened. She believed that if her spiritual advisor also wrote the let-
ter, that would settle any fears or worries her mother might have about her
daughter’s decision to leave Loreto.
Father Van Exem suggested that Mother Teresa take some medical
training. Working in the slums, there would be plenty of opportunity to
offer medical assistance. She agreed and decided to go to Patna in the
state of Bihar where she would receive training from the Medical Mission
Sisters at their hospital. Archbishop Périer supported the decision and
Sister Stephanie Ingendaa, the mother superior at the hospital, warmly
agreed to the request to help Mother Teresa in whatever way the sisters
could.
On August 16, a week after learning of the Vatican’s decision, Mother
Teresa changed her clothes. The long black habit, with its floor-length
skirt, the white coif, and black veil were laid aside. She now wore her new
religious habit, a symbolic breaking with the religious uniform she had
worn for the past two decades. Even though many of her former pupils
wished to see their teacher in a sari, her leaving was a solitary affair. That
evening, she left the convent grounds in a taxi as quietly as she had come
almost 20 years before. In her pocket, she carried five rupees and a ticket
to Patna.
A NEW BEGINNING
On August 17, Mother Teresa arrived at Patna, an old city located on
the banks of the Ganges River. Sister Stephanie was there waiting to wel-
come her. They went together to the Holy Family Hospital, where
Mother Teresa would spend the next few months receiving her medical
training.
The hospital and convent buildings were located in the poorer section
of Patna, known as Padri ki Haveli (House of the Fathers), and was named
after the first church built in the town. The Holy Family Hospital, which
formerly served as a school building, was modest: two stories high with a
small separate building to one side that housed the operating and delivery
rooms. The hospital was staffed by nuns who were doctors, mainly gyne-
cologists, obstetricians, and surgeons. Other nuns served as nurses, labora-
tory technicians, and nutritionists. The hospital also housed a nursing
school that many Indian girls attended.
The convent where Mother Teresa would take her meals and sleep oc-
cupied part of the former church. Built of stone blocks, it had a high ceil-
ing, a worn stone floor, small gothic-shaped windows, and whitewashed
walls. The main part of the church was divided into small cubicles by
bamboo rods and white cotton sheets. The garden was once the cemetery;
on very hot nights, many slept between the tombstones covered with
mosquito netting. The hopsital staff ate in the former servant’s quarters
with an old Hindu cook maintaining the small kitchen.
Because the hospital was so busy, there was little fanfare to welcome
Mother Teresa. Instead, she was put into a cubicle, given a chair in the
dining room, and included in the day-to-day running of the hospital.
Many of the sisters realized that she was in a period of transition, and
while Mother Teresa knew what she was to do, she was still unclear about
how she was to carry out her calling. In the meantime, the Medical Mis-
sion Sisters tried to make her feel at home and helped prepare her for the
grueling work ahead.
Now, instead of lecturing students, Mother Teresa’s days were filled
with new experiences; she never knew what to expect from one day to the
next. Whenever there was a new admission, an impending birth-or-
operation, Mother Teresa was summoned at the same time as a doctor was
36 MOTHER TERESA
called. This experience not only gave Mother Teresa an opportunity to

practice her Hindi, in which she was not very fluent, but to become ac-
quainted with expectant mothers, fatal accidents, ill and abandoned chil-
dren, and death on the operating table.
She also learned to tend to patients ill and dying with cholera or small-
pox. One nun remembered that, no matter what the calamity, Mother
Teresa remained unfazed by it, maintaining her focus on the patient. She
could always be counted on to hold a dying patient’s hand, to comfort a
small child frightened by the hospital, or to cradle a newborn infant in her
arms. She learned how to do many simple medical procedures such as
making a hospital bed, giving injections, and administering medicines.
She helped assist in delivering babies, something in which she took spe-
cial delight. Working with the nutritionists, Mother Teresa learned about
the importance of a healthy diet, hygiene, and adequate rest. This knowl-
edge was key to carrying out her work in the slums. As Mother Teresa
came to know many of the poor families of the area, she attended wed-
dings, feasts, and funerals, slowly entering their world and becoming one
of them.
During her time at Patna, Mother Teresa gained her first associate. A
young girl, suffering from advanced stages of tuberculosis, asked Mother
Teresa whether she could help her in serving the poor. Toward the end of
her stay at Holy Family, she appointed the young girl as an associate in her
work. Her new helper ministered to other patients sick with tuberculosis
and offered prayers for the recovery of those stricken with the disease. Un-
fortunately, she did not accompany Mother Teresa to Calcutta for she
died at Holy Family soon after.
BUILDING A FOUNDATION
During the evenings when not working at the hospital, Mother Teresa
discussed her plans with the many members of the Medical Mission Sis-
ters. She welcomed ideas, practical suggestions, and criticism from the
others about how she should best implement her plans. One thing that
did become clear: if Mother Teresa’s proposed order wanted to work with
the poor, they would have to commit themselves to working only for the
poor.
Out of these discussions came the foundation for Mother Teresa’s con-
gregation as well as many of the rules and routines that the group would
follow. Perhaps the most valuable lesson was the rule of balance as prac-
ticed by the founding mother of the Medical Mission Sisters, Mother
Anna Dengel. Like Mother Teresa, Dengal also had to obtain special per-
mission from the Vatican in order to establish an order of nuns who were
also practicing surgeons and midwives. Among Mother Dengel’s tenets
was that heavy tasks, physical or emotional, could not be carried out for
long without rest and renewal. Therefore, it was imperative for her nuns
to take regular rests when needed and retreats to recharge their bodies and
minds.
The sisters suggested that with the poor living conditions and hard
work that was to be done everyday, prayer should be strictly observed, but
no prayer should be scheduled after 9 P.M. This would allow the nuns
plenty of rest and relaxation. There should be plenty of protein-rich food
for meals, especially at breakfast, but the selection should be simple; no
exceptions to meals were to be made except in cases of illness. Mother
Teresa had thought that she and her nuns would eat nothing more than
rice and salt, the basic diet of the poor. But she learned that this diet was
too sparse; she and her nuns would then be unable to work efficiently at
their jobs. This kind of diet also left one open to the very diseases of the
poor that Mother Teresa hoped to treat and fight. Mother Teresa sagely
took the advice given to her.
Mother Teresa envisioned an eight-hour workday beginning at five in
the morning. For that schedule to work, the Medical Missionaries sug-
gested there be one daily hour of rest so that the nuns would have the en-
ergy to carry out their tasks. They also suggested that one day a week
should be taken off, usually a Sunday, but for those who worked Sundays,
one full day of rest should be scheduled sometime during the week. There
should also be an annual retreat for all, which took place away from their
work. Clothing should remain simple; the Medical Mission Sisters wore
white cotton habits and veils that were changed everyday, sometimes
even twice a day. When Mother Teresa explained that the white cotton
sari was to be the habit, the nuns suggested that for the sake of health, all
saris should be washed everyday, and each nun should be given three saris:
one to wear, one to wash, and one for special occasions and emergencies.
Head coverings, while necessary to protect oneself from the hot Indian
summers, were to be kept to a minimum with no starch used on any part
of the headdress veil.
TIME TO LEAVE
After only a few weeks, Mother Teresa wrote to Father Van Exem ask-
ing for permission to go to Calcutta. She felt she had learned all that she
could for now, and was anxious to begin her work. Reading her request,
Father Van Exem was skeptical. Mother Teresa had been with the Medi-
38 MOTHER TERESA
cal Mission Sisters for too short a time. He had fully expected her to stay
much longer: at least six months, even up to a year. The archbishop felt
similarly; both men wanted Mother Teresa to stay longer, to make sure she
had taken advantage of every opportunity for her medical training.
Still, her letters kept coming, asking for permission to leave for Cal-
cutta. She had learned all she could, plus receiving knowledge about dis-
eases that she most likely would not encounter in the city’s slums. Further,
she argued, she would learn more about cholera, sores, and other diseases
that were prevalent in the slums if she were living and working among the
poor who suffered from them. The Medical Missionaries agreed with
Mother Teresa; it was time for Mother Teresa to begin her mission.
Not convinced, Father Van Exem traveled to Patna to meet with
Mother Teresa and Sister Stephanie to discuss what was to be done.
When he arrived at Holy Family, he looked for Mother Teresa, but could
not find her in the group of nurses at the hospital. Finally, a small voice
answered, “But Father, I am here.”7 Father Van Exem, having never seen
Mother Teresa in her sari, completely overlooked her.
Meeting with Sister Stephanie and the sister-doctor who had been
overseeing Mother Teresa, Father Van Exem listened as the two explained
why it was time for Mother Teresa to leave. She was ready to begin her life
in the slums they told him, and they would always be there should she
need advice or direction in medical matters. Father Van Exem then ex-
plained that both he and the archbishop were concerned about the possi-
bility of a church scandal should Mother Teresa fail in her mission. She
would not make a mistake, the sisters assured him, and again they re-
minded him that there were others who would share in the responsibility
of her undertaking. Finding himself outnumbered, Father Van Exem re-
lented: Mother Teresa could go to Calcutta.
NOTES
Element, 1992), p. 21.
2. Kathryn Spink, Mother Teresa (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1997), p. 24.
Harper & Row, 1977), pp. 10–11.
4. Le Joly, Mother Teresa, p. 12.
Work (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1986), p. 35.
Chapter 4
OUT OF A CESSPOOL—HOPE
Shortly after his visit with Mother Teresa and the Medical Mission Sis-
ters, Father Van Exem wrote to Mother Teresa that the archbishop had re-
lented and given his permission for her to return to Calcutta. He had also
found a place for her to live with the Little Sisters of the Poor. She arrived
at the St. Joseph’s Home for the elderly, located at 2 Lower Circular Road,
on December 9, 1948. It had been barely four months since she had left
the Loreto convent in Entally and started her training in Patna. Prior to
her leaving Patna, Mother Teresa spoke with one of the nun-doctors in
the cemetery of the convent grounds. Remarking that she had no idea
how she was going to proceed or where she would even begin, Mother
Teresa nonetheless remained confident that God would direct her. And
with that thought, she made her way back to Calcutta to undertake her
life’s work.
Although Calcutta had the third highest per-capita income in India,
it was a vast sea of suffering and despair. The streets, where people were
born and died hourly, were crowded with beggars and lepers, together
with a host of refugees from the countryside who had never known a
home. Unwanted infants were regularly abandoned and left to die in
clinics, on the streets, or in garbage bins. There were thousands of
pavement dwellers within the city itself; 44 percent of the city did not
have sewers. It was into this sea of misery that Mother Teresa now
came.
The St. Joseph’s Home proved to be a good choice for Mother Teresa.
The Little Sisters of the Poor lived in strict poverty. Although they
worked through other institutions, they had no regular source of income
40 MOTHER TERESA
to draw on and were completely dependent on donations of food and

money. This dependence on God and the charity of others became an im-
portant element with the Missionaries of Charity as well. Although the
mother superior was at first unsure about whether Mother Teresa could
stay at the St. Joseph’s Home, Father Van Exem assured her that Mother
Teresa had received a decree of exclaustration and that she was still an-
swerable to the archbishop.
Upon her arrival, Mother Teresa made a short retreat under Father Van
Exem’s guidance. They decided to meet every morning; she would spend
afternoons in prayer and meditation. She also spent part of her time dur-
ing those first days at the convent helping the sisters care for their aged
patients.
MOTIJIHL
On December 21, 1948, Mother Teresa left her small room on the
first floor near the gate of St. Joseph’s and went to mass. After break-
fast, she left the convent grounds and boarded a bus bound for Mauli
Ali to begin her work. She was dressed in her white sari, but she wore
it not as a poor Bengali woman but instead wrapped around her head
covering a tiny cotton cap. Completing her habit was a small black cru-
cifix, attached to her left shoulder by a safety pin. Under her rough
leather sandals, a gift from the Patna sisters, she wore no stockings.
With a meager lunch in a small packet she entered the world of the
Calcutta slums.
Her first stop was in the slum of Motijihl, which means “Pearl Lake.”
While there was no lake, there was a large brackish sump in the center
of the neighborhood that provided the area’s residents with water. Raw
sewage flowed into open drains and garbage lay piled on the streets. The
slum’s residents lived in small hovels with dirt floors. There was no
school, no hospital, and no dispensary.
Motijihl was already a familiar place for Mother Teresa. Though she
had never personally visited it, many sodality students at St. Mary’s,
under Father Henry’s direction, had come to work in the area. Father
Henry was more than eager to offer help to Mother Teresa and provided
her with a list of families whose children had attended the school at the
Loreto convent. Mother Teresa visited with as many families as she
could. She told them she had permission to start a school right in the
area. As a result, several parents promised to send their children to her
the next morning.
OUT OF A CESSPOOL—HOPE 41
BEGINNING RIGHT ON THE GROUND

The next morning, Mother Teresa was back in Motijihl and was happy
to see several children waiting for her on the steps of a railway bridge that
led down into the slum. In trying to find a spot where they could meet,
Mother Teresa noticed that the only open area was a tree near the sump.
With no blackboard, chalk, books, or desks, Mother Teresa took a stick
and used it to write in the mud. As the children squatted and watched,
she traced the letters of the Bengali alphabet with the stick. Mother
Teresa had made a start, or as she would later describe it, beginning “right
on the ground,”1 which became one of the defining concepts of the con-
stitution of the Missionaries of Charity.
Soon the number of pupils attending classes multiplied as word spread
that a school had been started in Motijihl. In time, the sounds of children
reciting the alphabet competed with the other everyday noises of the
slum. When morning lessons were finished, Mother Teresa looked for
someplace to eat her small lunch, seeking out a quiet spot where she could
find drinking water. Once, when she stopped at a local convent to ask if
she could come inside to take her meal, the nuns, thinking Mother Teresa
was a beggar, refused. Instead, they directed her to the back to eat under
the stairs where the other beggars ate. In later years, she would never
mention the name of the convent that had turned her away.
Mother Teresa became a familiar, if strange, sight on the Calcutta
streets: many watched as the lone woman, dressed like a poor Indian, spent
her time visiting in the alleyways and mean streets of the slums. Even one
of her strongest supporters, Father Michael Gabric, a Jesuit priest from Yu-
goslavia and a member of the missionary group whose actions first influ-
enced Mother Teresa as a young girl, was puzzled by her actions. He
candidly admitted in an interview, “We thought she was cracked.”2
At the request of the archbishop, Mother Teresa kept a record of her
early efforts, dating from December 25, 1948 until June 11, 1949. Only a
small part of this fascinating record survives. These pages are her accounts
of her first days working in Motijihl, especially with the children. Chil-
dren who were dirty were given a bath. After lessons in hygiene and read-
ing, she helped the children learn their catechism. She noted especially
the joy the children gave her, remembering how she laughed when teach-
ing them.
There were also entries in which Mother Teresa described moments
when humor was of a darker nature. Attending to one poor man who had
a gangrenous thumb, Mother Teresa realized that the thumb would have
42 MOTHER TERESA
to be amputated. Saying a prayer and taking a pair of scissors, she snipped

it off. Her patient then fainted in one direction and she in the other. She
often gave her bus fare away to those who needed it more and, instead,
walked home.
THE DARK NIGHT

Although the remaining pages of her journal document the people and
situations that she saw and even the feelings she had while doing her
work, it is still hard to imagine the tremendous loneliness that Mother
Teresa must have felt as she made her way through the slums of Calcutta
in those first months. For someone who had been accustomed to the order
and peace of convent life, the reality must have been jarring. But Mother
Teresa’s faith in God was absolute, and so she kept up her work, despite
the exhaustion and pain she felt at the end of the day.
Her faith also kept Mother Teresa from falling into despair, for she
sensed that her work accomplished very little. Calcutta faced intractable
problems. Since winning independence from Great Britain, India had
been divided into two nations: Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India. De-
spite the creation of a separate country for Muslims, conflict between
them and the Hindus continued, sometimes erupting into bloody vio-
lence, which left families devastated and areas ravaged. Many Hindus
seeking jobs flooded the streets of an already-overcrowded Calcutta.
Most ended up in the streets, and with a growing shortage of food and
water, many were plunged into unrelenting poverty. Much of the food
and water available became contaminated from the overflowing sewage.
Many considered the acquisition of one rupee (about 11 cents Ameri-
can) as good fortune.
Still, Mother Teresa persevered. As people heard of what she was
doing, they came forth with money, supplies, time, and favors. The bus
driver who drove the route to St. Joseph’s made her sit in a seat next to
him so she should would not have to make the hour-long walk back to St.
Joseph’s. A former teacher at St. Mary’s came to help her teach classes. On
one occasion, she went to a local parish priest for help. As much as he said
he was glad to be of service, he offered her little in the way of encourage-
ment or help. Mother Teresa then went to another priest who was so de-
lighted with what she had accomplished, that he presented her with a gift
of 100 rupees to help carry on her work. It was a princely sum that allowed
Mother Teresa to rent two small huts in Motijihl for five rupees each. One
hut served as a school where the students met for class and where they
were given milk at lunchtime and free bars of soap as prizes.
The infectious enthusiasm of the children spread throughout the com-

munity. Here and there, people came forward with small gifts for the
school: a stool, an odd table, even books and slates appeared. By January
4, 1949, less than two weeks after she first set out, Mother Teresa had a
schoolhouse, over 50 students, and three teachers to help her. Not only
were the children learning their alphabet and numbers, but classes in
needlework were offered for the young girls as well as the continuing em-
phasis on teaching the children hygiene and catechism. The school was
soon formally blessed. It was one of Mother Teresa’s greatest successes.
The other hut on the premises was used for a more solemn purpose: car-
ing for the ill and dying poor, a place where Mother Teresa offered com-
fort, solace, and, above all, dignity to those who had no home and no
hope. Her reasons for creating the small hostel arose out of one of her
many experiences in dealing with the poorest of the poor. One day,
Mother Teresa saw a woman dying on the street beside a hospital. She
picked the woman up and took her to the hospital but was refused admis-
sion because the woman had no money. The woman later died on the
street. Mother Teresa then realized that she must make a home for the
dying.
Still, she was plagued by doubt about whether she was doing the work
God had called her to do. There were moments when she wished to return
to the quiet and security that the Loreto convent offered. On one occa-
sion when she approached a priest for financial aid, he treated her as if she
were doing something wrong by begging, telling her to ask instead her
own parish priest for money. He left her saying he did not understand and
brusquely turned away. The experience reduced Mother Teresa to tears
and raised grave self-doubts. She would later say that God was training
her; but in order to carry out His will, she had to feel completely useless
and inadequate to the task before her. Continually, she struggled to turn
her will aside and place her faith completely with God in the hope that
He would continue to show her the way. She later wrote of this period as
the “dark night of the birth”3 of her order, the Missionaries of Charity.
But in her begging for food, medicine, clothing, and money, Mother
Teresa was actually carrying out a time-honored tradition of mendicancy.
Throughout much of India’s history, priests, holy men, and teachers de-
pended on the support of the community for their livelihood. Her begging
letters and begging expeditions were a natural outgrowth of her own
poverty and a dependence on providence to provide for her basic needs and
the needs of those she helped. Although in some western cultures such
overt dependence is often looked down upon, in India, as well as in tradi-
tional Roman Catholic practice, begging was nothing to be ashamed about.
44 MOTHER TERESA
14 CREEK LANE
During her first months on the Calcutta streets, Mother Teresa’s spiri-
tual advisor, Father Van Exem, watched carefully to see how she was hold-
ing up. After talking, both he and she decided that it was time for her to
have a place of her own where she could start her work and no longer im-
pose on the Little Sisters of the Poor. But Mother Teresa’s first efforts to
find affordable housing met with little success. Often landlords would not
keep their appointments. Others, upon seeing the strange European nun
with no visible means of support, refused outright to rent to her. Mother
Teresa did not lose heart, but identified her plight with that of the people
she served. She later wrote:
Our Lord just wants me to be a “Free Nun,” covered with the

poverty of the Cross. But today I have learned a good lesson—
the poverty of the poor must often be too hard for them. . . . I
walked and walked till my legs and arms ached. I thought how
they must also ache in body and soul, looking for home, food,
help.”4
Father Van Exem finally stepped in. He spoke to a member of a Bengali

Catholic family, Albert Gomes, who, along with his brothers, owned a
sizeable property at 14 Creek Lane in East Calcutta. One brother, Michael
Gomes, lived in the house with his family. Finally an agreement was
reached in which Mother Teresa would move into a room on the second
floor. She would pay no rent. The home’s location was later described by
Mother Teresa as “rich in its poverty.”5
In February 1949, she moved into her new quarters, bringing with her
only a small suitcase. Her room was spartan in appearance: a single chair,
a packing case for a desk, and some extra wooden boxes for seats. The wall
was adorned with an image of the Virgin Mary, a gift from Father Van
Exem who had originally received it from Mother Teresa as a Christmas
gift years before.
Mother Teresa now had some helpers who accompanied her so that she
would not be alone in the slums. Charur Ma, a widow who was the cook
at St. Mary’s at Entally, often went with her on shopping trips. Mable
Gomes, the young daughter of the family with whom she boarded, also
went with Mother Teresa on occasion. Even Michael Gomes, when he
had time, went with Mother Teresa to chemists’ shops, similar to Ameri-
can pharmacies, to ask for donations of medical supplies. Father Van
Exem sent a parish worker to accompany her on some of her daily visits to
the poor and dying. She was even joined by some of her former students
who came to visit her. Seeing her in her sari, some burst into tears. But all
were glad to see her and to offer what help they could.
Many years later, Michael Gomes recounted some of his experiences
helping Mother Teresa. On one rainy afternoon, Mother Teresa and
Mable Gomes returned from the slums. Both were soaking wet, and
Mother Teresa apologized for Mable’s condition. She told Michael that
they had just come from a home where they found a woman standing in a
room without a roof. Knee-deep in water, the woman had held an enamel
washbasin over the head of her sick child to protect him from the rain.
The landlord had broken the roof deliberately because the woman had
been unable to pay her rent for the last two months, owing him a total of
eight rupees. Later that afternoon, Mother Teresa hurried back to give the
woman her rent money.
On another occasion, when Michael accompanied Mother Teresa on
one of her begging forays, they again encountered rainy weather. Watch-
ing from the train window, they saw a man, completely drenched,
slumped under a tree. The two hurried to finish collecting medicines and
went back with the hopes of helping the man. However, when they
reached him, he was already dead. As Gomes later recounted, Mother
Teresa was in anguish over the incident, and the fact that many other
poor and gravely ill men and women, like the unknown man, might have
wanted to say something to someone, to have some comfort in their final
hours. The incident hardened her resolve to search for a facility where the
terminally ill could die in dignity and peace.
Gomes also remembered giving Mother Teresa extra food whenever
there was any to spare. Often she would ask him for extra mugs of rice,
which she gave away to starving families. Still, from time to time, she en-
countered hostility. Gomes remembered when a group of passengers on a
train, remarking on her strange nun’s habit, said that she was nothing
more than a Christian hoping to convert Hindus. For a long time, Mother
Teresa listened in silence. Finally she turned to them and said, “Ami
Bharater Bharat Amar” (I am Indian and India is mine).6 The passenger
car was silent for the rest of the trip.
“IT WILL BE A HARD LIFE”

On March 19, 1949, the feast day of St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus
and the protector of the Virgin Mary, a young girl appeared at 14 Creek
Lane. Subashni Das had been a boarder at St. Mary’s at Entally since she
was a small girl, and had been one of Mother Teresa’s students. She was
now in the last year of secondary school. She had come to join Mother
46 MOTHER TERESA
Teresa in her work. Mother Teresa remarked, “It will be a hard life. Are
you prepared for it?”7 The young woman said yes, and in doing so became
Mother Teresa’s first postulant, taking the name of Agnes, Mother Teresa’s
Christian name. She would, in time, become Mother Teresa’s closest aide:
she replaced Mother Teresa as the mistress of novices, the nun who over-
sees the training of new nuns, and took over the duties of the mother su-
perior when Mother Teresa began traveling.
Some weeks later, another former student Magdalena Gomes also came
to the house. She, too, wished to join Mother Teresa in helping the poor.
She took the name of Sister Gertrude and became the order’s first doctor.
By Easter of that year, the three women were sharing the tiny quarters at
the Gomes’s home and traveling everyday to Motijihl. They lived as nuns,
though the Church had not yet recognized them as a formal religious
order.
Soon, two more women arrived to join them. By the beginning of sum-
mer, there were 10 young women, all former students of Mother Teresa,
living at the Gomes’s home. Since none had graduated from school,
Mother Teresa made sure that they completed their studies and that they
all passed their final exams. Of the original 10, only 2 eventually left. The
others went on to become some of the first novitiates of Mother Teresa’s
To make room for the new arrivals, the Gomes’s opened the upper
room, which was really more like a large loft. The group used one area of
the room as a chapel. Father Henry donated a wood altar and candle-
sticks. Above the altar was the picture of the Virgin Mother that Father
Van Exem had given to Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa instituted a schedule for the young women. Each morn-
ing, they were awakened by a bell, which also summoned them to meals.
The same bell also signaled periods of prayer, rest, and work. Every morn-
ing, clad in their saris, the young women and Mother Teresa left for the
poorest areas of Calcutta. The days followed a set routine: mornings were
spent teaching school, while afternoons were given to the sick and dying.
By this time, there were two schools to tend to: the first one in Motijihl
and another in the slum of Tiljala, where Mother Teresa rented another
small room for her new students.
The young women and Mother Teresa also established a dispensary,
which was located in a classroom in the local parish school. After school
hours, the large room was turned into a screening room for tuberculosis
patients. The classroom, which opened onto a veranda, was often the
scene of long lines of people waiting to be examined. The nuns tried to get
the most seriously ill into city hospitals. However, when necessary, they
cared for the sick on the spot as they lay in the streets and alleys of the
city.
Mother Teresa worried about her charges. Remembering the advice of
the sisters at Patna, she was especially concerned that they were getting
enough to eat. Michael Gomes remembers one instance in which Mother
Teresa, sitting in the back of a truck with some bags of rice and flour, re-
turned at the end of the day from one of her begging expeditions. She had
not eaten all day nor gotten any water for fear that someone would steal
the food meant for her postulants. She went without in order that the
food would be delivered safely to the house.
To help the sisters, Father Van Exem and Father Henry made an an-
nouncement at Sunday mass calling for mushti bhikka, a Bengali custom
where any families that were able put aside a handful of rice for a beggar.
This effort marked the start of the feeding program that the Missionaries
of Charity oversaw and that would in time include not only food, but
clothing and soap for the poor.
A YEAR’S END
And then the first year was over. On August 16, 1949, Mother Teresa’s
year of exclaustration came to an end. Now Archbishop Périer had to de-
cide whether she would remain outside the cloister of Loreto or return. By
this time, the archbishop had received reports of Mother Teresa and her
growing band of young women. In his mind, there was no turning back for
Mother Teresa; she would remain outside of the cloister. If she had re-
turned, the young women would have disbanded. They were not recog-
nized as a formal order of nuns; they were simply a group of very religious
women who happened to be living with a rather unorthodox nun. A
course that would allow Mother Teresa to continue her work with her as-
sistants would be to accept them as a congregation for the diocese of Cal-
cutta answerable to the archbishop just as Mother Teresa was. This was a
real possibility since the little group now numbered more than 10, the re-
quired number needed to begin a new congregation.
Still, the archbishop remained cautious. Before making any decision,
he needed to know if there had been any negative reports about Mother
Teresa and her work. He went to Father Van Exem, who admitted that
there had been one report, that of an old Jesuit who believed Mother
Teresa was doing the work of the devil. He had gone to the mother supe-
rior at Loreto, asking her why a woman who was doing such a fine job as a
teacher in an established school would leave to wander about the slums of
Calcutta. The archbishop, so incensed by the comments, insisted that the
48 MOTHER TERESA
priest in question immediately apologize to the superior for his criticism of

Mother Teresa and her work.
While Mother Teresa awaited the archbishop’s decision, she took an-
other very important step: she applied for and was granted Indian citizen-
ship. The act was a potent one, signifying not only her break with her
European roots, but a pledge to become one with the people she served.
By the end of 1949, the archbishop had become so supportive of Mother
Teresa and her efforts that he stated his willingness to recognize her group
as a congregation in his archdiocese. The final approval would have to
come from Rome, but the archbishop was willing to make the journey
himself and plead Mother Teresa’s case on her behalf. He planned to go to
Rome in April 1950 to present the Vatican with the necessary documents.
Now Mother Teresa struggled with a draft of the proposed order’s con-
stitution, which outlined the rules by which the nuns would live. She
wrote of her spiritual calling on the train ride to Darjeeling and outlined
the first three vows all would take when coming into the order: poverty,
chastity, and obedience. To these she added a fourth vow: “to give whole-
hearted and free service to the poorest of the poor,”8 which would become
known as “our way.”9 She also decided on a name for the new order: the
She turned over her draft to Father Van Exem, who worked on it, tight-
ening up the language, as Mother Teresa’s grasp of English was not good.
Father Van Exem forwarded the document to a priest who specialized in
canon, or church, law. Then five copies were made and taken to the arch-
bishop who presented the documents to Cardinal Pietro Fumosoni-
Biondi, head of the Office for the Propagation of the Faith for the
Catholic Church. The Vatican accepted the constitution, even with the
fourth vow, which over time brought many to the order and quieted even
the most skeptical. On October 7, 1950, the church had a new congrega-
tion in its fold: the Missionaries of Charity, headed by Mother Teresa.
DRAWING ON THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE

The new constitution of the Missionaries of Charity may have been
polished by the priests of the church, but the document reflected the spirit
of Mother Teresa. In it, she not only outlined why she believed what she
was doing was so important and the specific vows for her new order, but
also some basic rules that the Missionaries of Charity continue to follow
today. She began by stating the goal of the order:
Our aim is to quench the infinite thirst of Jesus Christ for love
by the profession of the evangelical counsels and by whole-
hearted free service to the poorest of the poor, according to the

teaching and the life of our Lord in the gospel, revealing in a
unique way the salvation of God. . . . Our particular mission is
to labor at the salvation and sanctification of the poorest of the
poor. . . . We are called THE MISSIONARIES OF CHAR-
ITY.10
Mother Teresa wished to see the vow of poverty rigorously applied. She
wrote:
Whoever the poorest of the poor are, they are Christ for us—
Christ under the guise of humans suffering. . . . Our food, our
dress; it must be just like the poor. The poor are Christ himself.
We should not serve the poor like they were Jesus. We should
serve the poor because they are Jesus.11
Mother Teresa sought to reinforce the vow of poverty in other ways,

too. In the constitution of the order it is stipulated that at no time will the
Missionaries of Charity own any buildings or other property. Postulants
were to be members of the Roman Catholic Church, which would pre-
serve the very core of the congregation. However, in time it became clear
that because the church was not a strong institution in India, that this
stipulation would have to be modified. Still, the core tenets of the consti-
tution for the new congregation showed the influence of those groups that
had the greatest impact on Mother Teresa’s own life, from the missionary
efforts of the Jesuits who swore devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and
obedience to God, and also to the Loreto Sisters who stressed a similar de-
votion and obedience to carrying out the work of the Lord on earth.
The last matter that needed to be attended to was the question of the
sisters’ dress. Sent to Rome were three photographs: one depicting a pos-
tulant in a plain white sari and short-sleeved habit, the second of a novice
in a white sari and habit with sleeves that entirely covered the arm, and
last a picture of Mother Teresa in the sisters’ dress of white sari with the
distinctive blue border. The new style of dress, while unorthodox, was ac-
cepted.
A NEW BEGINNING
On October 7, 1950, Archbishop Périer came to the house at 14 Creek
Lane for the first time to celebrate mass at the altar located in the tiny
chapel on the second floor. A large number of persons assembled to hear
Father Van Exem read the decree of erection recognizing the Missionaries
50 MOTHER TERESA
of Charity as a new congregation limited to the diocese of Calcutta. That

same day, 11 young women began their lives as postulates of the new
order. It was a joyous occasion for all.
Over the next two years, 29 young women joined Mother Teresa. All
took up residency on the second floor of the Gomes’s house, which res-
onated with their activity. Mother Teresa wrote in her journal of the trust,
surrender, and cheerfulness of the newcomers. She observed with special
pride how dutifully they accepted the vow of poverty required of them.
It was not an easy life. The novices washed their clothes and their bod-
ies using communal buckets. They cleaned their teeth with ashes and
slept on thin pallets. Their meager pile of garments consisted only of their
cotton saris, coarse underwear, a pair of sandals, a crucifix pinned to the
left shoulder, a rosary, and an umbrella to protect them from the monsoon
rains. All these items were packed in a small bundle (potla), which they
used as a pillow.
To celebrate the completion of the new nun’s postulancy, or taking of
vows, Father Van Exem created a special ceremony. The novices came to
the cathedral dressed as Bengali brides. During the service, they went to
a room where Mother Teresa cut their hair. This practice represented a
tremendous sacrifice, as many Bengali girls regarded their long hair as a
great gift. The women’s hair was often so long that the entire process took
several hours to complete. They then reappeared in their religious habits
as novices. It was a beautiful ceremony and one that Mother Teresa com-
pletely approved for its incorporation of high church ritual with the local
culture. Father Van Exem remembered with some amusement the reac-
tion of the locals to the first ceremonies of this kind: “The ordination of a
priest takes two hours, the consecration of a bishop three hours, the re-
ception of a Missionary of Charity four hours!”12 Not everyone, however,
was pleased at the spectacle of young Bengal brides who were in fact not
really married but had entered into the Catholic Church.
It was soon apparent that the quarters at Creek Lane were becoming
too small for the growing number of sisters. Father Van Exem and Father
Henry once again went to work searching for new quarters for the order.
One of the first nuns to join the order remembered how Mother Teresa
and her nuns helped the two priests:
Father Henry organized a procession every evening. He ac-

companied the sisters as we went through the Calcutta streets
saying the rosary aloud. . . . And from six to nine, we went on
the road from our house to St. Teresa’s Church and hence to
Fatima Chapel, praying there and again on our way home. We
were asking our Lady of Fatima to obtain for us the new house
we needed.13
Finally, a suitable house was found at 54A Lower Circular Road. The
home, which belonged to a former Muslim magistrate, was bought by the
diocese of Calcutta with the understanding that Mother Teresa would
pay back the loan. In February 1953, Mother Teresa and her group moved
into their new residence. In tribute to their founder, the sisters called it
Motherhouse.
NOTES
2. Egan, Vision, p. 43.
3. Raghu Rai and Navin Chawla, Faith and Compassion: The Life and Work of
Mother Teresa, (Rockport, Mass.: Element, 1999), p. 39.
4. Rai and Chawla, Faith, p. 38.
5. Kathryn Spink, Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1997), p. 38.
Harper & Row, 1977), p. 28.
11. Mother Teresa with Jose Luis Gonzàles-Balado, Mother Teresa: In My Own
Words (New York: Gramercy Books, 1996), pp. 24, 30.
13. Le Joly, Mother Teresa, p. 30.
Chapter 5
“RIGOROUS POVERTY IS OUR

SAFEGUARD”
Lower Circular Road is a humming center of activity in Calcutta. The

street is filled with pedestrians and traffic. The everyday drone of people,
car horns, rickshaw bells, and trams is broken occasionally by the passing
of Hindu processions and political parades. With all the commotion, it is
easy to overlook the residence located at 54A Lower Circular Road; the
noise of the everyday world drowns out the daily prayers of the home’s res-
idents.
To get to 54A Lower Circular Road, one takes a narrow lane that leads
to a three-storied, gray-washed building. On closer inspection, however,
one sees that there are really two houses that surround a small courtyard.
Leaving the lane takes one to the front brown-painted door; here is a
small chain attached to the frame, which, when pulled, rings a bell on the
inside. The bell is an acknowledgement of the power outages that often
plague Calcutta. Once inside the home, the visitor is in a very special
place: the center of activity for the Missionaries of Charity and their now-
deceased founder, Mother Teresa.
POOR BY CHOICE
With their move into Motherhouse in early 1953, the Missionaries of
Charity had their own base of operations. Not only did the new residence
offer more room for the growing number of newcomers to the order; it also
had its own chapel and a dining hall. Mother Teresa also had her own
quarters. Slowly, new recruits appeared asking to be taken into the con-
gregation as a Missionary of Charity.
54 MOTHER TERESA
Despite the spacious new surroundings, Mother Teresa was determined

that her congregation live a life shaped by extreme poverty. They would
not deny themselves the necessities; however, they would reject with
kind, but firm, graciousness any offers of material goods from the well in-
tentioned, as they were seen by the order as luxuries. “Our rigorous
poverty is our safeguard,” Mother Teresa said. She later explained that the
Missionaries of Charity did not want to do what other religious orders had
done throughout history—that is, to begin by serving the poor, but end-
ing up servicing the rich, and themselves. “In order to understand and
help those who have nothing, we must live like them. . . . The only differ-
ence is that they are poor by birth and we are poor by choice.”1
In the early days of the order, maintaining the vows of poverty was not
that difficult. Besides their meager possessions, the sisters soon learned
how to beg for their needs as well as the needs of the poor. However, the
poor came first and the needs of the order second. Still, that period was
filled with a number of stories, many of them humorous, as the sisters
learned to improvise given their situation and their mission.
Finding properly fitting shoes was a continual challenge for the nuns.
On one occasion, Mother Teresa allocated the same pair of sandals to
three different sisters, all of whom were in desperate need of footwear. On
another occasion, the only pair of shoes available for one sister to wear to
church services was a pair of red stiletto heels. However, she chose to wear
them and the sight of her hobbling was the source of much amusement for
many days.
Articles of clothing were also at a premium; habits were made out of
old bulgur wheat sacks; sometimes the labels were still visible under the
thin cloth cover of the white saris, even after repeated washings. One sis-
ter’s habit clearly bore the label Not for Resale under her sari. One Christ-
mas, there were not enough shawls for the sisters to wear to Midnight
mass; instead those without wore their bed covers.
JOINING THE ORDER

When Mother Teresa first established the Missionaries of Charity, she
worked hard to help prepare the young women who entered the order. Fa-
ther Van Exem and Father Henry also helped instruct the newcomers in
preparation for their lives as nuns. Gradually, these tasks became more the
duties of senior nuns. Mother Teresa always emphasized that the work of
a Missionary of Charity was no different from that of social workers. This
is not completely true; social workers, while working with the disadvan-
taged, often try to help correct the social ills that cause poverty in the first
“RIGO ROUS POVERTY IS OUR SAFEGUARD” 55
place. For Mother Teresa and her nuns, living among the poor and living
like the poor was a means to find God and bear witness to his presence and
his will.
Women who apply to join the order must meet four requirements.
They must be physically and mentally healthy. They must have the abil-
ity and the desire to learn. Common sense is a necessity as is a cheerful
disposition; they would need all they could muster in working with the
poor. Initially, women enter the order for only a few weeks or months; in
this way, they can see if they are truly meant to become a Missionary of
Charity. As in other religious vocations, some find the life too dismal or
too hard. Others decide to leave and marry. Women who choose to re-
main do so with the understanding that they will sever ties with their fam-
ilies. Rarely are they allowed to return home, though periodic visits are
allowed every 10 years or so; in the case of a family illness, permission is
given for the sister to go home. Often, if the nun is to be sent to a mission
abroad, she is allowed to visit family members before leaving.
When joining the order, a young woman spends the first six months as
an aspirant and the following six months as a postulant. This period also
offers an opportunity for those who wish to leave to do so. The next two
years are spent as a novitiate; again if one chooses to leave the order, she
may do so without receiving special permission. At the end of the two-
year period, the novitiates take their first vows. The next five years are
known as the juniorate; from then on, each year the candidates renew
their vows in order to strengthen their spiritual commitment to God and
the order. For those wishing to leave, special permission is now required
from the head of the order. The sixth year is known as the tertianship; be-
fore taking their final vows, the nuns are sent home to visit with their
families and to reflect upon whether they are ready to assume the duties
and life of a Missionary of Charity. When asked once about what she ex-
pected of her nuns, Mother Teresa replied:
Let God radiate and live His life in her and through her in the
slums. Let the sick and suffering find in her a real angel of com-
fort and consolation. Let her be the friend of the little children
in the street. . . . I would much rather they make mistakes in
kindness than work miracles in unkindness.2
LIFE AT MOTHERHOUSE
The daily routine for those who chose to be Missionaries of Charity was
long and grueling. Weekdays, the sisters rose at 4:40 A.M. to the call of
56 MOTHER TERESA
Benedicamus Domino (“Let us bless the Lord”) and the response of Deo
Gratias (“Thanks be to God”). Dressing at their bedsides with a sheet cov-
ering their heads, they went downstairs to wash their faces with water that
came from the courtyard tank and was carried in empty powdered milk
cans. They then collected ash from the kitchen stove to clean their teeth.
Each sister washed herself with a small bit of soap; this same bit of soap
was used to wash their clothes as well. Between 5:15 A.M. and 6:45 A.M.
the sisters went for morning prayers, meditation, and then mass. They
then went to the dining hall where each drank a glass of water before
breakfast. In the beginning, there was no tea for breakfast; instead milk
made from American powdered milk was given. Breakfast consisted of five
chapattis (homemade bread made from wheat or other grain flours and
baked without yeast) spread with clarified butter (ghee). The chapattis pro-
vided strength and energy to the body and it was required that all eat their
allotment, something that many had a harder time doing than going with-
out food. Father Henry once told a story of how, when the first newcom-
ers joined the order, they came with the expectation that food would be
insufficient and one of many deprivations they would suffer. At their first
meal, Mother Teresa put their plates before each one. Amazed, the
women looked at the plates full of food. They were told to eat it, as it was
their due. Mother Teresa then reminded them that God “wants obedience
rather than victims.”3 In addition to their food, all of the residents took a
vitamin pill with their meal. After their quick breakfast, the sisters were
out on the streets by 7:45 A.M. to begin their work. The sisters made a
point of traveling together in pairs for their own safety as well as to help
one another.
In the parlor of the Motherhouse is a hand-drawn chart that lists the
various activities the sisters are to do. These included providing child wel-
fare and educational programs and operating nutritional daycares; family
planning centers; dispensaries; leprosy clinics; rehabilitation centers;
shelters for the homeless, crippled and mentally disabled; homes for
unwed mothers; and hospices for the sick and the dying. A separate col-
umn notes the total number of these institutions and the number of peo-
ple who benefited from them. A world map with red pins denoted the
areas where the Missionaries of Charity established homes or foundations.
In time, Missionaries of Charity in Western Europe and the United States
offered family visits and a prison ministry. The Missionaries of Charity’s
emphasis in India and many Third World countries—besides helping to
educate the poor and tend the dying—came to be on homes for alco-
holics, shelters for the homeless, soup kitchens, and hospices for AIDS pa-
tients.
By noontime, many sisters returned to Motherhouse for prayers and a

midday meal, which consisted of five ladles of bulgur wheat and three bits
of meat if there was any available. After the meal, housework was at-
tended to and then came a rest of 30 minutes. Afterward, there was more
prayer and afternoon tea at which the nuns ate two dry chapattis. There
followed another half-hour of spiritual reading and instruction from
Mother Teresa. The sisters then returned to the city.
By 6 in the evening, the sisters returned to the Motherhouse for prayers
and dinner, which usually consisted of rice, dhal (a spicy dish made with
lentils), tomatoes, onions and various seasonings, and other vegetables.
During the meal, there was also 10 minutes of spiritual readings. After
dinner, attention was given to darning and mending, using a razor blade,
needle, and darning thread kept in a cigarette tin. There was also time for
recreation; this was the one time that conversation about subjects other
than work was permitted. The signal for this recreational conversation to
begin was Laudetur Jesus Christus (“Praise be Jesus Christ”), to which the
sisters answered “Amen.” Now was the time that all could share what
happened to them during the day. Then at 10 o’clock, the day was over;
and everyone retired for the night.
Because Sundays were often as busy as weekdays, Mother Teresa set
aside Thursdays as days of respite for the residents of Motherhouse. On
this day, the sisters might engage in prayer and meditation. Quite often in
the early days, Mother Teresa would take her group to the home of a Cal-
cutta doctor, where they would have a picnic and relax on the grounds.
The physical demands of the sisters’ work were strenuous. On any
given day, they might have to jump railway tracks or ditches or slog
through pools of standing water. During the rainy seasons, there was the
danger of being caught in a flash flood. Mother Teresa instructed her nuns
always to say their rosaries that each sister carried with her. In time, mea-
suring distances covered was not added up in miles, but in how many
rosaries were said. When the conditions they encountered were desperate
or terrible, the Sisters sang High Mass in Latin.
Even with the emphasis on poverty, there were times when the sisters
went without necessities. When there was no fuel to cook their meals, the
sisters ate raw wheat that had been soaked overnight. When their curry
was too bitter and there was nothing available to improve its taste, the sis-
ters ate it for the sake of the conversion to Catholicism of the Mau Mau
tribe in Africa. No matter the sacrifice, the sisters did it willingly and
often with smiles on their faces.
Not all welcomed Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity into
their lives. Some of the poor resisted the sisters’ efforts to help them, see-
58 MOTHER TERESA
ing them as trying to convert the poor to Catholicism. Others simply did
not want charity. For those young women who offered their lives in ser-
vice to the poor, rejection also waited. Many girls’ families were ashamed
of their vocation to help the poor and outcasts of the city. In some cases,
family members, if coming upon a daughter or sister who had become a
Missionary of Charity, crossed the streets or turned away to avoid looking
at them. Many parents urged their daughters to leave and were often dis-
appointed and surprised to hear their advice rejected.
THE JOY OF BEING POOR

Throughout the early years of her congregation’s existence, Mother
Teresa continued to work hard. Up before any of her nuns and often toil-
ing long after they had gone to bed, she never ceased to work. There was
always something to do, whether it was persuading those with much to part
with some of their goods, overseeing the everyday activities of the Mother-
house, or writing a history of the congregation. She appeared tireless, full
of good cheer and ready to move on to the next task. For members of her
congregation, she was nothing short of a marvel. As one sister explained,
it was as if the constitution of the congregation was being acted out before
their eyes. Mother Teresa exemplified for the order the joy of being poor,
working hard, and having strong faith in God’s providence.
No task was too menial or disgusting for Mother Teresa to undertake.
One sister, repelled at the thought of cleaning the toilet, hid herself away.
Mother Teresa passed by, not noticing the Sister in the hall. Seeing the
state of the toilet, she immediately rolled up her sleeves and cleaned the
toilet herself. The sister never forgot the experience and applied herself
more fully to her tasks.
From all the sisters, Mother Teresa asked obedience. Those unable to
eat the allotted five chapattis a day were not considered Missionaries of
Charity material and were asked to leave. Other requirements of the order
included speaking English at all times. Those who came to the order with-
out finishing their studies were to complete them in addition to their work
at the Motherhouse.
The nuns made other sacrifices in the face of cultural taboos. For in-
stance, realizing that the congregation needed people with medical train-
ing, Mother Teresa asked some of the first sisters to earn medical degrees
even though studying medicine meant mixing with men under conditions
of unacceptable intimacy. Nevertheless, the women did as they were
asked even though it meant being further ostracized from their families
and cultural traditions.
Mother Teresa asked nothing of others that she would not do herself.
She worked with her sisters and was protective of their well being. She
also continued to trust that God would meet the needs of the congrega-
tion. This faith and devotion to God often rewarded Mother Teresa and
her sisters in amazing ways. On one occasion when there was no food in
the house, a knock came at the door. A woman standing outside had with
her bags of rice. She later told Mother Teresa that she did not have any in-
tention of going there, but for some reason came bringing the rice. That
evening, Mother Teresa and the sisters had their dinner.
In another instance, Father Henry asked Mother Teresa for some
money to print some leaflets. She searched the house and found only two
rupees, which she gladly turned over to Father Henry. As he was leaving,
he remembered a letter that he had brought for her. Opening it, Mother
Teresa discovered a gift of 100 rupees. When a newcomer arrived at the
Motherhouse, there was no pillow available for her; Mother Teresa offered
the young woman hers, but the sisters refused to allow it, stating that she
needed the pillow for her own rest. Mother Teresa insisted and while
doing so, an Englishman appeared at the Motherhouse with a mattress.
He was leaving the country and wanted to know if the sisters would have
any use for his mattress. This and other events demonstrated to Mother
Teresa the power of faith as well as God’s providence when people com-
pletely surrendered their lives into his care.
As the sisters soon learned, there was great joy to be had from small
things when living the life of the poor. One of the first Christmas holidays
celebrated by the group was an example. One sister recalled how on
Christmas morning the sisters awoke to find that the dining area had been
decorated with streamers and balloons; by each place at the table was a
white paper bag with a sister’s name on it. Inside of each bag were letters
from home and gifts from Mother Teresa. All the sisters received pencils;
one remembered gifts of a bar of soap, a clothes peg, St. Christopher and
Miraculous Medals, sweets, and a balloon. The sister remembered how
thrilled she was by the gifts and Mother Teresa’s generosity toward her
congregation.
REACHING OUT
By 1953, the work of the Missionaries of Charity had grown tremen-
dously. On April 12, 1953, the initial group of Missionary Sisters took
their first vows in Calcutta’s Roman Catholic Cathedral; during the same
ceremony, Mother Teresa took her final vows as a Missionary of Charity.
She also now succeeded Archbishop Périer as superior of the order she
60 MOTHER TERESA
had founded. Despite his early resistance to Mother Teresa’s efforts, the
archbishop had demonstrated his full support in the order’s early years, be-
lieving, as many others did, that God’s hand clearly was at work in his city.
In time, Mother Teresa and her sisters became a familiar sight in the
streets of Calcutta. As news of their endeavors spread, Mother Teresa was
asked on occasion to speak about her work. As a result, many groups and
organizations pledged their aid to carry out the work of the Missionaries of
Charity. It took time, but soon doctors, nurses, and other lay people were
volunteering their time and skills to help Calcutta’s poor. As the number
of volunteer medical personnel increased, so did the number of dispen-
saries to help tend to the sick and dying. Mother Teresa was also able to
increase the number of schools in the slum areas; with more teachers,
more poor children had the opportunity to learn how to read and write.
Even the City of Calcutta eventually relented: whenever there were 100
pupils studying with the Missionaries of Charity in one area, the city
agreed to build a small school building for them.
Despite these strides, Mother Teresa felt that still she and her congre-
gation were not doing enough to help the growing numbers of poor. In the
wake of Indian independence, conditions had worsened throughout India
and particularly in Calcutta. Malnutrition and overcrowded living condi-
tions contributed to even more illness and suffering. Even the governing
body of the city, the Calcutta Corporation, was powerless to help.
In the 3,000 official slums in the city, there resided more than two mil-
lion persons. The overcrowded conditions forced many to seek shelter on
railway platforms, in alleyways, or on city streets. Prisons were overflow-
ing and hospitals had to turn away people because they had no room.
Even with the help of relief organizations, the city struggled to take care
of the problem. As a result, the sick and the starving, weakened by disease
and hunger, simply dropped wherever they were to die. To many, Mother
Teresa and her nuns were but a small trickle of hope in a growing sea of
suffering.
THE MISSIONARY OF CHARITY WAY

Confronted with the changes that the Roman Catholic Church faced
as a result of Pope John XXIII’s Second Vatican Council from 1962 to
1965, many of the Church’s religious orders struggled to find their place
in the changing world. The pope’s goal was to revitalize the church, and
he believed that changes in the liturgy and in some of the rules govern-
ing religious orders would make an effective beginning. However, in the
wake of the Second Vatican Council, many religious orders not only im-
plemented changes, but tried to make the religious vocations more

meaningful and pertinent to keep in step with the twentieth century.
Not everyone welcomed these changes; some orders preferred the old
ways.
Beginning in the 1970s, many religious orders underwent dramatic
transformations as the Catholic Church struggled to become more mod-
ern and accessible to its followers. For some women’s religious congrega-
tions, these changes meant modifying the nun’s habit, and in some cases
completely forgoing it. Many nuns believed that if one was to be of gen-
uine service in the world, then one must wear the clothes of the real
world. Others believed that by leaving behind their religious habit, which
was often viewed as a barrier to working with the public, they would make
people feel more comfortable around them. The practice of doing away
with the religious uniform also encouraged individuality among the
order’s nuns, and hopefully along with it, one’s particular talents. Others
eased their rules in order to attract potential applicants to their order, es-
pecially those women with backgrounds in social services, medicine, or
other advanced degrees.
However, in the case of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa
made virtually no concessions; even today, the order continues to attract
many young women who wish to take the vows of extreme poverty and
give their lives over to the service of the poor. Everything about the life of
a Missionary of Charity emphasizes the long-held ideal of caring feminin-
ity; that is, the traditional role of women as caretakers subservient to men.
It is an ideal that also asks one to suppress one’s own will for the common
good. The image is a particularly potent one in Western culture, where a
woman in a nun’s habit ministering to the needs of the ill and poor is seen
as the epitome of female selflessness, despite the efforts of the modern-day
women’s movement to counteract this image.
Even the manner in which Mother Teresa spoke of her order reinforced
this ideal. To Mother Teresa, she and her nuns were the wives of Christ
crucified, their bond to God like a mystical marriage; she described the
love that the Missionaries of Charity professed for Jesus in terms similar to
the love between husband and wife. This is an even more dramatic con-
trast to the thinking of many of today’s religious orders, who find the no-
tion of a nun as a bride of Christ not only outdated, but ridiculous.
In establishing the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa also made it
clear that she would brook no interference from priests, or meddling, no
matter how well-intentioned, from outsiders. She also deflected any ad-
vice about how to teach her nuns. This rigid sense of control has had some
impact on the order. Although one can understand the decision not to
62 MOTHER TERESA
have televisions in the homes of monastics, it was harder for outsiders to

understand the absence of newspapers or magazines; in fact, there is little
in the way of reading material at any of the homes. Being informed about
world events, Mother Teresa thought, was a distraction. She preferred to
put her trust in God, who would make known to her all that she needed
to know. What books were available for the nuns tended to be of a reli-
gious nature, such as books on piety or the lives of the saints. Except for
the nuns who became medical doctors, Mother Teresa did not want her
sisters to be any better informed or educated than those they were trying
to serve, a startling contrast to orders that encouraged their members to
seek advanced college degrees or specialized training.
This practice drew a great deal of criticism from within the Church.
Some officials believe that education is necessary, not just the knowledge
of theology but also of secular disciplines. Mother Teresa’s attitude to-
ward education is especially puzzling since she herself valued education.
Perhaps she came to regard education, like wealth and worldly goods, as
a source of vanity that the devout ought to sacrifice to the glory of the
Lord.
Mother Teresa left her imprint on almost every aspect of the order.
The old-fashioned discipline and rigid obedience required was and is
today, more than some can bear. Some did not like being told what to do
all the time. Others felt that even as the women grew older and more
senior in the order’s hierarchy, they were often forced to maintain a
student-teacher relationship with Mother Teresa. For many, that clearly
was no longer appropriate and had the effect of preventing the women
from growing up. Some even felt uncomfortable using the term “Mother”
as it denoted a childish dependence on Mother Teresa, which she en-
couraged.
Others, though, found themselves drawn to the Missionaries of Char-
ity precisely because they did not have to grow up and make difficult de-
cisions that adulthood requires. The black-and-white life of the order is
such that those who are immature will have an easier time coping with its
rigors than those who are prone to questioning and learning. This is in
contrast to what was taking place in other orders, as rules became more re-
laxed and nuns allowed to make more of their own decisions. The reforms
of Vatican Council II, ironically, also contributed to a drop in vocations.
In 1990, the number of women in religious orders had dropped by more
than half, from a record high of almost a million women serving as nuns
in 1970. Today, third-world vocations continue to increase, while in the
West, the numbers continue to decline.
THE INCULTURATION OF POVERTY

One of the greatest challenges that faced Mother Teresa, and that con-
tinues today, was the difficult balance of realism and idealism. In some
cases, the Missionaries of Charity, in their zeal to serve the poor, have
made some questionable choices. In one instance the sisters removed a ra-
diator from a house because the poor had no heat in their homes. Ac-
cording to a nun who is a member of the Sisters of Sion, the act was
patronizing to the poor. . . . We are learning from the poor, the

way we should respond to the poor is that we are in this to-
gether. Some of us are emotionally poor or poor in education.
Of course you can deprive yourself but I have had the opportu-
nities of a good education, there I’m a rich person; we must
recognize that and not play at being poor. You can live along-
side the poor but you must also be realistic.4
While Mother Teresa and her nuns adapted to life among the poor in
India and later in other Third World countries, when it came time to es-
tablish homes in the West, the order often faced a different set of circum-
stances. To what extent should the order inculturate, that is adapt to the
culture of the poor in the West, which is often very different from that in
the third world. For instance, in establishing a shelter for women in the
United States, did the sisters have an obligation to make sure that the
women they helped not only received housing and meals, but also help to
navigate the extensive red tape of the various social agencies to find aid,
jobs, or other support services? The Missionaries of Charity would say no;
that their vows do not extend to doing this type of work. However, there
are those in the Church who would come to feel otherwise.
In one instance, Mother Teresa’s rigorous attitude toward austerity for
her order made headlines. In San Francisco, the order was given a former
convent. When Mother Teresa arrived at the house, she was very un-
happy, telling the bishop that the house was too big and elegant for their
purposes. As a result, the mattresses, carpets, and many pieces of furniture
were thrown out of the house into the street. A boiler that provided hot
water was also taken out. Some in the order believed the matter could
have been taken care of more discreetly and were unhappy at the ruckus
the incident caused. On another occasion, Mother Teresa scolded her
nuns for storing some canned tomatoes. She lectured them, reminding
them that the order did not store food, but relied on God to provide for
them.
64 MOTHER TERESA
A HOLISTIC WHOLE
The theology that Mother Teresa followed is rooted in Church teach-
ings prior to Vatican II. This doctrine emphasizes the spirit over the flesh;
as such, it is the spirit that must be taken care of first. This attitude
stressed the glory of suffering, as the human body was often identified as
weak and sinful. Modern Catholic theologians have modified this view
and speak of the importance of good health for both body and soul. Glo-
rified suffering serves no purpose and is thought to be an evil in which no
good is found. To suffer is only good if there is a purpose and the possibil-
ity of turning it into something worthwhile.
For Mother Teresa, by contrast, suffering was the expected path one
must travel in order to reach heaven. This attitude helps explain how
such places as Nirmal Hriday, which became the home for the dying,
would be run. In caring to the very ill and dying, Mother Teresa was draw-
ing on the traditional practice of offering solace and comfort instead of
medical aid. This practice dates from the medieval period when religious
orders ran hospices for pilgrims or sanctuaries for the poor. There was, at
best, limited medical care available; what the sisters did in these places
was help to prepare the dying person’s soul for heaven.
By the nineteenth century, this attitude underwent a dramatic trans-
formation with sisters such as Mother Mary Aikenhead, founder of the
Irish Sisters of Charity, whose work helped lay the foundation for the
modern hospice movement. There were others too such as Dame Cicely
Saunders or Sister Frances Dominica, who helped change the way that re-
ligious orders treated the seriously ill and dying. Their work is often over-
shadowed by Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity, whom many
in the West believe had done the most to transform the way the dying are
cared for. In India and other Third World countries, there is little choice
in how one dies. Because of that, Mother Teresa’s work had been elevated
and in some cases misunderstood. It was an approach that would make her
an easy target in later years.
But for now, many of these criticisms were far in the future. Clearly, the
Missionaries of Charity had struck a resounding chord within the Cal-
cutta community. For Mother Teresa, there was still much to do. She and
her order had only just begun their work.
NOTES
p. 44.
2. Raghu Rai and Navin Chawla, Faith and Compassion: The Life and Work of
Mother Teresa (Rockport, Mass.: Element, 1999), p. 47.
Harper & Row, 1977), p. 23.
4. Anne Sebba, Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image (New York: Doubleday,
1997), p. 169.
Chapter 6
KALIGHAT
On a rainy day in 1952, a young boy, no more than 13 or 14 years old, lay
dying on a neighborhood street. He appeared to be one of the many beg-
gar children who are found in the streets of Calcutta. Naked and emaci-
ated, the boy’s limbs looked more like matchsticks than arms or legs. A
concerned resident called the ambulance, which took the boy to a nearby
hospital. The hospital, already overcrowded, refused to help. Instead, the
boy was dumped in a Calcutta street gutter where he died alone and un-
known. At some point the city sent a van or a cart to haul the body away.
Although such scenes were common in Calcutta, a local newspaper
picked up the story of the dead boy and heightened public attention to
the dying poor.
Mother Teresa was no stranger to the problem. In the increasing num-
ber of talks she gave to the public about her congregation, she related a
very similar story. One day, when she and another sister were just begin-
ning their work, they encountered what appeared to be a bundle of rags
lying on a street. As they approached, they realized, to their horror, that
the bundle was not just rags, but a middle-aged woman, half-conscious,
her face half-eaten away by rats and ants.
Together, Mother Teresa and her companion carried the woman to the
nearest hospital. The nurses refused to take the woman, claiming the hos-
pital had no beds. When Mother Teresa asked hospital officials where she
could go, they told her to take the woman back where she had found her.
Frustrated, Mother Teresa refused to leave until she had a promise that
the hospital would make room for the sick woman. In the end, hospital
authorities relented and gave the dying woman a mattress on the floor.
68 MOTHER TERESA
She died a few hours later with Mother Teresa by her side. It was then,
Mother Teresa told her audiences, that she had decided to find a place for
the dying and take care of them herself.
ASKING ONLY FOR A PLACE

“When Mother Teresa began her work in the slums,” recalled one sis-
ter, “we often found people dying or sometimes dead.”1 When possible,
the sisters took the ailing person to the hospital, where more often than
not they were turned away. Often there was no place to take them at all,
leaving the sisters unable to offer anything else except comfort and com-
pany until the person died. At one point, Mother Teresa rented two rooms
for five rupees each in the Motijihl slum. But the space, only eight feet
square, could not even begin to hold the numbers of dying people who
needed help; at best only two to three persons could be accommodated,
leaving little room for the sisters to tend to them. When one of the pa-
tients died during the night, the others, now fearful, fled. Undaunted, the
sisters continued to bring the sick and dying to the two rooms, while pray-
ing that they could find a larger building adequate to their needs.
Mother Teresa also realized that, if she were to realize her goal of es-
tablishing a home for the dying, then she needed more than prayers. De-
termined, she went to the city’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ahmed.
Explaining her desire to him, Mother Teresa promised that if he would
help her find a place, she would do the rest. The doctor, well aware of
Mother Teresa’s growing reputation, treated her request seriously. By of-
fering to help, Mother Teresa and her nuns would be relieving some of the
already heavy burden the city faced in dealing with dying people on the
streets.
In fact, Dr. Ahmed knew of a place that might perfectly suit Mother
Teresa’s needs. Together they went to inspect a building, which had been
used as a pilgrim’s hostel near the Temple of Kali, the Hindu goddess of
death and fertility. Located in the Kalighat district, the temple was situ-
ated near the banks of the Hooghly River. The site was popular among the
Hindus who came to worship at the temple. According to legend, Kali’s
father made a sacrifice in order to guarantee the birth of a son. Unfortu-
nately, the gift did not include an offering to Shiva, Kali’s husband. In-
sulted by the slight to her husband, Kali committed suicide. Shiva,
desolate over the death of his wife, carried her in his arms, threatening de-
struction wherever he went. To save mankind, another god, Vishnu,
hurled a discus at Kali’s corpse. The body shattered, falling in pieces to the
ground, which is now considered sacred.
KALIGHAT 69
Of all the consecrated ground, the most sacred was the area where the
toes of Kali’s right foot lay. On that spot, a temple to the goddess was
built. Over time, the temple was surrounded by streets bearing pictures of
the deity and became an important and symbolic center of worship for
Hindus throughout India. Some came to fulfill a vow; others journeyed
seeking cure for an illness. Still others came to celebrate important cere-
monies such as naming rites for infants, marriages, or cremations on one
of the funeral pyres located near the temple. The religious importance of
the temple of Kali was so great that many Hindus wished to be cremated
there.
The building that Dr. Ahmed showed Mother Teresa consisted of two
great rooms set at right angles and linked by a passageway. Calcutta offi-
cials had received complaints that squatters were misusing the building,
and so wished to have someone occupy it to save it from further destruc-
tion. Besides the large, airy rooms, there was also electricity, gas for cook-
ing, and a large enclosed courtyard where patients could take the air and
sun and where clothes and bedding could be hung to dry. Mother Teresa
decided on the spot that she would accept the building; the doctor, acting
on behalf of the city, agreed to let her have it provisionally. When asked
later why she accepted the doctor’s offer, she explained that since the
building was associated with the famous Hindu temple and that pilgrims
used to come to rest there, so would the dying before continuing their
final journey to heaven. Almost immediately, Mother Teresa and several
of her nuns and novitiates set to work. The quarters had fallen into terri-
ble condition and needed to be cleaned from top to bottom to make them
ready for the new arrivals.
NIRMAL HRIDAY
On August 22, 1952, the pilgrim’s hostel opened under the name Nir-
mal Hriday, which is Bengali for Pure or Immaculate Heart. Since it
opened on the day that celebrates the Virgin’s Immaculate Heart, the
building was named in her honor. To make ready for the patients, the
nuns had placed low cots and mattresses on ledges in both the large
rooms, which, when filled to capacity, would hold 30 men in one room
and 30 women in another. But Mother Teresa and her helpers did not
have much time to contemplate this latest offering from Providence.
They soon took to the streets in search of the hopelessly ill and suffering
who had no place to go.
Early on, Mother Teresa laid down some rules for Nirmal Hriday. No
leprosy patients would be admitted. This was done to allay the fears of
70 MOTHER TERESA
other patients who might refuse to come or try to leave. Mother Teresa
also instituted these rules to calm the fears of the local residents and pil-
grims who lived near or worshipped at the temple. It was implicitly un-
derstood that people from all religious creeds and races would be welcome
at Nirmal Hriday. Mother Teresa also decided that only patients refused
by city hospitals, of whom there were many, would be admitted. Soon, city
ambulances made their way to the doors of Nirmal Hriday to deliver pa-
tients whom the city’s hospitals had rejected. But Mother Teresa and the
other nuns continued to search the streets for the ill and dying, whom
they transported to the home in a wheelbarrow.
Those brought to Nirmal Hriday were given medical treatment when-
ever possible. Patients who were beyond saving received the last rites ac-
cording to their faith; for Hindus, this meant water from the nearby
Ganges on their lips; for the followers of Islam, readings from the Koran
(the Islamic holy book); for those who were Catholic, confession and
communion. While recovery from their ailments was cause for thankful-
ness, the primary goal of Nirmal Hriday was to offer those who were dying
a chance to pass away in peace and dignity. As Mother Teresa once stated,
“A beautiful death is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—
loved and wanted.”2
A MISSION UNDER FIRE

Not everyone was pleased about the creation of Nirmal Hriday. Al-
though Mother Teresa believed the hostel’s proximity to the shrine was
beneficial for the dying, residents of the area as well as visitors to the
shrine, felt differently. Many believed that having a home for the dying
nearby defiled the temple grounds. As Father Van Exem remembered, the
situation was full of bitter irony. Even though the home for the dying was
near a temple honoring a deity of death, “people did not want the dying
to come there actually to die.”3 Many days, Mother Teresa and her nuns
faced angry demonstrators shouting at them to leave. On several occa-
sions, protestors threw stones at the nuns. There were even death threats
made against the Missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa. A man once
threatened to kill Mother Teresa as she was making her way to the home.
She did not move and told the man that if he killed her, she would only
reach God sooner. The man let her pass.
Other Hindus complained that in tending to Hindu patients, Mother
Teresa and her nuns were also trying to convert the dying to Christianity.
The Brahmins (upper-class Indians), who served as temple priests, wrote
regularly to the city of Calcutta, complaining about Nirmal Hriday, asking
KALIGHAT 71
the city to evict the tenants. They argued that the agreement made with
Mother Teresa was only provisional, and that she and her patients be re-
moved from the area as soon as possible.
Finally, Dr. Ahmed, accompanied by a police officer, went to Nirmal
Hriday to see for themselves what was really going on. As they entered the
building, they saw Mother Teresa pulling maggots from the flesh of a pa-
tient. The stench was so overwhelming that the two men could barely
stay in the room. Dr. Ahmed heard Mother Teresa telling the dying pa-
tient to say a prayer from his religion and she would say a prayer from hers.
Together, she said, they both have offered something beautiful to God.
When she turned and saw the two men, she offered to show them around
the home. The police officer, with tears in his eyes, said no, that there was
no need to see anything else. Upon returning to the demonstrating crowd
outside, the policeman spoke and said that he would remove Mother
Teresa from the premises, but only if the women of the neighborhood
came in to continue her work. Although the visit from Dr. Ahmed
soothed the situation somewhat, hostility remained toward the home and
the nuns, especially from the Brahmin priests, who continued to petition
the city to remove Mother Teresa, her nuns, and the patients from the
hostel.
Then, one day, a young priest at the temple, who had been one of
Mother Teresa’s most vocal critics, fell ill. Vomiting blood, he was diag-
nosed with the last stages of tuberculosis. No hospital would admit him,
and so it was that he came to Nirmal Hriday to die. He was given a place
in a corner and the nuns lovingly tended him. He died not long afterward.
When the other Brahmin priests learned what had happened and how he
had been treated by the Missionaries of Charity, their hostilities subsided.
They realized then what others were learning too: the nuns at Nirmal Hri-
day took care of all who came with a love and tenderness and asked for
nothing in return.
LIFE AT NIRMAL HRIDAY

Like the Motherhouse on Lower Circular Road, daily life at Nirmal
Hriday had a routine all its own. Anyone could enter Nirmal Hriday just
by walking through the door. The large open rooms remained divided into
two wards: one for men, the other for women. A simple board hung in the
hall listing the number of men and women currently being treated at Nir-
mal Hriday. In the beginning, the dying were laid on the black marble
floor. Soon, though, each room contained three rows of low iron beds,
with two rows resting on a raised platform. Behind each bed a number was
72 MOTHER TERESA
painted on the wall to help keep count of patients and beds. Patients who
needed fluids had intravenous tubes connected to various bottles. Those
patients who were dying were placed near the entrance of each ward, so
the sisters could better tend them. Nirmal Hriday was quiet, too, with the
only sounds coming from the sisters moving about or a medical treatment
being administered. At one end of the hall was a burlap curtain; behind
this, the dead were kept until it was time for burial. In many cases, after a
patient died, local religious groups representing the Islamic, Hindu, or
Christian communities claimed the bodies in order to bury the deceased
according to his or her religious beliefs.
From the day Nirmal Hriday opened, Mother Teresa kept a meticulous
record of the number of cases admitted. Upon admittance, each patient’s
name, age, and address were recorded; whether the patient died or was re-
leased was also recorded. For those with no name or home, the entry was
labeled “Unknown” with the date of admittance recorded. Over the years,
with the aid of better hygiene and nutrition among the population and
the construction of more hospitals and clinics tending to the poor, Nirmal
Hriday saw its mortality rate drop from almost 50 percent to 10 percent.
As word of Nirmal Hriday spread, volunteers came forward to aid
Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity in their work. Hindu pil-
grims who came to worship at the temple now made contributions to Nir-
mal Hriday. A local businessman sent a delivery boy every month with a
supply of Indian cigarettes known as bidis to give to the patients, and in
time decided to deliver them himself. On Sundays, some of the wealthy
members of Calcutta society came to Nirmal Hriday to wash and shave
the patients. Other volunteers came to help clean out wounds, cut hair, or
feed the patients. Still others cleaned the rooms, washing floors by hand
with a mixture of water, ashes, and disinfectant. Almost all who visited
left Nirmal Hriday transformed. For Mother Teresa, such experiences
were necessary to understanding the plight of the poor. “Don’t just look
around like a spectator,” she said to newcomers, “really look with your ears
and your eyes, and you will be shown what you can do to help.”4
Mother Teresa also instituted a rule that everyone from novitiate to
nun work at Nirmal Hriday. It was backbreaking work as one had to be
doctor, nurse, porter, and attendant at any given time. The hours were
long, usually extending far beyond the normal workday with 18-hour days
a common occurrence. There was little respite, for there always was med-
icine to be given, patients to be washed or fed, or prayers to be said. A
sense of humor helped to counter relentless suffering and death. But few
Sisters complained; more startling perhaps, many Missionaries of Charity
asked to work at Nirmal Hriday.
KALIGHAT 73
AN ONGOING MISSION
Despite all she had done, there was residual anger over Mother Teresa’s
presence so near a Hindu temple. One Calcutta city council member intro-
duced a motion that called for moving the home to a more suitable loca-
tion. City leaders debated the issue and then agreed that, as soon as a
suitable location was found for Nirmal Hriday, the facility would be moved.
As most officials were happy with what Mother Teresa was doing, however,
they tended to downplay complaints. And since they did not want Mother
Teresa to leave, no one even proposed an alternate location for Nirmal Hri-
day, which continues to operate in the same location even today.
Most patients at Nirmal Hriday fell into two categories: street cases, or
people who had no family and were destitute, and family cases, where
family members were unwilling or unable to care for those, especially the
elderly, who were sick. In family cases, if the elderly patient recovered, the
sisters made every effort to reunite the family members. Later on, those
patients abandoned by their families were transferred to Prem Dan, a
home established in 1975 for the elderly poor, and those ill but with a
good chance of recovery. No matter the distinctions, the sisters tried
never to turn anyone away who was in need.
Since it first opened in 1952, Nirmal Hriday has rescued more than
54,000 persons from the street. Of that number, half died at the home. Al-
though a mortality rate of 50 percent is high, Nirmal Hriday was a home
for the dying. In this respect, Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Char-
ity succeeded in their mission to provide a sanctuary for those with
nowhere else to go to make their peace with God and to die with dignity.
The home also emerged as one of the most potent symbols in the West for
Mother Teresa and her work. As she later wrote, “In my heart, I carry the
last glances of the dying. I do all I can so that they feel loved at that most
important moment when a seemingly useless existence can be re-
deemed.”5
EARLY CRITICS
No sooner had the criticism of Nirmal Hriday died down, then rum-
blings about Mother Teresa herself surfaced. These criticisms grew
throughout the decade and followed her for years. As the number of
Mother Teresa’s detractors increased, the debate about her character and
her attitudes toward such controversial topics as abortion and family plan-
ning intensified. As donations to her order increased, Mother Teresa came
under scrutiny for accepting contributions from questionable donors.
74 MOTHER TERESA
One of the first to question Mother Teresa’s handling of Nirmal Hriday

was a young medical student named Marcus Fernandes. Before coming to
Nirmal Hriday, Fernandes was already familiar with Mother Teresa and
her work. His sister had attended Loreto, and through her, he had learned
a great deal about the Missionaries of Charity.
As inexperienced at medicine as he was, Fernandes, nonetheless, was
unhappy with the haphazard clinical practices that he found at Nirmal
Hriday. He made several suggestions to Mother Teresa about how she
could improve the chances for patients’ recoveries. According to Fernan-
des, the biggest problem at Nirmal Hriday was not cancer, tuberculosis, or
heart ailments, but malnutrition. Fernandes suggested that giving patients
rice fortified with vitamin supplements would improve their chances of
survival. He also suggested new approaches to diagnosis along with a sep-
arate area where he could make a more thorough examination of patients.
His recommendations failed to convince Mother Teresa. His widow, Pa-
tricia Fernandes, remarked, “He could not persuade her to treat them with
vitamins. She did not want them treated; she expected people to die and
would simply say, ‘Well, she’s gone to God.’ She was not particularly in-
terested in medicine.”6
Others who visited or worked at Nirmal Hriday similarly noted Mother
Teresa’s seeming nonchalance over others’ deaths. One visitor recalled
how, when her sisters asked Mother Teresa to try to save a 16-year-old boy
from dying, she simply blessed the ailing young man and said, “Never
mind, it’s a lovely day to go to Heaven.”7 A young woman volunteer, who
had been thinking of joining the Missionaries of Charity, helped a young
woman with a heart defect enter Nirmal Hriday. Mother Teresa told her
that there was nothing more she could do, it was in God’s hands as to
whether the young woman would live or die.
Dr. Fernandes stayed at Nirmal Hriday for two years, before leaving for
London to complete his medical training. When he returned to India and
again offered his services to Mother Teresa he saw, to his dismay, that
nothing had changed at Nirmal Hriday except that some conditions had
become worse. A great deal of the money that had been donated to Nir-
mal Hriday was being wasted, and the facilities needed improvement. Fer-
nandes was particularly angered by the sight of an X-ray machine that was
now useless and rusting. When he approached Mother Teresa about it, she
told him that there was no one trained to use it. Dr. Fernandes continued
off and on to see Mother Teresa, but after her refusal to pay for his treat-
ment of a skin ailment that had been plaguing her, he severed his associ-
ation with her. He did, however, volunteer his time and services with
other charity and missionary groups in Calcutta. But, when asked, he
KALIGHAT 75
never changed his assessment of Mother Teresa. To him, she was a hard
and extremely ruthless woman.8
Another vocal critic of Mother Teresa was a British doctor of ophthal-
mology, Major E. John Somerset, who was affiliated with the Calcutta
Medical College Hospital from 1939 to 1961. During the early 1950s,
when Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity were first becoming
known, Dr. Somerset was donating his time to five or six charitable homes
for the aged and sick in Calcutta. He soon began getting regular visits
from Mother Teresa, who would bring him patients she had found in need
of treatment. Many of the cases Somerset treated were children who suf-
fered from severe vitamin A deficiency to such a degree that their corneas
were melting away. Although Somerset promised Mother Teresa that he
would see as many cases as he could, he asked that she let him know be-
forehand and not come when he was seeing his regular patients. But to
Somerset’s dismay, Mother Teresa ignored his request and continued to
bring patients to him without an appointment. He came to regard her as
a nuisance and a bother.
Another volunteer, Sue Ryder, who had worked as a nurse during
World War II, also had her problems with Mother Teresa. When Ryder
came to India with her husband, she occasionally visited the slums with
Mother Teresa. She approached Mother Teresa about merging the Mis-
sionaries of Charities ventures with her own charitable foundation, but
was rebuffed. The two women had other problems with each other. Ryder
strongly suggested that the night staff at Nirmal Hriday be increased, as it
was often overnight that patients needed the most comfort and care.
However, Mother Teresa refused to consider a change in schedules: her
sisters were to return to the convent at night to say their prayers. The
matter was closed.
THE BRITISH, COLONIAL GUILT, AND MOTHER

TERESA
Complaints about Mother Teresa did little to dampen the tremendous
goodwill many felt toward her and her congregation. This was particularly
true in the English Catholic community of Calcutta. Many women vol-
unteered to help raise funds or provide toys, food, and clothing, especially
for the children. One volunteer, an Englishwoman named Ann Blaikie,
coordinated volunteer efforts and on occasion spoke to civic organizations
and other groups about the Missionaries of Charity.
As Anne Sebba, one of Mother Teresa’s biographers, noted, the atti-
tude of the English, especially English women, was very important in
76 MOTHER TERESA
Mother Teresa’s early successes. Many of these women lived in the exclu-
sive areas of Calcutta, belonged to certain clubs, and socialized only with
each other. Their only interaction with Bengalis came through their do-
mestics or in some official capacity. Some British who spent time in India
before and after its independence believe that Mother Teresa went a long
way in helping them to justify the privileged life that many English living
in India enjoyed. As more than one person recalled, by stepping out from
their upper-class surroundings and journeying to the slums or to Nirmal
Hriday or to one of the many clinics or schools Mother Teresa had estab-
lished, they could, for a moment or two anyway, say that they helped
Mother Teresa and eased their guilt. And Mother Teresa knew how to ma-
nipulate her audiences, whether she was speaking to one person or an en-
tire roomful. One man who grew up knowing Mother Teresa described
how she solicited funds and supplies. According to his account, Mother
Teresa fixed her gaze on the person and stated how the Missionaries of
Charity really needed such and such an item, and that they did not know
how they would find the money. The person often found himself rooted to
the spot; almost always that person ended up pulling out the checkbook to
provide Mother Teresa with whatever she wanted.9 Other English men
and women who spent time in India and also helped Mother Teresa felt
something much more profound. As one man explained it, when he was
in India during the war, he rarely came into contact with poor people,
though he realized he should have. He also believed that the British had
taken far more out of India than they had contributed. In the end, the
British failed in their duties to aid the poor and helpless of India.10
Helping Mother Teresa was a way to make amends.
Although this attitude may have eased many consciences, it also an-
gered the people who were the supposed beneficiaries of such generosity,
who resented Western condescension. For many Indians, the efforts of
Westerners, and the British in particular, promoted the false impression
that the people of India were indifferent to the suffering of their own. Fur-
ther, these critics charged, Westerners, as symbolized by Mother Teresa
and the Missionaries of Charity, appeared to be the only ones who do help
the poor and infirm in India, when in fact this was not the case.
Still, there is little question that with the establishment of Nirmal Hri-
day, Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity gained a reputation
for good works not only in Calcutta, but throughout the nation and the
world. By 1955, though, Mother Teresa had other things on her mind. She
turned her energies and attention to two groups who needed her help and
for whom she had done nothing specific: children and lepers.
KALIGHAT 77
NOTES
1. Raghu Rai and Navin Chawla, Mother Teresa (Rockport, Mass.: Element,
1992), p. 159.
p. 55.
3. Rai and Chawla, Mother Teresa, p. 160.
5. Mother Teresa with Jose Luis Gonzàles-Balado, Mother Teresa: In My Own
Words (New York: Gramercy Books, 1996), p. 70.
1997), p. 60.
7. Sebba, Mother Teresa, p. 60.
10. Sebba, Mother Teresa, pp. 63–64.
Chapter 7
SHISHU BHAVAN AND

SHANTINAGAR: PLACES OF
PEACE
By 1955, Mother Teresa turned her energies to another group in need: the
children of the poor. In a relatively short time, Mother Teresa and the
Missionaries of Charity had made progress in providing education for poor
children with the creation of schools in the slums. But providing children
with an education paled beside even bigger problem: what to do with the
growing number of unwanted and abandoned children in the city.
Since India’s independence, the number of unwanted children roaming
in the streets of Calcutta has increased. Orphaned, sick, and disabled chil-
dren were often cast into the streets to fend for themselves. Some children
tried to eke out a living by begging, others through petty crime such as
stealing. Poor families, faced with the growing burden of supporting their
children, abandoned them. Young girls and infants particularly were at
great risk, because in Indian society boys are considered more valuable.
Evidence of this cultural bias was everywhere; for the Missionaries of
Charity the sight of a newborn female infant, alone and left to die, was
common. For Mother Teresa, children were a special gift from God. She
wrote:
Children long for somebody to accept them, to love them, to

praise them, to be proud of them. Let us bring the child back to
the center of our care and concern. This is the only way the
world can survive because our children are the only hope for
the future. As older people are called to God, only their chil-
dren can take their place.1
80 MOTHER TERESA
Even though many Catholic charities were active in this area and Cal-
cutta had a number of orphanages, the number of children on the streets
were growing too quickly for these groups to manage.
SHISHU BHAVAN
To Mother Teresa, the sight of so many unloved children was heart-
breaking. It was not enough to rescue as many children as possible from
the streets, the gutters, the garbage heaps, and the alleyways. What was
needed was a refuge where the children could be taken, nurtured, and
loved. For Mother Teresa, these children were nothing less than a symbol
of the Christ child. Although other charities in Calcutta did their best to
deal with the problem, it was clear that they needed help. As with Nirmal
Hriday, Mother Teresa had once again identified a problem that was caus-
ing the city officials of Calcutta a great deal of embarrassment. As a result
of her previous successes, she received recognition and cooperation from
the highest offices in the city.
During one of her many forays through the city, Mother Teresa made
the acquaintance of Dr. B. C. Roy, Chief Minister of West Bengal and a
medical doctor. Dr. Roy often gave free consultations at his home office
and Mother Teresa lined up with the rest of the poor every day at 6 A.M.
More often than not, her requests were political, rather than medical. She
told the doctor about the needs for water or electricity in a slum area that
she had visited. Dr. Roy dutifully wrote memos to the official responsible,
informing him of the problem. In time, he began to pay closer attention
to the tiny nun who showed such great concern for the poor of his city. He
then told her to come to his office, where he helped open the doors of var-
ious city offices to her. Mother Teresa now could call on him freely; in
turn, Dr. Roy trusted her completely. With his help, she began to imple-
ment her latest project for the children of the poor.
And so it was on September 23, 1955, Mother Teresa opened the first
Shishu Bhavan, a home for children. Located near Creek Lane, and just a
short walk from the Motherhouse, the small unpainted bungalow was the
first of several children’s homes established by the Missionaries of Charity.
Like Nirmal Hriday, the sisters had to clean the house thoroughly to get it
ready for its new occupants. Though the house was small, it opened into a
spacious courtyard; Mother Teresa had rented the home from a Muslim
who had left the city.
When the first Shishu Bhavan was ready, the sisters went about in
search of residents. They did not have to look far; most everywhere they
went, they found children in need, many of them infants, some not even
SHISHU BHAVAN AND SHANTINAGAR 81
a day old. The infants were brought back to the house, cleaned, fed, and
given medical treatment, as many suffered from malnutrition and tuber-
culosis. Those that survived were dressed in green-and-white checked
clothing, then placed in boxes, packing crates, or even on the floor.
Those who were too sick were held lovingly by the sisters until they
died. Like the home for the dying, Mother Teresa wanted these small in-
fants and children to be cleansed, held, and loved, even though death
was imminent. As crowded as the Shishu Bhavan was, Mother Teresa
never turned away a child, even if it meant that infants slept three to a
cot; for those fighting for their life, a box heated by a light bulb was
used.
By 1958, the Missionaries of Charity had established Shishu Bhavans
to care for more than 90 children. In addition, Mother Teresa accepted a
government grant that provided 33 rupees for each child. But after a few
months of working within the government guidelines, Mother Teresa de-
cided to stop taking the grant money. She believed she could do just as
well spending 17 rupees per child; this allowed her to take in more chil-
dren and provide them with the care they needed.
Besides seeking out children themselves, the Missionaries of Charity
also sent letters to all medical clinics and nursing homes in Calcutta, stat-
ing that they would welcome any child without a home. Periodically,
young pregnant women, many of whom had been cast out of their homes,
would show up at a Shishu Bhavan seeking refuge. The sisters took them
in, and the expectant mothers worked in the homes until they gave birth.
If for some reason the new mother could not care for her child, the sisters
took the child, but only as a last resort. The home also acted as an after-
noon high school for young boys who would otherwise have been on the
streets learning to rob and steal.
CARING FOR THE CHILDREN

As with many of her undertakings, Mother Teresa chose a practical ap-
proach in overseeing the Shishu Bhavans. She firmly believed in teaching
the older children a skill or giving them a practical education that would
allow them to make their way in the world. Among the first things she did
when opening the home was to acquire some old typewriters. She taught
some of the older girls how to type with the hope that they could find sec-
retarial jobs. The sisters also taught carpentry for boys and needlework for
girls. Because Mother Teresa’s schools were not recognized by the govern-
ment, nor would the Calcutta schools accept the children unless they paid
tuition or fees, she depended on the largesse of benefactors to sponsor the
82 MOTHER TERESA
children. One of the first was a wealthy Hindu woman who sponsored 10
children for 10 years.
In time, other donors would do the same. This practice helped the chil-
dren to receive the education or technical skills they needed to become
self-supporting. It was common, for instance, for an Indian donor to pay
tuition for an infant from birth to the end of the child’s school years. Over
the years, the circle of donors widened considerably, as donors throughout
the world sponsored children at the Shishu Bhavans. The support monies
donated for the children were placed in a bank account until the child
reached school age; the funds were then used to pay for the child’s edu-
cation. This system proved so successful that in 1975 Mother Teresa
organized the World Child Welfare Fund, which shared the financial as-
sistance among all of the children under the care of the Missionaries of
Charity.
THE PROMISE OF A NEW LIFE

For residents of Shishu Bhavan who were of marrying age, Mother
Teresa, in accordance with Hindu custom, helped arrange marriages. Act-
ing as a marriage broker, Mother Teresa worked with other Hindu families
seeking a bride for a male relative. While the social status of the girls who
lived at Shishu Bhavan was, in general, low, Mother Teresa made sure that
each young woman had a dowry, or gifts, to present to the prospective
bridegroom’s family. These dowries always included a new sari, a few trin-
kets, and a wedding ring. Local benefactors also helped in many instances
adding to the dowry some gold ornaments, household utensils, furniture,
and in many cases, money in a small bank account opened in the future
bride’s name. On any given day, the couples could be found gathering out-
side the Motherhouse to greet Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of
Charity. In time, a joke started to make the rounds that a prospective
bridegroom had better watch his step as he was inheriting not one
mother-in-law, but several.
Perhaps the most important program that Mother Teresa created for
the children’s homes were adoptions. When the program began, the ma-
jority of children were placed with Christian families. Slowly, many
Hindu middle-class families opened their homes to unwanted and aban-
doned children. Initially, boys were still preferred over girls, but, over
time, many Hindu families were happy to welcome a new child, regardless
of sex, into their homes. Soon, Mother Teresa began to find homes for In-
dian children with overseas adoptive parents from Europe and North
America. However, the majority of families wishing to adopt wanted only
healthy children. Though physically disabled children might find a home

with European families, children with severe mental disabilities stayed at
the Shishu Bhavan.
In emphasizing adoption, Mother Teresa was also battling abortion,
which she strongly opposed. She once wrote that with abortion:
the mother kills even her own child to solve her problems.
And, by abortion, the father is told he does not have to take
any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the
world. That father is likely to put other women into the same
trouble. So abortion leads to abortion. Any country that ac-
cepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use vio-
lence to get what they want.2
For Mother Teresa, adoption was the best way to combat not only abor-
tion, but the growing practice of sterilizing women to cut down on esca-
lating birth rates. The Indian government advocated female sterilization
as a way to combat population growth. To combat abortion clinics,
Mother Teresa and her sisters sent word to medical clinics, hospitals, and
police stations that the Missionaries of Charity would accept all un-
wanted children.
In addition to adoption, Mother Teresa also became involved in family
planning. The Missionaries began instruction in what Mother Teresa
called Holy Family Planning, which emphasized natural family planning
based on the rhythm method, the only family-planning practice sanc-
tioned by the Roman Catholic Church. The Missionaries also set up a
number of family-planning centers where young married couples not only
learned how the rhythm method worked, but also learned that abstaining
from sex was another way to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Despite the
simplicity of these methods, teaching them to the poor had its drawbacks.
One familiar story involved a woman who had already given birth to a
large number of children. Wishing to avoid another pregnancy, she re-
ceived instruction in the rhythm method and was given a string of beads
of various colors to help her keep track of her ovulation. Several months
later, she returned to one of the family planning centers, obviously preg-
nant. She told the sisters that she had hung the beads around a statue of
Kali, and forgot about them. Then, she could not understand why she be-
came pregnant.
As they had with her practices at Nirmal Hriday, detractors criticized
Mother Teresa’s stance on abortion and sterilization. Many argued that
there were too many unwanted children in India and that there was no
84 MOTHER TERESA
way that the Missionaries of Charity could possibly care for every single
one. Although abortion clinics were available, they were rare and costly,
hardly justifying Mother Teresa’s outrage. Outlawing abortions might
cause women to try to abort their unborn child themselves, often with ter-
rible and fatal results. In the face of such criticism, Mother Teresa stood
her ground and never veered away from the Church’s teachings on birth
control and abortion. But the controversy was far from over; in the years
to come, Mother Teresa would be a visible target for pro-choice advocates
the world over.
REACHING OUT IN OTHER WAYS

Besides organizing the children’s homes, Mother Teresa reached out to
the poor in other ways. In 1956, she organized her first mobile clinic to
help those who could not get to one of the free clinics. She was aided by
Catholic Relief Services in New York City, which donated $5,000 to
transform an old van into a traveling medical dispensary that visited the
slums throughout the city offering free medical services. With the help of
some doctors, a small laboratory was set up in Shishu Bhavan to do med-
ical testing.
The Shishu Bhavan also became a buzzing center of activity for feeding
the poor. In the home’s small kitchen, the sisters cooked as much rice as
they could, which they handed out along with bananas. On any given af-
ternoon, there were anywhere from 50 to 100 women with children wait-
ing to receive food. For many, this was the only meal of the day.
There were some hazards in providing the free food. On one occasion,
the sisters had nothing to give out for that day, for the agency that sup-
plied them had stopped sending food to the home. The hungry crowd
grew angrier and angrier; some even tried to set fire to the home. At one
point Mother Teresa pushed back with surprising strength a whole line of
women who rushed forward to receive their food. It was only because of
the arrival of the police and fire brigade that the incident did not esca-
late into something more serious. On another, less dangerous occasion,
the kitchen ran out of plates and the sisters used dinner plates from the
Motherhouse to give to the poor.
TENDING TO THE UNCLEAN

Mother Teresa introduced the mobile dispensary in 1956 in response to
another growing problem on the Calcutta streets: lepers. Earlier, the
Gobra hospital, which housed many of the city’s leprosy cases, had closed,
leaving thousands of patients with no place to go. Mother Teresa had lob-
bied hard against the closing, but growing pressure from local residents
and developers, who wanted the hospital moved away from the area,
forced the city to shut down the facility. A new hospital for lepers was
soon built further outside the city limits.
Mother Teresa, realizing that it would be difficult for the former pa-
tients of Gobra to go to the new facility, decided to open up her own
clinic. Like the former Gobra facility, she found a site that was centrally
located, which would make it easier for patients to receive treatment.
However, residents in the neighborhood, upon learning of the proposed
clinic, did their best to stop her efforts. On one occasion, when she ar-
rived in the neighborhood to inspect the site, she was met by angry
neighborhood residents who began throwing stones at her. She took the
angry response in stride and remarked that it appeared that God did not
want the clinic in this area. She would pray for guidance.
As if in answer to her prayers, some American benefactors donated an
ambulance to the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa hoped the vehi-
cle would be the first of many mobile leprosy clinics. More help came from
a Dr. Sen, a physician and specialist in the treatment of skin disease and
leprosy. Sen had recently retired from the Carmichael Hospital for Tropi-
cal Diseases. Unsure of what to do with his free time and having heard of
the works of the Missionaries of Charity, he offered his services. Mother
Teresa gratefully accepted. Assisting Dr. Sen were three sisters who had
received nurse’s training.
In September 1957, the first mobile leprosy clinic was launched. The
ambulance could hold six persons along with a generous supply of medi-
cine, food, and medical records. Traveling from slum to slum, and also
making a stop outside the walls of the Loreto convent, the Missionaries of
Charity sought out the city’s lepers. In time, eight treatment stations were
established throughout Calcutta offering hope to the city’s 30,000 persons
afflicted by leprosy. The bright blue vehicle soon became a recognized
symbol of help and comfort. At each stop, the sisters handed out vitamins
and medicine, along with packets of food. By January 1958, over 600 lep-
ers regularly sought treatment from the mobile clinic.
A HIDEOUS DISEASE
In trying to help those afflicted by leprosy, Mother Teresa faced a spe-
cial kind of problem. The disease, also known as Hansen’s disease, has
been documented since biblical times. It is a particularly insidious ail-
ment, striking people with little warning. The bacterium that causes lep-
86 MOTHER TERESA
rosy attacks the nervous system and destroys the body’s ability to feel pain.
Without pain, people injured themselves without always knowing it. In-
juries become infected and resulted in tissue loss. Fingers and toes become
shortened and deformed as the cartilage is absorbed into the body.
Early symptoms include discolored or light patches on the skin accom-
panied by loss of feeling. When the nerves are affected, small muscles be-
come paralyzed, which leads to the curling of the fingers and thumb.
When leprosy attacks nerves in the legs, there is no sensation in the feet.
The feet can become subject to erosion through untended wounds and in-
fection. If the facial nerves are affected, a person loses the blinking reflex
of the eye, which can eventually lead to dryness, ulceration, and blind-
ness. Bacilli entering the mucous lining of the nose can lead to internal
damage and scarring, which in time causes the nose to collapse. The dis-
ease is assisted in its spread by unsanitary conditions, coughing, and sneez-
ing. In a small household with poor sanitation, it is easy for the entire
family to become infected.
The disease also carried with it, in India and elsewhere, a deep social
stigma. The fear of becoming contaminated often prompts lepers to be
banished. After the Gobra hospital closed, there was no place for many of
the lepers in Calcutta to go except the slums and the countryside, where
many died neglected. Even when a person recovered from the disease,
they were still shunned by the community and often could not find hous-
ing, work, or help—the social stigma of the disease was that prevalent.
Although leprosy had all but disappeared in Europe and North Amer-
ica by the sixteenth century, it still existed in Asia, Africa, South Amer-
ica, and the Middle East. In 1873 Dr. Armauer Hansen of Norway
discovered the bacteria that causes the disease, and a cure was almost a
century away. During the 1950s, when Mother Teresa opened her first mo-
bile clinics, leprosy was treated with dapsone pills. However, the leprosy
bacilli began developing dapsone resistance hindering successful treat-
ment.
TITLAGARH
For those stricken with leprosy, there was one place outside of Calcutta
to go—Titlagarh, an industrial suburb located about an hour’s drive from
Calcutta. Near the railway lines, a cluster of shanties had sprung up on ei-
ther side. It was a village of the poor, with the lepers occupying the hov-
els alongside a swamp. The area was a human cesspool: there was no
drainage or sewage, no drinking water, and no electricity. Even the
wretchedly poor had nothing to do with the lepers. Townspeople and the
police also stayed away for fear of infection. As a result, crime was ram-
pant and indiscriminate; violence and murder were everyday happenings.
The lepers, because of their disease and poverty, could not seek out treat-
ment; no doctor, clinic, or hospital in Titlagarh would see them.
In the meantime, even with the success of the mobile clinic, Mother
Teresa and her sisters realized that there were still a number of patients
from Titlagarh who could not afford the bus or train fare every week to
seek help. Those who could often found themselves banned from riding.
In addition, Mother Teresa and the sisters were seeing more cases of new-
borns afflicted with leprosy; and it was a burden for mothers to come to
the clinics. Many patients asked Mother Teresa to open a permanent
clinic for them nearer to home.
When she made her first visit to Titlagarh, Mother Teresa realized that
something needed to be done. Within a few months, she had established
a small clinic in a shed near the railway lines. A few sisters were sent to
handle the enormous caseload for the Titlagarh clinic. But it soon became
evident that more needed to be done.
To draw attention to the plight of the lepers, Mother Teresa turned
once again to her lay volunteers and benefactors. Many groups, hearing of
the living conditions of the lepers, banded together to support a citywide
collection to help them. The symbol used for the collection drive was a
bell, the ancient symbol of the so-called unclean, but now pressed into
service as a symbol of compassion. The slogan of the collection drive was
Touch the Leper with Your Compassion; and the saying was carried on
posters, signs, newspapers, and on the mobile van, too. The citywide cam-
paign made it possible for even more lepers to be treated by uncovering
other areas where groups of lepers resided.
Finally work was begun on the construction of a more permanent
building. But that project ran into early difficulties. The first attempts to
improve the living conditions of the railway site were met with opposi-
tion from gang leaders who ran most of the illegal activities in the area.
Stones greeted the volunteers who were cleaning up the site, but they
persisted. Construction of two small cottages at last began, and with
them, resistance to the construction faded. The gang leaders fled and
many of the residents pitched in to help with the building. In addition to
the clinic, which opened in March 1959, the facility housed a rehabilita-
tion center, a hospital, and a cafeteria. An assortment of utility buildings
was added during a 10-year period. By the time construction was finished
in 1968, the buildings constituted a mile-long stretch. Mother Teresa
asked the municipality of Titlagarh for water, sewers, and electricity for
the area. Children were put into local schools, and slowly small shops
88 MOTHER TERESA
and stalls appeared in the area where once only crime and violence had
flourished.
But no sooner had the clinic opened than the municipal leaders feared
an influx of lepers would come to Titlagarh. They begged Mother Teresa
to consider opening yet another facility for lepers. With that in mind,
Mother Teresa turned to her next project: Shantinagar.
SHANTINAGAR
In 1961, Mother Teresa received a gift from the Indian government: 34
acres of land located about 200 miles from Calcutta. She would pay the
government an annual fee of one rupee a year for the land. The land was
uncultivated, almost a jungle in appearance. With funds raised by Ger-
man children singing at a charity concert, Mother Teresa began construc-
tion of Shantinagar—The Place of Peace for Lepers.
There was not enough money to complete the project. Hoping for a
miracle, the Missionaries of Charity prayed for guidance. Their prayers
were answered in 1965 in the form of a white 1964 Lincoln Continental
automobile. The car was originally a present from American Catholics to
Pope Paul VI. The pope had the car specially flown in for his state visit to
India in 1964. While there, he visited Mother Teresa and the home at
Nirmal Hriday and was so touched by the work of the Missionaries of
Charity that he gave the car to Mother Teresa before he left. Having no
practical use for the car, Mother Teresa raffled it off, raising a much larger
sum of money than she would have by simple selling the automobile. In
the end, the raffle netted the order of approximately 460,000 rupees or
$100,000. With the funds raised by the raffle, Mother Teresa could pay for
the main hospital block at Shantinagar.
In 1968, Mother Teresa sent Sister Francis Xavier along with several
other sisters to Shantinagar to oversee the construction and maintenance
of the grounds. Within the next two years, a number of key buildings went
up including a rehabilitation center and cottage for lepers built by the pa-
tients themselves. In addition, flowering trees and shrubs, fruit trees, and
vegetable gardens were planted on the grounds. The nearby pond was
stocked with fish, all with an eye to promoting self-sufficiency among the
residents.
In time, the home for lepers offered treatment and a chance at a nor-
mal life for almost 400 lepers and their families. New arrivals were taught
to make bricks in order to construct new homes for future patients. The
residents tended their own cattle, grew their own rice and wheat, and
tilled their own gardens. Others ran a grocer’s shop. Some residents made
baskets, which are used in the nearby coal mines. There is even a printing
press. Shantinagar also has its own local government with its leaders
elected from among the residents. Medical treatment is not far away, and
with the advent of better drugs since the 1970s, many lepers had a chance
to recover from their illness. There is also a Shishu Bhavan on the prem-
ises, where children can live and be protected from the more infectious
patients.
With each new success and each new undertaking, it was becoming
clear that Mother Teresa possessed extraordinary vision. She was making
a name for herself, not only throughout Calcutta, but in India and be-
yond. Her great determination to help those who could not help them-
selves had earned her a host of supporters and a growing number of critics.
As the size and scale of the Missionaries of Charity grew, so did the seeds
of controversy. By the end of the 1950s, it was clear that Mother Teresa
and her order would no longer toil in anonymity.
NOTES
1. Mother Teresa with Jaya Chaliha and Edward Le Joly, The Joy in Loving: A
Guide to Daily Living (New York: Viking, 1996), p. 327.
2. Mother Teresa with Chaliha and Le Joly, Joy, p. 371.
Chapter 8
THE GROWTH OF A MIRACLE
By the late 1950s, Mother Teresa found herself becoming quite newsworthy,
at least in Calcutta, where she was the subject of several articles in both the
Indian and English newspapers. This attention marked the beginning of a
remarkable relationship between Mother Teresa and the Indian press. For
one thing, the articles about Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity
often resulted in donations to the order. Some of the gifts came in the form
of money; others donated supplies and their time.
The wife of a British businessman and a former Loreto student, Aruna
Paul, helped teach children in the slums. She also organized Christmas
parties for the children. After her own children were born, she made a
point of having birthday parties for the children in Shishu Bhavan on the
same day as her own children’s celebrations. She also made a point of tak-
ing her children with her to Shishu Bhavan to impress upon them how
fortunate they were. Paul also had access to a textile factory; through her
efforts, the sisters received new saris every year. Years later, Paul recalled
that Mother Teresa, prior to her traveling, never seemed hurried and that
she always had time for everyone who came to see her. But that would all
soon change as Mother Teresa began capturing the attention of a much
wider audience, while recognizing there were other places in the world
that might benefit from her vision.
SETTING FOOT ON THE WORLD STAGE

For nearly 10 years, the work done by the Missionaries of Charity had
been confined to Calcutta. This was in agreement with church law, which
92 MOTHER TERESA
prohibited new orders to open houses outside of the diocese. Initially,

Mother Teresa realized that between the archbishop’s emphatic enforce-
ment of this rule, and the horrific problems she faced in Calcutta, expan-
sion of any kind was clearly out of the question.
But, in 1959, things had changed. There was one year left before the
probationary period of the Missionaries of Charity formally ended, and
the sisters were eager to take their mission outside of Calcutta and begin
work in other parts of India. When Mother Teresa went to Archbishop
Périer, he relented. But he told Mother Teresa that her work could only
expand into other areas of the country, not beyond. She agreed. New
houses of the Missionaries of Charity were established—and warmly wel-
comed by church and city officials—in Delhi and Jhansi. The news of
their work reached the highest echelons of Indian government; at the
dedication of a children’s home in Delhi, the Prime Minister of India,
Jawaharlal Nehru, was in attendance. When introduced to him, Mother
Teresa proceeded to tell the prime minister of her order. Gently stopping
her, Nehru replied that he did not need to hear of her work; he knew all
about it and that was why he had come to the ceremony. The Missionar-
ies of Charity also sent a group of nuns to Ranchi, a city located in the ex-
tremely poor state of Bihar. Here, many girls from the local tribes were
recruited to become Missionaries of Charity with great success.
In Bombay, a city with numerous Catholic churches and schools, the
Missionaries of Charity were welcomed by none other than the head of
the Roman Catholic Church in Bombay, Cardinal Valerian Gracias.
After a short tour of the city, Mother Teresa angered many of the residents
with her comment that the slums of Bombay were worse than those in
Calcutta. But many others recognized that beside the many palatial
homes found in the city were also tall buildings with little ventilation, no
indoor plumbing, and very little fresh air. With Cardinal Gracias’s bless-
ing, Mother Teresa soon opened a home for the dying, similar to Nirmal
Hriday.
In the autumn of 1960, Mother Teresa looked beyond the borders of
her adopted country and accepted an invitation to speak at the National
Council for Catholic Women to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Although
it seemed an unlikely destination for a woman considered a saint through-
out India, Mother Teresa went with the hope of raising more funds for the
By this time, Mother Teresa was 50 years old and in charge of 119 nuns,
all but three of whom were Indian, and she wished to carry her message
further. As it turned out, her reputation was already becoming established
on the world stage. In the United States, she had appeared on the front
THE GROWTH OF A MIRACLE 93
page of an American magazine called Jubilee: A Magazine for the Church

and Her People in 1958, which introduced her at least to the American
Catholic community.
That October, Mother Teresa arrived in Los Angeles; from there she
traveled to Las Vegas in the company of a former volunteer with the Mis-
sionaries of Charity, Katherine Bracken. Mother Teresa was to give a
speech entitled “These Works of Love,” in which she outlined the work of
the Missionaries of Charity.
Mother Teresa had never spoken in public before; previously she had
relied on others to do her talking for her. But speaking before 3,000
women, she discovered that what might have been a disadvantage actu-
ally was an advantage. Instead of a professional giving a polished speech,
Mother Teresa showed herself to be a natural orator. She spoke easily of
her life’s work and that of the Missionaries of Charity in India. She stated
she was not there to beg for donations; instead she continued to rely on
God’s providence for help. But she did remind her audience that they, too,
could participate in doing something beautiful for God. As she was to dis-
cover, this approach proved far more effective in raising money than a di-
rect appeal ever would. Afterwards, sitting in a booth in the convention
hall, she watched as person after person stopped to put cash in a bag she
carried with her. During the course of the day, the bag was emptied several
times. Mother Teresa had discovered a powerful and successful way in
which to raise funds for her projects. It was a formula from which she
rarely deviated in the following years.
During her time in Las Vegas, Mother Teresa was less interested in the
goings-on in the nearby casinos and nightclubs than she was to traveling
in the desert. When asked what she thought of the city, she replied that
the neon lights of the city’s casinos and hotels reminded her of Dewali,
the yearly Hindu festival of lights. As a souvenir of her visit to Nevada,
she took some long cactus spines that she found in the desert. These were
later twisted into a crown of thorns and placed on the head of the cruci-
fied Christ hanging behind the altar in the novitiate chapel of the Mis-
sionaries of Charity in Calcutta.
A WHIRLWIND TOUR
From Las Vegas, Mother Teresa went to Peoria, Illinois, where she
spoke to yet another group of Catholic women. Then it was on to Chicago
and New York City. In each city, she was welcomed warmly and had little
trouble in gathering more monies for the Missionaries of Charity. One
disappointment in her itinerary came when a planned meeting with the
94 MOTHER TERESA
Democratic presidential candidate, John F. Kennedy, who was also Roman

Catholic, did not take place. However, while in New York City, Mother
Teresa met with Mother Anna Dengel, the Austrian-born founder of the
Medical Mission Sisters, who had given Mother Teresa her early medical
training in Patna a little more than a decade earlier. She also paid visits to
Catholic Relief Services, and met with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, who was
a prominent radio and television personality in the United States. Sheen
was the head of the American division of the foreign mission’s organi-
zation, the Propagation of the Faith, which channeled donations to Cath-
olic missions all over the world. But perhaps one of the most important
contacts Mother Teresa made during this trip was with Marcolino Can-
dau, director of the World Health Organization (WHO). She told Can-
dau of her urgent need to provide for the lepers and their children in
India. Candau told her that if she made her request through the Indian
government, WHO would see that she received the necessary medical
supplies.
From New York, Mother Teresa’s next stop was London, where she
spent one evening at the home of the sister of Indian Prime Minister
Nehru, who encouraged her to expand her work, particularly where vol-
unteers were concerned. Mother Teresa also met with a representative of
the Oxfam aid agency and had her first television interview with a British
journalist on the BBC.
Her next stop was Germany, where Mother Teresa enjoyed a greater
reputation, having been featured in a news magazine Weltelend (World
Misery), published by the German Catholic relief agency Miseror. The ar-
ticle had also shown photos of the terrible poverty in Calcutta as well as
shots of Nirmal Hriday. Another news magazine Erdkreis (Earth Circle)
had featured photos of Kalighat. As she stepped off the plane, wrapped in
a rough wool blanket to protect her from the cold weather, Mother Teresa
was greeted by a horde of German photographers and journalists.
In meeting with Miseror representatives, Mother Teresa outlined her
plans for the construction of a new home for the dying in Delhi. She al-
ready had land set aside, but needed help in building the proposed facility.
The organization, while generally preferring to fund self-help projects,
readily agreed to her request. In return, they asked only that the Mission-
aries of Charity send financial statements to the organization to monitor
how the money was spent. To their great surprise, Mother Teresa flatly re-
jected their request, stating that the sisters did not have time to spend on
preparing complicated financial forms. She assured the officials that they
should not worry about the money; each penny would go to the proposed
project. But her refusal to keep detailed accounts marked the beginning of
a practice that would continue and later become a source of much criti-
cism. As Mother Teresa later argued, making out separate reports to each
sponsor would be so time-consuming that the poor would suffer. Although
she and her sisters recorded each donation with a letter, they did not keep
detailed financial records of donations accepted and monies spent. As was
her nature, Mother Teresa ignored complaints about the order’s account-
ing practices.
Before leaving Germany, Mother Teresa also stopped to visit Dachau,
one of the most infamous concentration camps in Nazi Germany, where
more than 28,000 Jews died between 1933 and 1945. After listening to
the history of the camp, Mother Teresa stated that the camp was to his-
tory what the Colosseum in Rome was to the Romans who threw the
Christians to their death. In Mother Teresa’s eyes, modern humans were
behaving no better, and if anything, far worse.
After a brief visit to Switzerland, Mother Teresa stopped in Rome
where she hoped to make a formal and personal plea to Pope John XXIII
for the Missionaries of Charity to become a Society of Pontifical Right. If
the pope agreed, it would mean that the Missionaries of Charity could
begin working in other countries. However, when it came time to meet
the pope, Mother Teresa, frightened at making the request directly to the
pope, instead only asked for his blessing. She then made her request to
Cardinal Gregory Agagianian, who agreed to take the matter under con-
sideration. But it was clear that the Church recognized the value and im-
portance of Mother Teresa not only to its missionary and humanitarian
efforts, but to its efforts to spread the Gospel.
A BRIEF REUNION
While in Rome, Mother Teresa arranged a reunion with her brother
Lazar, whom she had not seen in more than 30 years. Lazar now lived in
Palermo, Sicily, where he worked for a pharmaceutical firm. He was also
married to an Italian woman and was the father of a 10-year-old daughter.
During World War II, he had joined the Italian army after the Italian oc-
cupation of Albania. His defection to the Italian army earned him a death
sentence in Albania; Lazar could never return to the land of his birth.
When the two met, they discussed the terrible predicament of Aga and
their mother, who were still in Albania. The country, now a communist
satellite of the Soviet Union, had made it virtually impossible for its resi-
dents to leave Albania. Mother Teresa had applied for a visa to visit the
country, and possibly because of her brother, but more likely because of
her own activities, she had been refused. Albania’s atheist government
96 MOTHER TERESA
did not look kindly on a religious figure, particularly one becoming inter-
nationally renowned.
And then all too soon, it was time to return home. Upon her arrival in
Calcutta, Mother Teresa continued to work with her sisters, opening up
new homes throughout India. For the next five years, new chapters ap-
peared in cities and states throughout the country. Adopting the pattern
established in Calcutta, the Missionaries of Charity assessed the needs of
an area and adapted their programs. With each new house, each new
school, each new mobile clinic, Mother Teresa’s name and works gained
greater and greater recognition. Still, it was not enough, and Mother
Teresa waited anxiously for news from the Vatican.
THE BIGGEST MIRACLE OF ALL

In February 1965, Mother Teresa finally received her answer: the Mis-
sionaries of Charity had received the pope’s permission to become a So-
ciety of Pontifical Right. In his decree granting the right, Pope Paul VI,
who had succeeded John XXIII, charged Mother Teresa and her order to
continue carrying out their works of charity and to dedicate themselves
to God. Now, Mother Teresa could carry her good works outside of India
for the first time. In time, these works included clinics for those suffering
from tuberculosis; antenatal clinics; clinics for general medical needs;
mobile leprosy clinics; night shelters for the homeless; homes for chil-
dren, the poor, and the dying; nursery schools, primary, and secondary
schools; feeding programs; villages for lepers; commercial schools; voca-
tional training in carpentry, metal work, embroidery and other skills;
child-care and home-management classes; and aid in the event of emer-
gencies and disasters such as floods, earthquakes, famine, epidemics, riot-
ing and war.
Mother Teresa’s first invitation came in 1965 when she was asked to
open a house in Venezuela, to help many of the impoverished people who
had lapsed in their Catholicism due to a lack of priests and nuns to sustain
them. Archbishop James Robert Knox, the Internuncio to New Delhi,
had already met with a South American bishop who impressed upon
Knox the need for the Missionaries of Charity. Knox wanted Mother
Teresa to accept the invitation and pressed her to do so. But Mother
Teresa balked. She was not sure that her sisters were ready for such an un-
dertaking. She wanted more time. Archbishop Knox told her that the
needs of the Church were more important than the needs of her sisters.
The matter was then settled. Mother Teresa and her order were going to
Venezuela.
In July 1965, the Missionaries of Charity opened their first home out-
side India in Cocorote, Venezuela. Mother Teresa, accompanied by five
sisters, came to the small town. Working in Cocorote also presented the
Missionaries of Charity with a very different situation. Not only were they
dealing with a different language, but also with a different culture. While
in Cocorote, the sisters, for the first time, began cooperating in religious
education. Because priests were in such short supply, the sisters took on
the duties of preparing children to receive their First Communion and
Confirmation, which were important Catholic rituals for children be-
tween the ages of 8 and 12.
By 1970, the duties of the sisters had expanded even more. After open-
ing a house in Caracas, they received permission for three of their nuns to
administer Holy Communion, a duty previously reserved for priests. This
relaxing of rules allowed the Missionaries of Charity to offer Holy Com-
munion to the sick and the dying. In addition, the sisters were busy con-
ducting funerals, washing and cleaning for the elderly, and feeding the
hungry. In 1972, the Missionaries of Charity helped with roof repairs
when strong winds damaged several homes, leaving many without ade-
quate shelter. In return for their many labors, the nuns might be rewarded
with something simple: an egg from someone’s hen, or a banana. The sis-
ters accepted the gifts with gratitude.
AN APPEAL FROM ROME

In 1968, Mother Teresa received another invitation, this time to work
among the poor in Rome. The invitation came as a bit of a surprise. Rome
already had more than 22,000 nuns belonging to 1,200 separate religious
orders. Why, Mother Teresa thought, would the Church need yet another
group to work with the poor? But this invitation was different; it came
from none other than Paul VI himself.
Three years earlier, in July 1965, Mother Teresa was among a group of
40 persons granted an audience with the pope. Although Mother Teresa
was overwhelmed at meeting the pope, as were the six other Missionaries
of Charity who accompanied her, it appears Paul VI was taken with her.
Asking for her prayers, he told Mother Teresa to write to him. Now, the
pope was asking her directly for her help in working with Rome’s poor.
That August, Mother Teresa and a handful of her nuns arrived in Rome
to begin work. The area in which they were to work, known as the bor-
gate, is located on the outskirts of Rome. Here live the city’s poorest resi-
dents, many of whom could not even begin to pay the city’s high rents.
The area was home to thousands of immigrants from Sicily and Sardinia.
98 MOTHER TERESA
Rome’s slums were also known for their distinctive architecture. Shelters
known as barraca, a kind of barracks-like structure, sprawled for acres in
the city’s slums. The homes were also distinguished by their bright orange
terra-cotta roofs, which were secured by heavy stones. Many of these
homes lacked electricity, water, and sewage, though some enterprising
souls were able to tap into the city’s electrical power source to light their
homes. Some families also planted small gardens near their homes, which,
in addition to supplementing their diets, alleviated the barren and harsh
landscape of poverty with a wondrous riot of color.
Initial attempts to find a house for the order were futile; there appeared
to be nothing for them. Finally, Mother Teresa found a barracche. It was by
far the poorest and shabbiest residence that the sisters had resided in,
something that appealed to Mother Teresa a great deal. With the excep-
tion of the house being wired for electricity, the residence was from all ap-
pearances no different from the others. There was no plumbing; the nuns
would have to make do with the nearby fountain from which residents
drew their water. In time, the Missionaries of Charity instituted many of
the same programs for the poor of Rome that they provided elsewhere.
A GROWING MISSION
Over the next several years, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of
Charity continued to open new homes around the world. In 1967, the
order opened its first home in Sri Lanka. In September 1968, a month
after traveling to Rome, Mother Teresa journeyed to Tabora, Tanzania,
where the sisters opened their first mission in Africa. A year later, the
Missionaries of Charity were in Australia, where they opened up a center
for the Aborigines. From this point on and well into the next decade, a
new mission center opened somewhere in the world approximately every
six months.
The Missionaries of Charity were growing in other ways, too. By 1963,
Mother Teresa realized that men were better suited for certain kinds of
work, such as working with young boys, than her nuns were. After con-
sulting with Father Van Exem, she petitioned the archbishop of Calcutta
for his permission to create a new branch of the order: the Missionary
Brothers of Charity. The archbishop did not have to think very long; al-
most immediately he agreed to the request.
But there were issues to settle before the new order could get underway.
Men were reluctant to join because the order was still unrecognized. To
become recognized meant that the order needed to grow and have the
proper leadership to provide guidance and direction. Even though the
brothers were aligned with the Missionaries of Charity, under Church law
Mother Teresa could not head a male congregation. She tried to engage
the services of two other priests, but for a number of reasons could not
convince either man to leave his order to take charge of the new congre-
gation. Finally, a young priest applied for the position; Mother Teresa,
even though she did not know him personally, agreed to have him take on
the responsibility of directing the new order.
In 1966, an Australian Jesuit, Father Ian Travers-Ball, became the
head of the Missionary Brothers, changing his name to Brother Andrew.
Travers-Ball was a young and charismatic presence within the order. He
was familiar with conditions in India having come to the country in 1954
as a new priest. He was interested in working with the poor, and specifi-
cally with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity.
Early on, Brother Andrew believed it was necessary for the Brothers of
Charity to establish their own presence and identity. Although he ad-
mired Mother Teresa, Travers-Ball also wished to escape her domination.
To establish a base for the Brothers, Brother Andrew rented a small house
in Kidderpore, which Mother Teresa purchased. Along with a dozen
young homeless boys, Brother Andrew moved into the home. In time, the
house settled into a routine that was far different from the goings-on at
Motherhouse.
In general, the Brothers adopted a style of working with the poor that
was far less regimented. They were less sheltered than the Sisters, which
allowed them access to the poor community in ways that the Sisters did
not enjoy. The more informal approach enabled the Brothers to be more
adaptable to cultural and regional differences than the Sisters. And be-
cause their focus was on helping poor boys, their homes tended to be
smaller and more close-knit.
One of the first places the Brothers began work was at the Howrah rail-
way station where many young poor boys lived. Much as Mother Teresa
did when she began working among the poor, the Brothers started out by
establishing contact and helping the boys in small ways, such as passing
out bars of soap or helping get medical treatment for those in need. Grad-
ually, the Brothers organized an evening meal for the boys at the station.
Some boys were taken in and given refuge where they could receive voca-
tional training. Along with boys residing at the Shishu Bhavan, several
were then transferred to other houses in and around the city, such as Nabo
Jeevan (New Life), or Dum-Dum where there was a radio-repair work-
shop. Boys suffering from medical or mental handicaps were taken to Nur-
pur, a farm located about 20 miles outside of Calcutta, where they learned
to farm. The Brothers also became heavily involved with mobile leprosy
100 MOTHER TERESA
clinics and, in time, would take over the day-to-day work at the leprosy
colony in Titlagarh.
Like Mother Teresa’s own Missionaries of Charity, the Brothers grew
rapidly. Within a decade of their creation, Brother Andrew opened up the
first overseas house in war-torn Vietnam. From there, the order began
opening houses all over the world, usually in places where the Missionar-
ies of Charity did not have a presence. In 1975, the Brothers opened a
house in a poor, crime-infested neighborhood in Los Angeles, California,
where they began working with drug addicts and alcoholics who had been
living on the street.
There was no shortage of rough neighborhoods in the world, and
Brother Andrew sought out as many as he could find, establishing homes
in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Guatemala, the Philippines, El Sal-
vador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Brazil. Everywhere they went,
the Brothers undertook the jobs they knew best. Their mission, more than
that of the Missionaries of Charity, brought them into contact with the
residents of many a city’s mean streets and society’s outcasts: the crimi-
nals, the drug addicts, and the hopeless alcoholics. The Brothers also con-
tinued their work with orphaned and wayward boys. Wherever they went,
they established soup kitchens and helped those in need to receive medi-
cal attention.
Still, the Brothers’ road to success was not without its bumps. Pre-
dictably, Brother Andrew and Mother Teresa clashed over the order’s
management. One issue was dress; Brother Andrew requested that the
brothers wear no uniform and instead dress in jeans and T-shirts. While
this made them more accessible, it also made them at times harder to dis-
tinguish, and on more than one occasion, a brother was picked up along
with those he was helping to spend a night at the city jail. Mother Teresa
wished for the Brothers to wear their clerical garb. She also did not agree
with Brother Andrew’s willingness to delegate authority and wished for
tighter, stricter management, much as she did with her own order. The
final straw came when Mother Teresa established a contemplative branch
of the Brothers without consulting Brother Andrew. Her actions caused a
temporary rift between the two orders; in 1987, Brother Andrew left the
order. His replacement, Brother Geoff, brought with him a management
style and an attitude that was more complementary to Mother Teresa’s vi-
sion for the Missionaries of Charity Brothers.
COME AND SEES AND CO-WORKERS

Assisting the Missionaries of Charity and the Brothers were volunteers
whom Brother Andrew called Come and Sees. This group consisted
mainly of young people interested in working with the Brothers for a few
weeks or months. Some were interested in joining the order, but wanted
to see if they were capable of handling the work. Mother Teresa had
adopted a similar practice with her own missions for young women who
might be interested in joining her order.
Also assisting Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity were
hundreds of volunteers, called Co-Workers. The term was borrowed from
Mahatma Ghandi, who referred to his helpers by the same name. Like
Ghandi, Mother Teresa’s Co-Workers were men, women, and children
from all over the world. They came from a variety of backgrounds and rep-
resented a number of different religions. All shared an interest in helping
the poor.
Among the first Co-Workers helping Mother Teresa were the Gomes
family, and the many doctors, nurses, and dentists who donated free med-
ical services. By the 1950s, a more formal organization of Co-Workers had
been established, largely through the efforts of British wives who were in-
volved with various social services in Calcutta. When a number of these
women returned to England, they began meeting, and by 1960, a Mother
Teresa committee was formed that began working with the poor in En-
glish cities. By the 1990s, approximately 30,000 Co-Workers were volun-
teering in the United Kingdom.
Smaller groups of Co-Workers appeared in other countries as well. In
the United States, there are approximately 10,000. In Europe, the num-
bers are much smaller, with only a few hundred active volunteers. Still,
the rise of one group has often led to the formation of another. Although
forbidden to engage in fund-raising or publicity, the group publishes Co-
Workers Newsletter, which goes out to all members. There is no paid of-
fice or staff to put out the newsletter; all work is donated. Further,
Mother Teresa stipulated that all collection centers for clothing or food
are to be in someone’s residence; there is to be no rental of a unit or store-
front.
In some areas, Co-Workers handled donations of money which were
turned over to the Missionaries or were spent to buy bulk purchases of ne-
cessities such as food, clothing, and medical supplies. The size of some of
these donations are staggering even by today’s standards: for instance, in
1990, 17,000,000 Belgian francs ($680,000 in 2004 dollars) were used to
purchase powdered milk, while 200,000 Dutch guilders ($146,000 in 2004
dollars) bought protein biscuits. Both purchases were then sent to Mis-
sionaries of Charity houses in Africa, South and Central America, and
Asia. An additional 3,000,000 Belgian francs ($120,000 in 2004 dollars)
was spent to buy clothes bought at one-tenth of retail value and sent to
various countries in Africa. Finally, 24 large containers of used clothing,
102 MOTHER TERESA
blankets, and bandages that were collected door-to-door by British Co-

Workers were sent to several countries in Asia.
But Mother Teresa emphasized to her volunteers not to wander away
from more humbling tasks, whether it was writing a letter, washing
clothes, or reading to the ill.
There is also a very special branch of the Co-Workers that was created
during the 1960s: the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers. These are indi-
viduals who are old, infirm, or handicapped; they cannot help with the
more strenuous activities of the other Co-Workers. This group offers
prayers for Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity’s efforts. Quite
often, these volunteers are linked with a member of the active Co-
Workers in their area. Currently there are about 5,000 Sick and Suffering
Co-Workers representing 57 countries.
THE MEETING POINT

In 1968, Oliver Hunkin, head of religious programming for the BBC,
called upon noted British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, to ask whether
he would do a short television interview with a relatively unknown nun
from India. Hunkin’s choice of Muggeridge was inspired. Muggeridge was
well known for his agnosticism and mocking attitude toward organized re-
ligions. Having briefly entertained thoughts of becoming a priest at a
young age, Muggeridge instead chose journalism as a career. However, he
never completely let go of his deep Christian feelings, and much later in
life returned to the Church. But for now, Muggeridge was a bit put out at
the thought of conducting this interview, particularly since Hunkin had
not given him much notice in order for him to prepare.
Muggeridge had never heard of Mother Teresa, but the next afternoon
he found himself making his way to the Holy Child Convent in London
to do the interview. Mother Teresa, looking visibly nervous, answered
Muggeridge’s questions in a small, halting voice. Gently, he led her
through the story of her mission and what she hoped to accomplish, and
avoided controversial questions completely; nor was there any appeal for
donations on her part. At one point, Muggeridge feared that he would not
be able to keep the interview going for the full 30 minutes. When the
completed interview was broadcast for BBC executives, there was even
some question about whether the lackluster and ordinary exchange
should be televised.
But in the end, the interview aired in May 1968 on the BBC Sunday-
night series, Meeting Point. The response was as unexpected as it was
spectacular. So many British viewers were moved by the story of Mother
Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity, that within 10 days of the broad-
cast, £9,000 ($16,000 in 2004 dollars) were donated to the organization.
Another story credits the interview with raising £25,000 (approximately
$45,000 in 2004 dollars). Although the actual figure is in dispute, one
thing is not: Mother Teresa struck a chord with the public. BBC officials
were so taken aback by the response to the interview that they broadcast
it again with even more donations coming in for the Missionaries of
Charity.
AN ACTUAL MIRACLE?
What, on the surface, appeared to have been a run-of-the-mill inter-
view had a very profound effect on Malcolm Muggeridge. Later, he ad-
mitted that when he first saw Mother Teresa walk into the room, she
appeared unique and significant. He was also very excited about the pos-
sibility of working with her again and asked the BBC to send him to Cal-
cutta where he could film Mother Teresa in action.
In the spring of 1969, Muggeridge, accompanied by a cameraman and
producer, left for Calcutta. Although initially reluctant to agree to the re-
quest, Mother Teresa eventually relented and gave the film crew her full
cooperation. For the next five days, Muggeridge and his team followed
Mother Teresa as she went about her daily routine. But it was the filming
at Nirmal Hriday in which Muggeridge later claimed to have witnessed a
photographic miracle.
Initially, both Muggeridge and Kenneth Macmillan, the cameraman,
were reluctant to shoot inside the home because of the dimly lit interior.
As it was, Macmillan had only a small light with him, and to get adequate
light seemed an impossible task. However, he had recently purchased
some new Kodak film, which he had not tried yet. He decided to go ahead
and shoot footage inside Nirmal Hriday using the new film. When Mug-
geridge and his team returned to London, they began work on the docu-
mentary. Several weeks later, as they were reviewing rushes, or the
unedited film footage, they watched for the first time the sequence shot at
Nirmal Hriday. Macmillan recounted what happened next:
It was surprising. You could see every detail. And I said: “That’s
amazing, that’s extraordinary.” And I was going to say . . . three
cheers for Kodak. I didn’t get a chance to say that though be-
cause Malcolm, sitting in the front row, spun round and said:
“It’s divine light! It’s Mother Teresa. You’ll find that it’s divine
light old boy.”1
104 MOTHER TERESA
Macmillan also found himself besieged over the next several days by
newspaper reporters asking him about the miracle he had witnessed.
The completed documentary Something Beautiful for God was shown for
the first time in December 1969. It was a resounding success. Later, Mug-
geridge, Macmillan, and Peter Chafer, the producer, credited Mother
Teresa for the film’s reception, citing her as an extremely charismatic pres-
ence. However, both Chafer and Macmillan were reluctant to attribute
the extraordinary lighting sequence at Nirmal Hriday to Divine Provi-
dence, even though when Macmillan used the film again in a low-light
situation he got poor results.
The documentary not only boosted Mother Teresa’s image worldwide,
it also had an impact on the Missionaries of Charity. As a result of the
film, there was a visible increase in the numbers of young women wishing
to join the order. In 1970, a year after the documentary aired, 139 new
candidates were received by the Missionaries of Charity. The new arrivals
came from all over: Pakistan, Ceylon, Nepal, Malaysia, Yugoslavia, Ger-
many, Malta, France, Mauritania, Ireland, Venezuela, Italy, and India.
The total of the entire congregation stood at 585, of which 332 were fully
professed nuns, 175 novices, and 78 postulants, a remarkable achieve-
ment for an order barely two decades old.
NOTE
1997), p. 83.
Chapter 9
BLESSINGS AND BLAME
Thanks to the amazing success of the documentary Something Beautiful for

God, Mother Teresa no longer just belonged to Calcutta or to India. She
belonged to the world. Malcolm Muggeridge, the journalist who now
emerged as one of Mother Teresa’s most vocal and supportive champions,
went on to write a book published under the same title in 1971. Using the
transcript from the film as the basis of the text and incorporating many
black and white photographs, the book illustrated Mother Teresa’s work
and life. Muggeridge also included nine pages of Mother Teresa’s sayings,
stating that, since Mother Teresa would never write about herself or her
work, there should be a record of her own words.
The book enjoyed phenomenal success. It has rarely gone out of print,
and over 30 years, has sold more than 300,000 copies. It has been
reprinted 20 times and has been translated into 13 languages. Upon his
death in 1990, Muggeridge donated the royalties from the book to Mother
Teresa, the sum of which is about £60,000.
Between the film, the book, and Mother Teresa’s own globe-trotting,
both she and her order were very much in the public eye. Although that
visibility was beneficial, particularly as Mother Teresa was trying to raise
funds and awareness of the world’s poor, it also left her vulnerable to grow-
ing dissent, criticism, and accusations. Despite Muggeridge’s predictions
that Mother Teresa would one day be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, her
application for the coveted award was rejected three times.
NEW ADVENTURES
During the 1970s Mother Teresa continued her travels, both speaking
and opening new homes for the Missionaries of Charity. The decade
106 MOTHER TERESA
opened with a home established in Amman, Jordan. In December 1970, a

novitiate, or center to train newcomers, opened in England; homes for the
Missionaries opened in London’s Paddington District and the Bronx, New
York City in 1971. Mother Teresa and her Missionaries did not shy away
from the world’s troubled spots: in 1972, a new foundation opened in
Belfast, Northern Ireland; in 1973, Mother Teresa opened another foun-
dation working with the 380,000 Arab refugees who lived and worked in
the Israeli-occupied Gaza strip. And so it continued throughout the de-
cade with the high point coming in 1979 when the Missionaries of Char-
ity opened 14 new foundations. As her missions spread across the world,
Mother Teresa enjoyed the support of many world leaders. In the United
States alone, she counted among her champions the wealthy Democratic
Kennedy family and former Republican president Richard M. Nixon.
She also began receiving a number of honors. Her first came in
1962 when she was awarded the Magsaysay Award for International Un-
derstanding. That same year she received the Padma Shri, known as the
Magnificent Lotus, India’s second highest award. First, after hearing the
news that she won, Mother Teresa would not accept it. However, after re-
ceiving permission, she traveled to New Delhi to accept the award from
the president of India at that time, Dr. Rajendra Prasad.
In many cases, the awards came with substantial cash prizes. For in-
stance, the money received from the Magsaysay award was used to pur-
chase a home for children. In January 1971, Mother Teresa traveled to
Rome where she accepted a check from Pope Paul VI for £10,000 (appx.
$17,000) after being awarded the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. That
money was directed toward the building of a leper colony on land donated
by the Indian government. In 1971, she again traveled to New Delhi to
accept from the Indian government the Nehru Award for International
Understanding. In 1973, Mother Teresa became the first recipient of the
Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. She was chosen out of a field of
2,000 nominations by a panel of judges representing the world’s major re-
ligions including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
In every case, Mother Teresa graciously accepted each award in the name
of the world’s poor.
BATTLING SPIRITUAL POVERTY

Mother Teresa was most familiar with the conditions of the poor in
Third-World countries; however, when confronted with the poverty in
Western countries, she was not only shocked but appalled. On more than
one occasion, she noted with some irony how people in the West sent do-
BLESSINGS AND BLAME 107
nations to her to help the poor in India, when at the same time they
turned their backs on those in their own countries who were suffering and
forgotten. In many areas, the Missionaries of Charity opened up Homes of
Compassion for the destitute men and women living on the streets. The
nuns also made a point of checking on the elderly and lonely who had no
one to look after them.
For Mother Teresa, the poverty that confronted her in such societies as
the United States and Great Britain was more a poverty of the spirit. It
came in the form of loneliness and being unwanted, plaguing the home-
less, the drifters, the alcoholics, and the mentally ill left to fend for them-
selves. What Mother Teresa found so troubling, as she traveled through
the rough neighborhoods of London or New York City, was society’s re-
sponse to these people: shunning them, abandoning them, or leaving
them at the mercy of those who were stronger.
Yet, Mother Teresa did not pass judgment on those societies. Instead,
she tried to point out as gently as she could that God did not make the
poor people in the world, nor did he create poverty and disorder. Rather,
it was because people did not share enough with one another that some
had plenty and others went without. When faced with the criticism that
helping all the needy in the world was a never-ending and hopeless task,
she replied that she and her sisters used themselves to save whom they
could, when they could. If pressed hard to reason out her mission as a re-
sult of that first foray into the Calcutta slums over 20 years before, she
might have been astounded to learn that she and her order had saved tens
of thousands of lives. But numbers were meaningless to Mother Teresa; for
her, each small act, each kindness extended toward those in need, was
done in the name of Christ. That was all.
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
As the number of foundations grew, Mother Teresa’s schedule became
more hectic. Because she kept close watch on the order, leading by exam-
ple, it was important that she visit every motherhouse she could to check
on the day-to-day goings on. For instance, she believed that the sisters
must not waste any donations because others had sacrificed in order that
they have them. Medicine and food were to be distributed as soon as pos-
sible to prevent spoilage. She asked that the priests who assisted in the
spiritual welfare of the sisters not interfere in the internal affairs of the
houses, particularly when it came to observing their vows of poverty. At
no time should a congregation raise its standard of living; this meant
going without simple things such as curtains for the motherhouse or bed-
108 MOTHER TERESA
spreads, which were invariably given away. Donations of washing ma-

chines, carpets, or other creature comforts were also given away. As
Mother Teresa continually reminded her sisters, the poor did without and
so must they.
She wrote to each house as often as possible offering advice, wisdom,
and comfort to her growing number of sisters. She wrote to parents thank-
ing them for their daughters who had given their lives in service to God.
She reminded her nuns to be cheerful and smile, as God needed and loved
those who gave of themselves cheerfully. A cheerful disposition also at-
tracted those who might be seeking a vocation with the Missionaries of
Charity. She shared news of her travels, her visits with dignitaries, and hu-
morous incidents that had occurred.
Even as she was becoming more well known, Mother Teresa remained
as unobtrusive as possible. She commonly slept in the luggage racks of
third-class train compartments or shared a seat on a train or a bus between
the wife of a farmer and some livestock. On those occasions when she had
a seat to herself, she made the most of it, using the time for reflection,
often writing small notes or letters to her sisters and benefactors.
Yet, she declined the offers of regular income that were beginning to
arise more frequently. She emphasized repeatedly that fund-raising was
not her work, fearing that the Missionaries of Charity would become a
business rather than a labor of love. She squarely placed her life and that
of her congregations in God’s hands, fully trusting that Providence would
provide for her needs in helping the poor. Her rejections of some dona-
tions were on the face of it astounding, yet completely in character. Once
she rejected an offer from New York City’s Cardinal Terence Cooke,
which would provide $500 a month for each Sister working in Harlem,
asking him if he believed that God was going to be bankrupt in New York
City.
LOSS AND FAILINGS

The 1970s were an extraordinary period of growth for the Missionaries
of Charity and of growing recognition for Mother Teresa. Still, the decade
was not without its low points as Mother Teresa suffered both personal
losses and public failures. She may also have come to realize that not all
things were possible through faith and love alone.
The year 1970 began with a troubling letter from her sister Aga, who
was living with their mother in Tirana, Albania. Drana was in ill health
and her condition was worsening. On top of that, life under communist
rule was extremely difficult and the two were having a hard time making
ends meet. For Mother Teresa, this was a bitter blow; her divine Provi-
dence, which had made possible the impossible, seemed strangely absent
now. But she took the news with a strong heart, yet sad that there was
nothing she could do to help her mother and sister when she had found
ways to help so many others around the world.
Yet, June 1970, Mother Teresa had a bittersweet homecoming. The
Red Cross extended an invitation to her to visit Yugoslavia. From there
she made the journey to Prizren, where her family originated, and then
traveled to Skopje, the city of her birth. Here she met with the local
bishop and visited the shrine at Letnice, where she had often visited to
pray and meditate as a young girl. She made it known that she hoped one
day to return to Skopje to open a Missionary of Charity home.
Later that year, Drana wrote to her son Lazar stating that her only wish
was to see him, his family, and her daughter Gonxha before she died. Both
Lazar and Mother Teresa worked hard to bring Aga and Drana to Italy for
a reunion. At one point, Mother Teresa, while on a visit to Rome, paid a
visit to the Albanian embassy seeking permission to bring her mother and
sister to Italy. Lazar, though limited in what he could do, tried working
with Catholic Relief Services to help relocate Aga and Drana in the event
that they would be allowed to leave. These attempts proved futile: the Al-
banian government refused to permit either Aga or Drana to leave the
country.
Mother Teresa then thought about traveling to Albania. But, to her
dismay, she learned that while she might be allowed to enter the country,
communist authorities could very well prevent her from leaving. Finally,
on July 12, 1972, Mother Teresa received word that her mother had died.
Not more than a year later, on August 25, 1973, more sad news came,
when she learned that her sister Aga had also died. Mother Teresa’s pain
and grief were not so much for herself, but for the mother and sister who
suffered.
The Missionaries of Charity also suffered severe setbacks during the
1970s. In 1971, after much fanfare, the order opened a house in Belfast,
Northern Ireland, in the Catholic ghetto of Ballymurphy. Belfast was, at
the time, a city under siege, as Catholic and Protestant factions engaged
in almost daily violence. Mother Teresa sent four sisters who came with a
violin and two blankets each. The house where they were to live had been
previously occupied by a priest who had been shot just as he had finished
administering last rites to a wounded man. The house was completely
empty and had been the target of vandals. Undaunted, the sisters began
working with a small group of Anglican nuns in the hope of helping to
end strife in the city.
110 MOTHER TERESA
After only 18 months in Belfast, the sisters left, stating that they were
unwanted and saw no need to risk further danger to themselves. Mother
Teresa preferred to see their leaving, however, not as a failure, but as a call,
for the sisters were obviously needed somewhere else. She sent them to
Ethiopia where they were to help victims of a terrible drought that rav-
aged the country.
During the 1980s, the Missionaries of Charity experienced more bad
luck, when in March 1980 someone set a fire at a home for destitute
women run by the order in Kilburn, London. Ten residents of the shelter
and one volunteer died in the blaze. The arsonist was never found. In
1986, two sisters were drowned in Dehra Dun, India, when a wooden
bridge collapsed during a heavy rain, sending their ambulance into the
river below. Although Mother Teresa offered prayers for the dead, no
doubt both incidents weighed heavily upon her.
Even more painful for Mother Teresa was the number of professed sis-
ters choosing to leave the Missionaries of Charity. Of the original 12
women who became the order’s first nuns, two eventually left, as well as a
small number of others over the years. Their reasons for leaving were
many: some chose to serve God in another way, others wished to leave be-
cause of ill health. Some even fell in love and wished to marry and raise
families. Mother Teresa did not resent the women’s choices; in fact she
often thanked them for their time and effort in their service to the order.
Still, it clearly saddened her to lose members.
Despite these setbacks, the Missionaries of Charity continued to grow.
By 1979, there were 158 foundations established throughout the world.
There were 1,187 professed sisters, 411 novices, and 120 postulants. What
was perhaps most amazing about the continued growth of the order was
that it came at a time when religious vocations for the Church were gen-
erally on the decline. It appeared that the total commitment to a life of
poverty and the complete surrender of the self in the service of God held
tremendous appeal for women everywhere. For Mother Teresa, the con-
tinued arrival of newcomers ready to work for the poor was heartwarming.
Each week it seemed a new group left Motherhouse bound for some desti-
nation where they were needed. As Mother Teresa once remarked, “If
there are poor on the moon, we shall go there too.”1
THE FIRST VOLLEY

One of the first and fiercest attacks on Mother Teresa’s work came dur-
ing a crisis in the newly formed country of Bangladesh. Between 1947 and
1971, before gaining its independence, Bangladesh formed the eastern
part of Pakistan and was called East Pakistan. Before the partition of India
into independent India and Pakistan in 1947, the area that now forms
Bangladesh, or the “land of Bengal,” had been the eastern part of the Ben-
gal province.
In December 1971 fighting broke out on the Indo-Pakistan border in
the west. The Indian army also invaded East Pakistan and in two weeks
had control of the country. The Bangladesh government-in-exile estab-
lished itself in Dhaka on December 22, 1971, but in January 1972, the
leaders returned to the country to begin governing the new nation.
But independence for Bangladesh came at a high price. In the nine
months of fighting, three million Bengalis had died and over one million
homes had been destroyed. Many of the people killed were professionals—
teachers, doctors, lawyers, skilled workers, and engineers. Tea plantations
and many jute mills were damaged. Added to this vast physical destruc-
tion, including the great damage to the transportation system, was the so-
cial disruption of the country. Many of the ten million refugees returned to
find their homes in ruins. Some sought shelter in the nearest sewer pipe.
In addition, the country suffered great internal strife. Though much of
the destruction had been the direct result of actions taken by the Pak-
istani army, many non-Bengalis in East Pakistan, the Biharis, had played
a role as a paramilitary force, working with the Pakistani army against the
Bengalis. After the war, many of the Biharis were placed in camps, and
some were killed. The atrocities did not end there. Pakistani troops re-
portedly raped 4,000 women, though some place the number as high as
200,000.
On January 14, 1972, Mother Teresa announced that she was going to
Bangladesh with 10 of her nuns to assist the rape victims, many of whom
were now in the advanced stages of pregnancy. Traveling to Khulna,
Pabna, Rajshahi, and Dhaka, Mother Teresa and her nuns sought out
these women, in the hope of arranging adoptions for as many as possible.
Because rape is a very serious crime in Islam, the victim is often ostracized
by her family, friends, and perhaps even an entire village. For many
women, giving up any children who might have been conceived as a re-
sult of the rape was the only option.
In Dhaka, the nuns were given the use of an old convent as a home for
the women. But there were few who came seeking help. Some victims did
not conceive, while others tried to terminate their pregnancies them-
selves. Eventually, the convent was turned into another Shishu Bhavan
for orphaned and abandoned children.
As altruistic as Mother Teresa’s motives may have been, there was at
least one person who did not view her actions in Bangladesh in the same
112 MOTHER TERESA
light. Australian feminist and writer Germaine Greer, a Roman Catholic,

reported in an article written for the magazine the Independent in 1990,
another purpose behind Mother Teresa’s humanitarian mission:
When she went to Dacca two days after its liberation from the
Pakistanis in 1972, 3,000 naked women had been found in the
army bunkers. Their saris had been taken away so that they
would not hang themselves. The pregnant ones needed abor-
tions. Mother Teresa offered them no option but to bear the
offspring of hate. There is no room in Mother Teresa’s universe
for the moral priorities of others. There is no question of offer-
ing suffering women a choice.2
But Greer wasn’t done yet. She went on to write that, according to lay
workers with whom she had spoken at the time, pregnant women suffer-
ing from complications attributed to both physical abuses and malnutri-
tion—as well as women who had miscarried—were turned away from
Mother Teresa’s clinics. According to Greer, the women had been accused
by the Missionaries of Charity working at the clinics of trying to abort
their unborn children. Further, when the new Bengali government
banned the export of Bengali orphans, Mother Teresa, through some
means, was allowed to place Bengali babies with Catholic families abroad.
And, according to Greer’s sources, no one at the Family Planning Associ-
ation who knew of the incidents was allowed to say anything critical of
Mother Teresa or her actions.
THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

By the 1970s, Mother Teresa had emerged as a powerful human-interest
story for newspapers and magazines around the world. This tiny nun, barely
over five feet tall, had a number of powerful leaders and politicians as her
friends. In spite of the growing number of financial donations made to the
Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa refused to allow herself any indul-
gences that would interfere with her vow of poverty. And, though small in
stature, she clearly wielded considerable power.
One of the more interesting stories that was done on her during this pe-
riod came from Time magazine. In December 1975, the magazine not only
devoted a long article to her, but also chose her for the cover of the mag-
azine. Mother Teresa explained that she only agreed to sit for the photog-
rapher after having prayed at mass that morning. She asked God, that for
every picture the photographer took, one soul be released from purgatory.
The article “Saints among Us,” besides providing an overview of

Mother Teresa’s work, also suggested that many supporters considered her
a living saint, a title Mother Teresa herself rejected. The article also dis-
cussed the qualities that made a saint. For instance, many saints lived
their lives outside of conventional society and were often considered mis-
fits. People, then, who tended to conform to cultural norms rarely went on
to exhibit saintly qualities. As one theology professor noted, saints tend to
be on the outer edge along with the maniacs, geniuses, and idiots. Saints
also broke the rules of society in order to carry out their work.
The Time magazine article highlighted not only Mother Teresa’s saintly
qualities, but also her shrewd sense of organization and her great compas-
sion for the poor. However, the article also went on to point out that there
were a number of individuals who had also devoted their lives to the poor,
but who were not as well known as Mother Teresa. These included
Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement; the Norwegian
medical missionary Annie Skau, who lived and worked in Hong Kong; Dr.
Cicely Saunders, founder of the Hospice movement; and the Coptic
monk Matta el Meskin, also known as Matthew the Poor.
By this time, Mother Teresa had received numerous accolades and
awards. Still, there were many who believed that she was overlooked and
wished her to receive what they considered to be the most important
and prestigious award in the world: the Nobel Peace Prize.
Those who select nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize may be from
one of seven categories, including members of the International Court
of Arbitration in The Hague; active and former members of the Nobel
Committee of the Norwegian Parliament; advisors appointed by the
Norwegian Nobel Institute; university professors of political science,
law, history, and philosophy; and lastly, those who have won the prize
themselves.
Mother Teresa had first been nominated for the prize in 1972, but no
prize was awarded that year. Many of her supporters, among them Mal-
colm Muggeridge, again put her name in nomination in 1975. This time
her nomination was supported by a number of important and influential
individuals including Senator Edward Kennedy; Robert McNamara, then
head of the World Bank; the National Council of Catholic Women; the
Mayor of Addis Ababa; the head of the UN Disaster Relief Organization,
Faruk Berkol; and a number of nuns in Spain.
But the prize eluded her again and went instead to Andrei Sakharov,
the noted Russian scientist and human rights advocate. In 1977, Mother
Teresa’s name was put forth yet another time. Again the Nobel commit-
tee passed her over for the award, which was instead given to the organi-
114 MOTHER TERESA
zation Amnesty International for championing human rights around the

world. She later joked that the prize would only come to her when Jesus
thought it was time.
Then, in 1979, her name was put forward again, only with much less
fanfare. Although the name of the person who put forward Mother
Teresa’s name has never been publicly acknowledged, it is thought to have
been Robert McNamara. McNamara had known Mother Teresa for al-
most two decades and was very familiar with her work with the poor. He
had also worked with her on occasion in the Food for Peace program. In
1975, writing about Mother Teresa and her work, McNamara stated:
More important than the organisational structure of her work

is the message it conveys that genuine peace is not the mere
absence of hostilities, but rather that tranquility that arises out
of a social order in which individuals treat one another with
justice and compassion. The long history of human conflict
suggests that without greater recognition of that fact—a fact
which Mother Teresa’s concern for the absolute poor strikingly
so illustrates—the prospects for world peace will remain per-
ilously fragile.3
Then, on October 16, 1979, came the announcement that many had
waited for: the Nobel committee awarded the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize to
Mother Teresa. In the wake of the pronouncement, some nagging ques-
tions remained. Why, for instance, did the committee choose Mother
Teresa this time and not others? Who had, in fact, nominated her? But be-
cause the committee’s meetings are kept secret, no one will ever know
what took place during the deliberations for the award.
Meanwhile, in Calcutta, Mother Teresa was mobbed when the news
was announced. Journalists and photographers jostled one another as they
tried to talk to Mother Teresa to get her reaction to the good news. Stand-
ing in front of the Motherhouse, she spoke to the gathering media about
the news, stating “I am unworthy. I accept the prize in the name of the
poor. The prize is the recognition of the poor world. . . . By serving the poor
I am serving him.” A reception was held in her honor in which one offi-
cial proclaimed, “You have been the mother of Bengal and now you are
the mother of the world.”4 That same day, a small abandoned baby girl was
brought into the Shishu Bhavan in Calcutta. She was named Shanti,
which means “Peace” in Hindi, in honor of Mother Teresa’s award.
The celebrations had just begun. Over the next few days, Mother
Teresa received more than 500 telegrams from heads of state all over the
world. Letters of praise and congratulations also poured in. Many people
stopped by Motherhouse to offer their congratulations and best wishes.
Many in India rejoiced that the prize had once again come to their coun-
try; six decades earlier, the Nobel committee had awarded the same prize
to Mahatma Gandhi. The government also issued a commemorative
postage stamp in Mother Teresa’s honor. Many people rejoiced around the
world, that, for once, the Nobel committee had put politics to the side
and picked a true humanitarian, one who easily matched the stature of
previous winners such as Albert Schweitzer, Gandhi, and Martin Luther
King, Jr. Other people believed that by winning the Nobel Peace Prize,
Mother Teresa had enhanced the prestige of the award.
Still, there were detractors. Some of the most vocal dissent came from
an extremist anti-Gandhian group that published an article “Nothing
Noble about the Nobel”:
For when all is said and done, she is a missionary. In serving the
poor and the sick, her sole objective is to influence people in
favour of Christianity and, if possible to convert them. Mis-
sionaries are instruments of Western imperialist countries—
and not innocent voices of God.5
Another critic wrote to The New York Times stating that his under-
standing of the Nobel Peace Prize was that it was to be given to an indi-
vidual who made important contributions to world peace, not to someone
who merely helped individuals in distress. Another article, in the National
Catholic Reporter, suggested that Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of
Charity merely covered the wounds left by capitalism and that they did
little in the way of actually helping to change the conditions that make
people poor. In general, the hubbub over Mother Teresa’s winning of the
prize overshadowed the winners of the other Nobel prizes that year.
ON TO OSLO
In December 1979, Mother Teresa, accompanied by four other nuns,
traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Prize medal and a check for
£90,000 (appx. $161,000). In addition, there was another check of
£36,000 (appx. $64,000) awaiting her, which was a donation raised by
the young people of Norway. Another £3,000 (appx. $5,300) was later
presented to her after she requested that the monies spent on the cus-
tomary banquet given in honor of the recipient instead be given to those
who needed a meal more.
116 MOTHER TERESA
It was a bitterly cold day and many people in the audience were bun-
dled up in fur coats and hats in the Aula Magna of Oslo University where
Mother Teresa was slated to give her remarks and receive her prize. In the
crowd were the king and crown princess of Norway, along with many
other world dignitaries. The stage was banked with lush floral arrange-
ments; nearby, a symphony orchestra played selections from Edvard
Grieg, the great Norwegian composer. Wearing only a gray cardigan
sweater and black coat over her thin cotton sari, Mother Teresa made her
way to the podium. After asking her audience to join her in prayer, she
then began her speech. According to the reporter for the magazine Na-
tional Review, Mother Teresa’s speech was not only on the poor, but on
abortion, stating that nations who allowed legalized abortions are really
the poorest of all. She further argued that the most horrendous crime of all
existed “against the innocent unborn child.”6
Another journalist wrote that Mother Teresa went on to state:
I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion. Be-

cause it is a direct war, a direct killing—direct murder by the
mother herself. . . . Because if a mother can kill her own child—
what is left but for me to kill you and you to kill me—there is
nothing in between.7
Mother Teresa also spoke of the great spiritual poverty of the West:
Around the world, not only in the poor countries, I found the
poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. . . . a per-
son that has been thrown out from society—that poverty is so
hurtful and so much, that I find it very difficult. Our Sisters are
working amongst that kind of people in the West.8
Even though the Norwegian paper Aftenposten commented how the press
was spellbound by the tiny nun who won the award, there were numerous
others who were critical of her remarks. In the aftermath of her speech,
one thing was clear: Mother Teresa had not only stated her view of abor-
tion, but also made it clear she would not change her views. And when
given the opportunity, she would speak out on the subject to any who
would listen.
As if the abortion issue were not controversial enough, Mother Teresa
disappointed many Albanians with her comments on the religious perse-
cution in Albania. When asked by a reporter for her thoughts on the sub-
ject, Mother Teresa demurred, stating that she could not say much
because she did not know what was going on. But, as more than one critic
has pointed out, the fact that she was in contact with her mother and sis-
ter until they died, along with her repeated attempts to get them out of
the country, or at least to gain permission to visit, demonstrate that
Mother Teresa, in fact, knew well the conditions present in the country.
In addition, earlier that year, Mother Teresa had met with the widow of
the Albanian king, Queen Geraldine, when the country’s predicament
surely would have been discussed.
In the wake of the Nobel Prize ceremonies, many of Mother Teresa’s
supporters stated that she did not comment on the Albanian question be-
cause she refused to become involved in any controversial political
stances, as that was incompatible with her primary mission: helping the
poor. But her detractors point out that, by making her comments on abor-
tion, Mother Teresa was in fact involving herself in what was clearly one
of the most heated political arguments of the day.
DAPHNE RAE AND LOVE UNTIL IT HURTS

Following Mother Teresa’s winning of the Nobel Prize, activity at the
Motherhouse at 54A Lower Circular Road picked up considerably. Offers
and donations poured in from all over the world, as many companies and
individuals offered to help the Missionaries of Charity. From Bata Shoe
Company came leather for leprosy patients to make shoes. Help the Aged,
a nonprofit organization based in England, donated money for meals. An
international organization, the Rotary Club, also pledged money and help
for Mother Teresa. Also aiding Mother Teresa in her work were many
wealthy individuals who gave both time and money for the poor.
One of these volunteers was Daphne Rae, who came to Calcutta to
work in the slums. Rae was the wife of the headmaster of Westminster,
one of the best schools in England. Rae, originally from Sri Lanka, con-
verted to Catholicism in 1977 and came to Calcutta in 1979, leaving her
husband and six children to work with Mother Teresa. Altogether, she
traveled to the city three times in order to work with the Missionaries of
Charity. She brought with her large donations of medical supplies and
medicines and spent much of her time at Nirmal Hriday and the chil-
dren’s home. But, suddenly, Rae stopped working with Mother Teresa, and
instead devoted her energy to working with lesser-known organizations
also dedicated to helping India’s poor.
Although she never publicly stated why she no longer worked with the
Missionaries of Charity, Rae’s 1981 book, Love until It Hurts: Mother
118 MOTHER TERESA
Teresa and Her Missionaries of Charity, offers some clues about her change
of heart. Rae, who had previously worked with the terminally ill and
dying, was no stranger to places such as Nirmal Hriday. However, she was
distressed that while helping Mother Teresa, she saw disposable hypoder-
mic needles used over and over again; in some cases as many as 40 or 50
times.
Rae, who was also a passionate opponent of abortion, was bothered by
the approach the nuns took toward single, pregnant mothers at the
Shishu Bhavan. For a young, unmarried Hindu girl to become pregnant
was a scandal, and for many, abortion was often seen as the only solution.
For those unwilling to terminate their pregnancy, there was the possibil-
ity of sanctuary at the Shishu Bhavan. Often these girls were taken in by
the nuns with the understanding that they would receive a place to sleep,
medical care, and help in placing the infant up for adoption in return for
helping with domestic chores. According to Rae, these arrangements in
fact often resulted in the girls being treated as the lowliest form of servant
with only the barest of necessities provided for them. She also found a
kind of moral superiority on the part of the nuns, certainly not in keeping
with the charitable expressions toward unmarried women espoused in
public by the order.
A WOMAN IN DEMAND
Beginning in the 1980s, Mother Teresa stepped up her visits, traveling
all over the world to meet with world leaders or to open another founda-
tion somewhere for the Missionaries of Charity. Her travels kept her away
from Motherhouse even more; it was usual for her to be gone for 10
months out of every year. At the behest of Pope John Paul II, with whom
she developed a very close relationship, Mother Teresa used her travels
and the media attention to air her views, giving her a platform second to
none among religious leaders.
The new decade opened with Mother Teresa traveling again to her
hometown of Skopje as a guest of the city. Months earlier, she also had
the opportunity to open a house for the elderly in Zagreb, Croatia, mark-
ing the first time the Missionaries of Charity had opened one of their
homes in a communist country. She attended a conference on family life
in Guatemala; then went to visit the desperately poor island of Haiti,
where she met the then-president Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and
his wife. From Haiti, she traveled to Egypt where, much to the Egyptian
government’s dismay, she urged Egyptian housewives to have many chil-
dren. The government, which had just finished producing a series of
short films that urged families to limit the number of children, could do
nothing.
In addition to Mother Teresa’s traveling, the Missionaries of Charity
opened a number of new facilities throughout the world. In 1980, 14 new
homes were opened; in 1981, 18. Twelve Missionaries of Charity founda-
tions opened in 1982; in 1983, the number rose to 14. At the beginning
of the decade, the Missionaries of Charity established 140 slum schools, a
daily meal program that fed nearly 50,000 persons at 304 centers. There
were 70 Shishu Bhavans, which took care of approximately 4,000 chil-
dren, out of which 1,000 adoptions were arranged. There were 81 homes
for the dying and 670 mobile clinics that had treated some 6 million pa-
tients. Although the Missionaries of Charity were going global with their
work, the bulk of their endeavors were still based in India.
Mother Teresa also continued to show little regard for her own personal
safety as she ventured into many of the world’s hotspots. In 1982, she went
to West Beirut where the area’s hospitals had been shelled by Israeli ar-
tillery. While there, she took 37 children who had been stranded in a men-
tal hospital on a Red Cross convoy into East Beirut and safety. In 1984, she
traveled to Bhopal, India, where a poisonous gas leak at a Union Carbide
plant killed thousands of people and left many others in terrible health.
During this period, Mother Teresa also plunged into the growing AIDS
crisis. She opened a hospice in Greenwich Village in New York City to
care for patients who were suffering from what she termed as the new lep-
rosy of the West. Among her first patients were three convicts suffering
from the disease in the notorious Sing-Sing Prison near New York City.
But despite her willingness to tackle the deadly disease and provide hos-
pice care, Mother Teresa was criticized for her handling of AIDs patients.
According to one account, a doctor who was also working at the hospice
was appalled by how little the nuns knew about the disease. The doctor
told Mother Teresa that simply wearing a crucifix around her neck offered
her no protection from the disease. To this, Mother Teresa replied that
God would take care of her. But for critics this argument was flawed at
best, and dangerous at worst, as the account illustrates: “God never pro-
vides knowledge or skill. God in fact is never enough. . . . [T]he teresan
community sees it [AIDS] as a sickness that can be assuaged with loving
words and a little hot soup.”9
THE SAINT AND THE SINNER

In 1985 came one of the oddest pairings the world had seen: that of a
young, anti-Catholic Irish rock musician and the tiny nun who worked
120 MOTHER TERESA
with the world’s poor. On the face of it, the idea of rock star Bob Geldof,
lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, meeting with Mother Teresa not only
seemed odd; it was completely incongruous. But the two actually had
something in common: working to help the poor.
Geldof, an Irish Catholic who had little use for the Church of his
youth, had come to the forefront during 1984 for his concert Band Aid to
raise money for the poor in Africa. In 1985, he was traveling to Ethiopia
to help distribute the funds raised. He met Mother Teresa at the Addis
Ababa airport in January 1985. Geldof remembered, upon greeting her,
how tiny she was. He towered more than two feet above her. He de-
scribed her as a battered, wizened woman whose most striking character-
istic was her feet. Mother Teresa’s sandals were beaten up pieces of
leather; her feet were gnarled and misshapen. When Geldof tried to kiss
her, Mother Teresa bowed her head quickly so that he could only kiss the
top of her wimple. This bothered Geldof a great deal. He later found out
that she only let lepers kiss her.
As photographers snapped their picture, Mother Teresa and Geldof
began talking, she about the Missionaries of Charity, he about his band,
the Boomtown Rats. He even offered to arrange a benefit concert for her
work. But she gently refused him, stating that God would provide for her.
As Geldof later recounted, he had an opportunity to see Providence in
action. Upon arriving in the city, Mother Teresa had seen some vacant
buildings and asked if she could have the buildings to use as orphanages.
Flummoxed government officials, not wanting to turn her down, clearly
did not know what to do. But it was clear that Mother Teresa knew about
the buildings beforehand. When the official told her he would find her a
building for her orphanages, she reminded him that she needed two
buildings for two orphanages, not one.
When asked later for his impression of Mother Teresa, Geldof replied
that she was the embodiment of moral good, but also added that there was
nothing otherworldly about her. She showed herself fully capable of han-
dling the media and could manipulate them easily. He also found her de-
void of any false modesty or pretense; she was totally selfless in her work
and seemed genuinely to care about the people she was helping.
In 1986, Mother Teresa made further headlines when she traveled to
the Soviet Union to meet with government officials. Two years later, she
returned with four nuns to begin working in a Moscow hospital helping
victims of an earthquake. Her visit was unprecedented and marked the
first time that a religious mission was allowed to open a house since the
Russian Revolution in 1917.
AN UNHAPPY VISIT
In 1988, Mother Teresa traveled to London to visit with Prime Minis-
ter Margaret Thatcher. She also visited Cardboard City, the site of the
city’s homeless. She asked Thatcher for help in setting up a hostel for
them, but Thatcher pointed out that there were voluntary organizations
in the city that specifically worked with the homeless, and there was no
need for Mother Teresa’s help.
There were other problems as well. Mother Teresa’s trip coincided with
a hearing in Parliament for a bill that would reduce the time limit for al-
lowing abortions from the current 28 weeks to 18 weeks. Mother Teresa
again went to Thatcher asking her to support the bill. Again she was re-
fused. At a conference in Oxford, Mother Teresa told the audience that
couples who used contraception other than the rhythm method, as al-
lowed by the Catholic Church, would not be accepted as potential adop-
tive parents for any children coming from the Missionaries of Charity
homes.
Shortly afterward, Mother Teresa met with Robert Maxwell, the Aus-
tralian owner of the London newspaper the Daily Mirror. Maxwell, al-
ready known for his dubious business dealings, offered to help raise money
for a new Missionaries of Charity home in London. Maxwell loved the
publicity, and Mother Teresa, either in the dark about Maxwell’s personal
business dealings or refusing to acknowledge them, accepted his offer. It
also allowed her a chance to do something without going through gov-
ernment channels. In all, £169,000 (appx. $302,000) was raised and de-
posited in an account held by Maxwell and the paper. In addition,
another £90,000 (appx. $160,000) was raised by the readers of a Scottish
paper to be used for Mother Teresa’s efforts. With the funds, she hoped to
set up two facilities for the homeless in London.
But Mother Teresa never saw the money. Some speculated that
Maxwell had appropriated the funds. A spokesman for the Daily Mirror
later charged that Mother Teresa never seemed to find an appropriate
home or piece of land to suit her purposes. He further denied that any of
the money was missing. There was also the stigma attached of having ac-
cepted the money in the first place from a man who was a known swindler
and unsavory businessman. If Mother Teresa had any regrets about any of
her actions, her association with Maxwell was one. Finally, though, in
1993, a 35-room hostel was opened in London for the Missionaries of
Charity. Mother Teresa came for the opening ceremony and once again
thanked readers of the Daily Mirror for their generosity. Mother Teresa
122 MOTHER TERESA
complained, though, that officials of the British government did little to

ease the suffering of homeless in their country, despite her offers of help.
Although the last 20 years had brought great recognition for Mother
Teresa and her organization, it was also a period of loss, regret, and con-
troversy. With a new decade looming before her, Mother Teresa, at the
age of 80, showed no signs of slowing down. However, the coming years
would be less than kind to her, both personally and professionally, as she
strove to continue her work with the poor.
NOTES
p. 102.
2. Germaine Greer, “Heroes and Villains,” Independent, September 22, 1990.
3. Raghu Rai and Navin Chawla, Mother Teresa: Faith and Compassion (Rock-
port, Mass.: Element, 1992), p. 184; Anne Sebba, Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image
(New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 100.
6. “The Week,” National Review, January 4, 1980, p. 12.
7. Nobel Foundation, “Mother Teresa Nobel Lecture,” http://www.nobel.se/
peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html (accessed November 19, 2003).
8. Nobel Foundation, “Mother Teresa Nobel Lecture,” http://www.nobel.se/
peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html (accessed November 19, 2003).
9. Anthony Burgess, “Mother Teresa,” Evening Standard, January 3, 1992.
Chapter 10
“THE MOST OBEDIENT

WOMAN IN THE CHURCH”
Even though Mother Teresa kept up her busy schedule, it was clear by the
early 1990s that traveling from place to place, visiting many of the world’s
most troubled spots, could not last forever. Beginning in 1989, her health
began deteriorating. In September of that year, she suffered a near-fatal
heart attack and underwent major surgery. The heart trouble was not new;
she had first been diagnosed with it almost 15 years earlier. Still, she con-
tinued her frenetic pace.
After being fitted with a pacemaker in December 1989, Mother Teresa
traveled to establish new homes for the Missionaries of Charity. But in
1991, she was hospitalized again, this time at the Scripps Clinic and Re-
search Foundation in La Jolla, California, where she was treated for heart
disease and bacterial pneumonia. Later, she took ill while visiting in Ti-
juana, Mexico, and doctors were forced to perform surgery to open a blood
vessel.
Although increasingly frail, Mother Teresa did not slow down. Then,
in 1993, while in Rome, she fell and broke her ribs. That July, she was
hospitalized for two days in Bombay for exhaustion; not more than a
month later, she was back in the hospital in New Delhi, this time for a
malarial infection, which was further complicated by heart and lung
problems. She was transferred to the All India Institute of Medical Sci-
ences, where she recuperated in the intensive-care coronary unit. She
was home in Calcutta for less than a month, when she was treated by
doctors yet again, this time for a blocked heart vessel. Clearly, age and
the years of deprivation, travel, and work were taking their toll on
Mother Teresa’s health.
“THE MOST OBEDIENT WOMAN IN THE CHURCH” 125
flattering, portraying her as demanding and egotistical. This was only por-
tent of what lay ahead.
HELL’S ANGEL
On November 8, 1994, the switchboard operator at the British tele-
vision station Channel Four was bombarded by over 200 calls. Many of
the callers were irate viewers who had just finished watching a half-hour
film called Hell’s Angel, produced by Pakistani-born Tariq Ali, a noted and
controversial author and broadcaster. The angel was Mother Teresa, and
the tempest surrounding the film, already generating controversy in pre-
views, showed no sign of cooling down soon.
The film, which featured journalist Christopher Hitchens, made some
accusations, many of which had been noted earlier by the British-born
Hitchens in his writings for such well-known publications as Vanity Fair
and the ultraliberal news magazine Nation. Among the many inflamma-
tory statements Hitchens made was that “Mother Teresa has an easy way
with thrones, dominions and powers,” and operated “as the roving ambas-
sador of [the] highly politicized papacy”1 of Pope John Paul II. In addition,
Hitchens charged that Mother Teresa
lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters,

which is scarcely the essence of simplicity, and she preaches
surrender and prostration to the poor, which a truly humble
person would barely have the nerve to do. . . . In a godless and
cynical age it may be inevitable that people will seek to praise
the self-effacing, the altruistic and the pure in heart. But only
a complete collapse of our critical faculties can explain the il-
lusion that such a person is manifested in the shape of a dema-
gogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.2
The source of the film was actually Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, a Bengali physi-
cian living in London. Dr. Chatterjee, who was born and raised in Cal-
cutta, was dismayed at the discrepancy between Mother Teresa’s work and
the growing cult-like adulation of her in the West. In a letter written to
the production company Bandung, Dr. Chatterjee also stated that Mother
Teresa’s assets totaled more than those of many Third-World govern-
ments; and that in Calcutta, unlike the West, she was regarded as some-
thing of a nonentity. Chatterjee’s greatest objection, though, was in how
closely intertwined Mother Teresa’s work and identity were with Cal-
cutta, another misconception on the part of the West. Chatterjee pointed
126 MOTHER TERESA
out that there were a number of other individuals and groups doing far
more for the city’s poor than the Missionaries of Charity, and these groups
were completely overlooked.
The production company was more than willing to listen to Chatter-
jee’s proposal. The company had already, in its short existence, voiced
some of the very same grievances that Chatterjee had described. Calcut-
tans were annoyed that Western journalists and filmmakers portrayed
their city as a place that cared little for the poor, the sick, and the dying.
In the 1991 film City of Joy, for example, Calcutta was depicted as little
more than a dark pit of misery and despair.
The decision to interview Hitchens might at first have seemed odd.
But, in fact, he was already quite familiar with Mother Teresa, having first
met her in 1980. In a 1992 article called the “Ghoul of Calcutta,”
Hitchens described his first encounter with Mother Teresa, whom he de-
scribed as the “leathery old saint.” He had stopped at the Missionaries of
Charity facility on Bose Road and was immediately put off by the home’s
motto “He That Loveth Correction Loveth Knowledge.” Despite his re-
action, Hitchens agreed to go along on a walk with Mother Teresa. Ini-
tially, he was favorably impressed:
I was about to mutter some words of praise for the nurses

and was even fumbling in my pocket when Mother Teresa
announced: “You see, this is how we fight abortion and
contraception in Calcutta.” Mother Teresa’s avowed motive
somewhat cheapened the ostensible work of the charity and
made it appear rather more like what it actually is: an exercise
in propaganda.3
As harsh as that initial assessment was, Hitchens had an opportunity in

the film to voice even more accusations. Against footage of Mother Teresa
that showed her bent and looking down, Hitchens described her connec-
tion with the deposed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier,
from whom she accepted large financial donations. Footage was also
shown of her laying a wreath at the grave of Enver Hoxha, the ruthless
communist dictator of Albania, and meeting with notorious figures in the
business world. According to Hitchens, Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of
Charity grossed an annual income in the neighborhood of tens of millions
of dollars.
Hitchens also suggested, as had some of Mother Teresa’s other critics,
that if the monies accumulated by the order were kept in Calcutta,
chances are the order would certainly make much more of a difference in
working with the poor. Instead, Mother Teresa spread her nuns and their
money very thinly trying to open homes throughout the world. Further,
Hitchens argued, Mother Teresa chose her convent and the church’s
teachings over the work of her clinics.
According to the BBC, the Channel Four program did spectacularly:
approximately 1.6 million viewers tuned in to watch. In the aftermath of
the documentary’s airing, callers phoning the station called the program
insulting, hurtful, offensive, obscene, untrue, obnoxious, shocking, and
satanic. One viewer even went so far as to accuse the head of the station,
Michael Grade, a Jew, of anti-Catholic bias, while both Hitchens and
Tariq Ali were branded as Bolsheviks and Marxist revolutionaries. Other
viewers believe the film was nothing less than the work of a Judeo-Muslim
conspiracy.
The Roman Catholic Church understandably rallied to Mother
Teresa’s defense, denouncing the program as a grotesque caricature of the
woman and her work. Noted Catholic writer and historian Paul Johnson
called the documentary a diabolical and malicious attack by left-wing pro-
pagandists. Another 130 viewers went so far as to lodge a complaint with
the Independent Television Commission, which, after considering the
matter, refused to sanction the station for broadcasting the film.
In Calcutta, several of Mother Teresa’s supporters rallied to her cause,
calling the film biased. As of 2004, the film has yet to be shown in India,
due in part to how expensive the film is to sell, though copies are available
privately. Mother Teresa was undeterred by the controversy surrounding
her. When asked about the film in an interview, she simply stated, “No
matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own
work.”4 However, the day after the program was shown, she did cancel a
scheduled visit to Taiwan, but did not explain her reasons for doing so to
anyone.
Despite the backlash against the film and Hitchens, there were those
who applauded what the film tried to do. One reviewer writing for the
Guardian stated that Hitchens was completely right in questioning what
he called the “cult of Teresa.” Another supporter of the program was the
Reverend Andrew de Berry, who had met Mother Teresa many years ear-
lier when he was a chaplain-in-training. He recalled her telling an audi-
ence that she advised the women of Calcutta to have as many children as
they wanted. De Berry then wrote that the experience stayed with him al-
ways; and undoubtedly many who died on the streets of Calcutta were the
children of mothers who took Mother Teresa’s counsel.
128 MOTHER TERESA
THE MISSIONARY POSITION

After Hell’s Angel Hitchens published a small book that picked up
where the film left off. In The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory
and Practice, Hitchens hoped to elaborate on Mother Teresa and her work,
by “judging Mother Teresa’s reputation by her actions and words rather
than the actions and words by her reputation.”5 According to Hitchens,
Mother Teresa’s shining reputation was put upon her by the millions of
people who needed to feel that someone, somewhere, is doing the things
that they are not to help the poor. Further, Hitchens charged, Mother
Teresa fed on this adoration, and, contrary to what she says, has not only
come to accept it, but expects and even demands it.
Hitchens’s book posed some troubling questions. Among other things,
Hitchens questioned how Mother Teresa spent the money she had raised.
Hitchens could find no satisfactory answer, and Mother Teresa consis-
tently refused to discuss her financial affairs. As Hitchens stated, “The de-
cision not to [fund a proper hospital], and to run instead a haphazard and
cranky institution which would expose itself to litigation and protest were
it run by any branch of the medical profession, is a deliberate one. The
point is not the honest relief of suffering but the promulgation of a cult
based on death and suffering and subjection.”6
Mother Teresa’s apologists have often portrayed her as an innocent
who professes to know little of business and politics, and who is concerned
only with God and God’s will. In reality, as Hitchens points out, Mother
Teresa kept some questionable company over the years. She has received
hospitality, awards, publicity, and money from numerous persons with
overt political motives or dubious business histories such as Robert
Maxwell; the Duvaliers; President Ronald Reagan; Prime Minister Mar-
garet Thatcher; President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton; and
Charles Keating, one of the key figures in the savings and loan scandal of
the 1990s. The relationship with Keating was particularly galling. Keating
made a generous donation to Mother Teresa as well as making his private
jet available for her use. When Keating was imprisoned for fraud and em-
bezzlement, Mother Teresa petitioned the trial judge to look kindly on
him. When she received a reply from one of the prosecutors, explaining
that the $10,000 she had received from Keating was stolen from innocent
and not especially wealthy investors, Mother Teresa never answered the
letter.
Hitchens maintained that such blatant and deliberate disregard for the
truth on Mother Teresa’s part was not a sign of naiveté or even stupidity,
but rather arrogance. Claiming to be above politics, Mother Teresa also
had the benefit of an almost unprecedented public forum. But while

speaking out against abortion in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United
States, she remained noticeably silent on the topics of unlawful deaths,
murders, and oppression in such political hotspots as Ethiopia, Haiti, and
Albania, where she kissed the hands of ruling dictators and willingly took
their money and their awards.
Her refusal to acknowledge the deep problems of poverty emerged in
Hitchens’s description of a 1981 visit that Mother Teresa made to Ana-
costia, an African American ghetto in Washington, D.C. At that time,
the Missionaries of Charity intended to establish some sort of operation
there, though many of the area’s residents did not want to give the im-
pression that their neighborhood was helpless and poor like many of the
Third World areas in which Mother Teresa worked. Just before a press
conference, a group of African American men visited Mother Teresa:
They were very upset. . . . They told Mother that Anacostia

needed decent jobs, housing and services—not charity.
Mother didn’t argue with them; she just listened. Finally one of
them asked her what she was going to do here. Mother said:
“First we must learn to love one another.” They didn’t know
what to say to that.7
Hitchens’s book, like the film, had its detractors and admirers. George
Sim Johnston, writing for the American conservative publication The
National Review, called Hitchens’s work “unresisting imbecility,” and
added that “the only good that will come from this book is the prayers the
nuns of Mother Teresa’s order are no doubt saying for its author.”8 The
New York Times Book Review found that Hitchens’s book is, “zealously
overwritten, and rails wildly in defense of an almost nonsensical proposi-
tion: that Mother Teresa of Calcutta is actually not a saint but an evil and
selfish old woman.” Yet the reviewer concluded that Hitchens had a
point: “Ultimately, he argues, Mother Teresa is less interested in helping
the poor than in using them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on
which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic be-
liefs.”9 The Sunday Times was even more succinct: “Veteran lefty kicks old
nun; old nun forgives; lefty doesn’t want to be forgiven.”10
Mary Poplin, a journalist writing for Commonweal magazine, visited
Calcutta in 1996. She was there to write about Mother Teresa and her
work; she also took the opportunity to ask Mother Teresa about the
Hitchens’s book. According to Poplin’s account, when questioned about
the charge that Mother Teresa was one of the wealthiest women in the
130 MOTHER TERESA
world, and that she certainly did not need any more money, Mother
Teresa, after a puzzled look, replied, “Oh yes, the book. I haven’t read it
but some of the sisters have. It matters not, he [Hitchens] is forgiven.”
Poplin laughed and then said, “Yes, Mother, in the end of the book, he
says he knew you said you forgave him and he’s irate because he says he
didn’t ask you to forgive him and he didn’t need it.” She looked at me as
though I hadn’t understood, then gently and confidently instructed me,
“Oh, it is not I who forgives, it is God, it is God. God forgives.”11
A GROWING MINORITY
The bitter arguments over Hitchens’s charges in both Hell’s Angel and
The Missionary Position might have ended there, if it had not been for
other, more moderate voices also coming forward with their criticisms of
Mother Teresa. Dr. Robin Fox, a thoracic specialist and editor of the
highly respected medical journal, the Lancet, wrote in 1994 of the poor
medical facilities found at Nirmal Hriday in Calcutta. According to Fox,
he was astonished to find that there were no simple testing procedures im-
plemented to distinguish an incurable from a curable disease: “Such sys-
tematic approaches are alien to the ethos of the home. . . . Along with the
neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks Mother Teresa’s ap-
proach as clearly separate from the hospice movement. I know which I
prefer.”12 Further, although it appeared that the poor in the facilities that
the Missionaries of Charity operated could not receive even basic treat-
ment, Mother Teresa herself had access to the most modern medical treat-
ment in the world, especially when her heart problems came to light.
Not long after Dr. Fox’s criticism appeared, a thoughtful piece by Clif-
ford Longley, a writer and former religious affairs correspondent for the
London Times, warned of Mother Teresa’s reverence for death. Such an
emphasis, Longley feared, threatened to turn suffering into a goal. In ad-
dition, many health workers who visited the clinics and listened to
Mother Teresa’s views on abortion wondered how anyone who concerned
themselves with the problems of the poor could not also be concerned
with the problems of fertility, overpopulation, and other questions of re-
productive health. The furor over Hell’s Angel had in fact opened up the
debate over Mother Teresa’s work during the last 50 years; for the first
time, opposition to her seemed to be emerging and hardening. Was
Mother Teresa’s way of dealing with the poor outmoded as some of her
critics charged, or, as some of her supporters suggested, would there always
be the need for the kind of Christian charity Mother Teresa exemplified?
In her article “No Humanitarian,” Mary Poplin who spent two months
working as a volunteer, described the rough conditions of Mother Teresa’s
medical facilities:
Like many Western visitors, I initially found the experience

disorienting. Despite Mother Teresa’s repeated reminders that
the order’s mission is religious, not social work, most Western-
ers who visit the homes for sick and handicapped children ex-
pect them to look like medical clinics or hospitals. They don’t.
Most shocking is the absence of hospital-like procedures and
equipment. This can be particularly disconcerting for people
who have worked in hospital settings in America and Eu-
rope. . . . Surely, given Mother Teresa’s fame, such equipment
was available?. . . . The Missionaries of Charity, one learns, re-
sist owning anything, even medical equipment that is not
widely available to the poor.13
PUTTING HER HOUSE IN ORDER

By the mid-1990s, Mother Teresa was fighting not only ill health but
also the growing criticism of her mission. Any ideas she may have had
about retiring were now out of the question. Her seemingly contradictory
actions and world fame had put her in an uncomfortable position. Yet, she
also relied more fully on the advice and support of the other sisters, some
of whom believed that Mother Teresa was trying to get her affairs in order.
In May 1993, Mother Teresa traveled to Belgium where she was to help
celebrate a gathering of Co-Workers. Because so many volunteers were
going to attend the meeting in Antwerp, they decided to hold a meeting
of the governing body to discuss a Co-Worker chapter that had been
planned for San Diego the following year. Many believed the gathering in
Antwerp would be a good opportunity to address the organization about
some of her concerns.
Mother Teresa was scheduled to speak on May 8; however, the evening
before, Brother Geoff, General Servant of the Missionary Brothers, an-
nounced to the assembly that allegations had been made against the Co-
Workers for misuse of funds; monies that should have gone to the poor
were thought instead to have been spent on Co-Workers’ travel expenses,
newsletters, and postage. He then informed the stunned audience that
Mother Teresa was going to dissolve the Co-Workers organization the
next day and cancel the San Diego chapter.
132 MOTHER TERESA
The announcement came as a terrible shock to the group. But for those
who had been with Mother Teresa almost from the beginning, her actions
were in character. For those volunteers, working with Mother Teresa had
always been a bit of a balancing act: on one hand, she could raise enor-
mous amounts of money for the poor; on the other, she had no problem
telling the Co-Workers that they could not make Christmas cards in order
to raise money. This attitude formed the crux of Mother Teresa’s own con-
cern over money; namely that it would become too central a preoccupa-
tion for the organization and its volunteers. First and foremost, the work
was always to be about the poor. In the end, with the help of Brother
Geoff, the Co-Workers convinced Mother Teresa not to disband the
group.
Plagued by her physical ailments, Mother Teresa battled memory
lapses, confusion, and a growing dependency on others. She no longer
was as accessible as she had been in years past. For many volunteers,
there was the question of whether these changes were hampering her
judgment and influencing what they perceived as erratic behavior
and inconsistent decisions. Her supporters, however, maintained that
Mother Teresa was simply reminding her volunteers not to lose track of
their priorities: to live a simple life and maintain a deep spirituality and
faith in God.
In September 1993, Mother Teresa received sad news; Father Van
Exem, the priest who had reluctantly agreed to serve as her spiritual advi-
sor over 50 years ago, had died. His death was a terrible blow to Mother
Teresa for the two had become close friends. Because she was still recov-
ering from her own illness, she could not attend his funeral, but watched
sadly from her bedroom window as the funeral procession made its way to
St. John’s Cemetery for burial.
Shortly before his death, Father Van Exem wrote to Mother Teresa,
telling her that he would be offering his prayers for the following inter-
cessions: that she would recover from her latest illness of a blocked heart
vessel without surgery; that she would travel to China by October of that
year; and that God would take him, instead of her. And so it was at the
end of October that Mother Teresa arrived in China to arrange for the
opening of a home for children. Her visit was a quick one; she stopped in
Shanghai and Beijing before going to Rome and then to Poland. She re-
turned to China once more in March 1994 with the hope of opening a
house for handicapped children. Her wish to establish the Missionaries of
Charity failed; China, by 1994, was becoming less open and Mother
Teresa turned her energies elsewhere.
MORE CONTROVERSY
Mother Teresa’s final years were touched by controversy. In February
1994, she attended a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. She
did so reluctantly, having been invited by then-President Bill Clinton. She
had been asked to speak and did so with much of her speech focusing on
the topic of abortion. However, when she was finished, no one at the top
table where the president was sitting applauded, though President Clinton
later apologized. Mother Teresa did meet Hillary Clinton, who traveled
with her daughter, Chelsea, to Calcutta the following year to visit one of
the Missionary of Charity homes. With Mrs. Clinton’s help, a children’s
shelter operated by the order opened in Washington in June 1995.
Two other unhappy events in Calcutta ensnared Mother Teresa. In
September 1995, a 15-year-old girl who lived on the city streets was cook-
ing a meal. She overturned the fire and was badly burned. A local doctor
found her some days later lying outside with third-degree burns and severe
damage to one arm. He managed to get the young woman into a state
hospital, but it became difficult to obtain the right medications for her.
Her relatives removed her and she went back to living on the street. After
a month, her wounds became severely infected and so her relatives
searched for another facility.
By this time, the local press had gotten wind of the story. The Mission-
aries of Charity were contacted and they agreed to send an ambulance for
the girl. She was first taken to Nirmal Hriday, but was turned away be-
cause she was not dying. The next stop was to Shishu Bhavan, where she
was turned away again, having been told that she was not an orphan and
moreover was married with a child. Her next destination was Prem Dan,
but again she was refused admission because she was not suffering from tu-
berculosis nor was she insane. In the end, the burn victim was deposited
back on the street.
The story was a sensation and marked the first time any reporting car-
ried a strong bias against Mother Teresa. One reporter asked Mother
Teresa about the young woman’s predicament. To his astonishment,
Mother Teresa said that she would not discuss the issue. Some told the re-
porter that the girl should have been in a hospital, not in one of Mother
Teresa’s homes. But, as the reporter later stated, his intent was never to
ask Mother Teresa to take the girl, but to ask her why—when she had pur-
portedly never refused anyone care or help—she would not admit the girl
to one of her facilities. The young girl was eventually taken to another
state hospital, but the story had done damage and for many caused con-
134 MOTHER TERESA
siderable disillusionment with both Mother Teresa and the Missionaries

of Charity.
Not more than two months later, Mother Teresa again became em-
broiled in controversy, this time of a political nature. This incident also
was the first time Church officials in India publicly criticized her, and
where she faced the most sustained opposition to her work and philoso-
phy. The situation was one of the few times in which Mother Teresa be-
came involved in a contentious row that had severe international
repercussions.
MOTHER TERESA AND THE DALITS

On November 18, 1995, Mother Teresa held special prayers at the Sa-
cred Heart Cathedral in New Delhi. The occasion was to launch a two-
week fast and protest campaign demanding scheduled caste recognition
for Christian Dalits. Caste is an important part of Indian society; it is not
only a declaration of social status, it determines the course of a person’s
life. People born into the highest caste of Indian society were those with
property, money, education, and opportunities. The lowest level of Indian
society were the Dalits or “untouchables.”
In India alone, close to 160 million so-called Dalits, or known legally
as scheduled castes, were routinely discriminated against, denied access to
land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused, even
killed, at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoyed
the state’s protection. The discrimination against and segregation of the
Dalits has been called India’s “hidden apartheid,” and entire villages in
many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste.
Although the practice of “untouchability” was abolished under India’s
constitution in 1950, social discrimination against a person or group by
reason of birth into a particular caste remains very much a part of rural
India. Untouchables may not cross the line dividing their part of the vil-
lage from that occupied by members of the higher castes. They may not
use the same wells, visit the same temples, drink from the same cups in tea
stalls, or lay claim to land that is legally theirs. Dalit children are fre-
quently made to sit in the back of classrooms, and Dalit women are fre-
quent victims of sexual abuse. Most Dalits continue to live in extreme
poverty, without land or opportunities for better employment or edu-
cation. With the exception of a minority who have benefited from India’s
policy of quotas in education and government jobs, Dalits are relegated to
the most menial of tasks, as manual scavengers, removers of human waste
and dead animals, leather workers, street sweepers, and cobblers. Dalit
children make up the majority of those sold into bondage to pay off debts
to upper-caste creditors.
It was the government provision that allowed a small number of Dalits
access to government jobs that set off the firestorm. But Dalits who had
converted to Christianity were denied this opportunity on the grounds
that once a person converted to Christianity, the issue of caste is no
longer important. It was also argued that Christian Dalits had other op-
portunities available such as studying in Christian schools. Christian Dal-
its argued that, in using these educational facilities, they were being
denied the country’s resources that as citizens they should have access to.
But, as others argued, if Dalits are Christians, they cannot be Dalits, as
Christianity does not recognize the notion of caste. If they are Dalits, then
they are Hindus, and, as far as Mother Teresa was concerned, she had lit-
tle to do with them.
Mother Teresa’s involvement with the campaign had tremendous
repercussions. Accused of trying to introduce the pattern of caste systems
into Christianity at the expense of non-Christian Dalits, Mother Teresa
called a press conference in which she stated that she had no idea what
the prayer meeting was about. Her statements infuriated the organization
sponsoring the event. The organization secretary stated that, in fact,
Mother Teresa did know the purpose of the prayer meeting as it had been
explained to her by the auxiliary bishop of the Delhi archdiocese.
In another time, an incident such as this would have rallied Mother
Teresa’s supporters. Instead, she not only antagonized non-Christians, but
Christians as well. One church official went so far as to say that Mother
Teresa, with her antiquated views on abortion and family planning, had
become obsolete. She had, in fact, helped create a greater schism in a
country already plagued by numerous divisions.
STEPPING ASIDE
On March 13, 1997, the Missionaries of Charity took a long-awaited
step: choosing a successor to head their order. The announcement ended
months of speculation not only about Mother Teresa’s future, but about
who would succeed her. The discussions over the new leader had been
deadlocked for weeks as the order struggled to find an acceptable replace-
ment. Eventually the members were forced to turn to Pope John Paul II
who offered a compromise: Mother Teresa would stay on as spiritual and
titular head of the Missionaries of Charity, while Sister Nirmala, a 63-
year-old member of the order would take over the day-to-day duties of the
group. It was also decided that she would hold the post for six years when
136 MOTHER TERESA
the group would meet again to choose either a new head or reelect Sister
Nirmala.
Despite the effort at compromise, the transition did not go smoothly.
Within hours of Sister Nirmala’s appointment, Mother Teresa announced
plans to create a number of new homes. Sister Nirmala did not object. She
was by temperament timid, and decided to maintain a low profile, even
bypassing the title of “Mother” for the time being. Mother Teresa acted as
if she were still in charge, while giving her blessing to her successor.
Though her health was failing, Mother Teresa continued to travel, to
raise funds, and visit many of the new homes that the Missionaries of
Charity established. But in March 1996, she fell out of bed and broke her
collarbone. Yet, by June, she was traveling again, though she fell once
more, this time severely spraining her ankle. In the meantime, her mem-
ory grew worse and lapses became more frequent.
In August 1996, Mother Teresa was once more admitted to the Wood-
land’s Nursing Home in Calcutta. She was having trouble breathing and
many believed that she was going to die. She rallied, though, and left the
facility on September 6, against her doctors’ wishes. She then attended
special services marking the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the
Missionaries of Charity. But two weeks later, she was back in the hospital
after having fallen down the stairs at the Motherhouse. More of her days
were spent in bed suffering from severe back pain.
Finally, in January 1997, Mother Teresa announced her decision to re-
sign as mother superior of the order; her health was too precarious, and
even she seemed to realize that she could no longer battle her ailments as
she once had. However, in May, she did travel to Rome where she met
with the pope and then to the United States where she was awarded the
Congressional Medal of Freedom in recognition for her work. She also
made time to tour New York City’s the Bronx with Princess Diana.
The untimely death of Princess Diana three months later was one more
loss to bear. Mother Teresa had become good friends with the young
princess, often offering her advice. The two also talked of Mother Teresa’s
work, and Princess Diana had made a point of visiting Nirmal Hriday
when she came to India, years before. Mother Teresa’s remarks on the
princess’ death were in fact her last public statements. On September 5,
1997, the eve of Diana’s funeral, Mother Teresa’s heart finally stopped.
After a private service at the chapel of the Motherhouse, her body was
transferred to a Missionary of Charity ambulance with the word “Mother”
written across it, and taken to St. Thomas Church, which was used by the
Loreto Sisters. Here, thousands of mourners crowded among the pews to
pay their respects to the tiny nun. A week later, the Indian government
held a state funeral for Mother Teresa. On September 13, her body was
carried through the streets of Calcutta on the same gun carriage used to
transport two of India’s greatest leaders and heroes: Mahatma Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru. Thousands of mourners lined the streets as the carriage
traveled to the Calcutta sports stadium where a state funeral mass was
held; numerous dignitaries were in attendance to pay their respects. Af-
terwards, in a private ceremony, with soldiers firing their guns in a last
tribute, Mother Teresa was laid to rest beneath a plain stone slab on the
grounds of the Motherhouse located at A.J.C. Bose Road. Here, she is not
far from the people she served and helped.
THE MAKING OF A SAINT

Six years after her death, Mother Teresa was back in the news. In 2003,
it was announced that John Paul II, to help commemorate his 25th an-
niversary of his election to the papacy, would beatify Mother Teresa on
October 19. The event marks the final step before canonization, or official
sainthood. It was a remarkable process in that no one has ever been beat-
ified in so short a time as Mother Teresa. Yet, Vatican officials worked rig-
orously to treat her case as they would any other.
Even before her death, some officials in the Vatican thought she ought
to be canonized without the usual investigation. Pope John Paul II even
waived the usual five-year waiting period to see whether a candidate’s
reputation for holiness is justified. For Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the
task ahead was even more daunting; he was charged with coordinating
the team that eventually put together 67 volumes arguing that Mother
Teresa met all the requirements for sainthood. In addition, the church
lawyers held 14 tribunals all over the world to hear testimony from peo-
ple who knew Mother Teresa well. Nearly all were friendly witnesses who
had to answer 263 questions that were used as evidence that Mother
Teresa had manifested the virtues required of a Roman Catholic saint:
faith, hope, and charity, as well as humility, prudence, justice, fortitude,
and temperance to an extraordinary degree. Mother Teresa also had her
critics: three non-Catholics testified against her, among them Christo-
pher Hitchens.
In the end, Father Kolodiejchuk’s team concluded that Mother Teresa’s
willingness to work with those who were morally and financially corrupt
was in keeping with her own philosophy: using ill-gotten money to do
good for the poor and also provide spiritual benefits for the donors. As to
her failure to take a more aggressive stance against institutionalized injus-
tice, the team sided with Mother Teresa. They argued that her mission
138 MOTHER TERESA
was to help individuals and bear witness to the Divine presence in the
world, not fight for social change.
As with all candidates for sainthood, the church required a divine sign
in the form of a posthumous miracle. Many claims were submitted; the
one chosen concerned a Hindu mother, Monika Besra, who came to the
sisters suffering from a life-threatening stomach tumor. The sisters prayed
to Mother Teresa for a cure and pressed a religious medal that she had
touched to Besra’s abdomen. Five hours later, the tumor had completely
disappeared.
The beatification ceremonies in Rome were only the beginning of a
media and merchandising frenzy surrounding Mother Teresa’s eventual
canonization. In Calcutta, Mother Teresa’s legacy was to be honored with
an international festival of films. The event was a first; no saint in the his-
tory of the Catholic Church has had an international festival of films held
in their honor. Among the films scheduled to be shown were Malcolm
Muggeridge’s Something Beautiful for God, two-time Emmy Award winner
Anne Petrie’s Mother Teresa—Her Legacy, Japanese director Shigeki
Chiba’s Mother Teresa and Her World, Anna & Folco Terzani’s Mother
Teresa’s First Love, and Dominique LaPierre’s In the Name of God’s Poor.
The controversial 1994 Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta was also to
be shown, but in the end was pulled.
In addition to the film festival, the Vatican issued special commemora-
tive stamps of Mother Teresa. Factories churned out additional merchan-
dise, including Mother Teresa rosaries, crucifixes, and key chains.
According to one vendor, his factory is working full time to make 10,000
Mother Teresa rosaries, key chains, and other trinkets. A stage musical
and an animated cartoon based on her life and works were to be presented
as well. In one of the more bizarre, but also more historically familiar, ways
of honoring a holy person, a display of Mother Teresa’s blood was planned.
Today, Mother Teresa’s thoughts can still be found in the more than 20
books she coauthored to offer spiritual advice and guidance to people. Her
order continues to be active and hard at work. Both the sisters and the
brothers continue to thrive, though not experiencing the rapid growth of
homes and foundations that marked the last 25 years of Mother Teresa’s
life. More than 3,000 volunteers come to Calcutta every year, hoping to
make a difference at least for a little while.
At the same time, the Missionaries of Charity have shown themselves
to be a little more worldly, as they successfully copyrighted the name of
Mother Teresa in 2003. The nuns said they sought the rights to Mother
Teresa’s name, the name of their order, and its rosary-encircled globe logo
to prevent them from being exploited by commercial interests. It is diffi-

cult to say what the future holds for the order; like many other religious
orders, the changing climate of the times often forces changes if a reli-
gious group hopes to survive. There may be changes in the way the com-
munity lives or is administered. There may even be a subtle shift in how
best to help the poor, but, as Sister Nirmala comes from a contemplative
background—as opposed to a medical or social work emphasis—the di-
rection of the Missionaries of Charity is carried out as Mother Teresa had
originally envisioned it.
THE LEGACY OF MOTHER TERESA

When asked to explain the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa
once remarked, “We are first of all religious; we are not social workers, not
teachers, not nurses or doctors, we are religious sisters. We serve Jesus in
the poor.”14 With that statement, Mother Teresa made clear the mission
of the order and to the best of her abilities lived her life following that
simple premise.
Still, there is no question that for the last 20 years of her life Mother
Teresa and her work were at times seriously misunderstood. She inspired
many people not through powerful speeches or magnificent works but be-
cause she exemplified a way, imperfect as it was at times, of using the
power of love to heal and save. As journalist Mary Poplin pointed out, the
key to understanding Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity is
the sacredness with which they treat all people and their humble way of
carrying out their work. To the Missionaries of Charity, Jesus is present in
everyone they meet whether it is a young volunteer from New Jersey or an
old Muslim woman starved and half-eaten by rats and worms, or the de-
formed infant just born and left in a garbage heap. Christ is present in ev-
eryone, but most especially in the poorest of the poor. From the very
beginning, Mother Teresa and her order reached out to treat each person
they encountered as they would Jesus Christ. Thus, they performed each
task for the benefit of the poor as they would do it for Christ. In other
words, it is Jesus’ diapers they wash, his meals they prepare, his ailing body
they tend, and his hand being held.
On closer inspection, Mother Teresa appeared a contradiction, a walk-
ing paradox, and later, a woman out of step with the times. But that as-
sessment dismisses her and her work much too easily. Mary Poplin, the
journalist who volunteered for the Missionaries of Charity, tried to ex-
plain her understanding of Mother Teresa:
140 MOTHER TERESA
Many writers have depicted Mother Teresa as someone who

saw the poor and responded sympathetically to their needs.
That is not quite the case. Mother Teresa served the poor not
because they needed her but because God called her to the
work. She was obedient to God’s call, not to her social con-
science. She often remarked that if God had told her what was
to happen after she picked up the first dying person off the Cal-
cutta street, she would never have done it, for she would have
been too afraid.15
Mother Teresa called herself “a pencil in God’s hand.” What she meant
was that she was simply God’s instrument and she did only his bidding, re-
lying on his providence to provide for her order and the poor. Part of her
success lay in her ability to tap into and inspire a large number of volun-
teers, many of them young men and women who needed help. Quite
often, it was the more knowledgeable and qualified volunteers who had
the most trouble working with and understanding Mother Teresa. But for
many young people who had only high ideals but were not sure how to put
those ideals into practice, Mother Teresa and her work were a good
match. No matter if they stayed an hour, a week, or a year, they were al-
ways welcomed. For in the time they stayed, these volunteers made a dif-
ference to those around them and Mother Teresa was grateful for their
gifts. For others, Mother Teresa was unique, not because of her work with
the poor, but because for many people, she was doing what they wished to
do. She was what they were not.
Her legacy is strong; at the time of her death, there were more than
4,000 sisters in the Missionaries of Charity, along with 400 brothers and
thousands of others who have volunteered as Co-Workers, Lay Missionar-
ies of Charity, and Missionaries of Charity Fathers. It is through these vol-
unteers that Mother Teresa’s spirit lives on. Yet, Mother Teresa had her
flaws as well: she was stubborn, difficult to work with, and demanding.
Perhaps she needed those qualities to carry out the work to which she be-
lieved God had called her. But Mother Teresa was also a woman who sang
Happy Birthday to Jesus at Christmas, who regarded all life as holy, and
who saw the face of God in the face of every human being she encoun-
tered. For Mother Teresa, her works came not from the strength of her in-
tellect, but of the great power and love she had in her heart.
NOTES
1997), p. 122.
2. “Mother Teresa Dies,” BBC Politics 97, http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/
news/09/0905/teresa.shtml (accessed October 13, 2003).
3. Christoper Hitchens, “Ghoul of Calcutta,” Nation, April 13, 1992, p. 474.
4. “Mother Teresa: A Profile,” CNN Interactive, http://www.cnn.com/
WORLD/9709/mother.teresa/profile/ (accessed October 15, 2003).
5. Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa In Theory
and Practice (New York: Verso, 1995) p. 7.
6. Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position, p. 41.
7. Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position, p. 10.
8. George Sim Johnston, “Mother Teresa and the Missionary Position,” re-
view of The Missionary Position by Christopher Hitchens in National Review, De-
cember 25, 1995, p. 58.
9. Bruno Maddox, “The Missionary Position,” review of The Missionary Po-
sition by Christopher Hitchens in The New York Times Review of Books, January
14, 1996.
10. Robert Kee, “The Missionary Position,” review of The Missionary Position
by Christopher Hitchens in The Sunday Times, November 10, 1995, p. 25.
11. Mary Poplin, “No Humanitarian,” Commonweal, December 19, 1997,
pp. 11–14.
12. Parvathi Menon, “Mother Teresa,” Frontline: India’s National Magazine,
September 20–October 3 1997, http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1419/
14190170.htm.
13. Mary Poplin, “No Humanitarian,” pp. 11–14.
14. Nelson Graves, “Mother Teresa No Stranger to Controversy,” Reuters:
New York, August 24, 1996, http://library.bigchalk.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/
WOPrimo.woa/20/wo/JW75gJ4TBP1s3EEW9q71laknBdo/3.27.2.12.3.
15. Mary Poplin, “No Humanitarian,” pp. 11–14.
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INDEX
Agagianian, Gregory, 95 Bangladesh, 110–11, 124

Ahmed, Dr., 68, 69, 71 Belfast, 106, 109–10
Aikemhead, Mary, 64 Bengal, 9, 10, 15, 24, 111
Albania, communist rule of, 95, Berkol, Faruk, 113
116–17, 126, 129; diaspora, 2; Besra, Monika, 138
history, 1–4; independence Bihar, 34, 92
movement in, 3–5; Islam in, Blaikie, Ann, 75
2–3; Italian occupation of, 95; Bojaxhiu, Aga, birth of, 4; death
national identity of, 2–6; Ot- of, 109; education of, 6; family
toman conquest of, 2–3; resis- responsibilities of, 7; life under
tance to Ottoman Empire, 2; communism, 95, 108–9
Roman Catholics in, 6; war Bojaxhiu, Agnes Gonxha. See
against Ottoman Empire, 3 Mother Teresa
Albanian League of Prizren, 3,4 Bojaxhiu, Dranafile (Bernai),
Ali, Tariq, 125, 127 character of, 7–8; death of, 109;
All India Institute of Medical faith of, 6–8; health of, 108–9;
Science, 123 life under communism, 95,
Amnesty International, 114 108–9; marriage, 4
Arafat, Yassir, 124 Bojaxhiu, Lazar, birth of, 4; edu-
cation of, 6, 10; exile of, 95;
Balkans, Ottoman conquest of, military career of, 11, 95; re-
1–3; war against Ottoman Em- union with Mother Teresa,
pire, 3 95
Ball, Francis, 15, 16 Bojaxhiu, Nikola, character of, 4;
Band Aid, 120 death of, 6–7; faith of, 4, 6;
148 INDEX
marriage, 4; political activity of, Dachau, 95

4–7; profession of, 4 Dalits, 134–35
Bombay, 22, 92, 123 Darjeeling, comparison to Cal-
Boomtown Rats, 120 cutta, 18
Bracken, Katherine, 93 Das, Subashni, 45
British Broadcasting Company Daughters of St. Anne, 18, 31
(BBC), 94, 102–3, 126 Day, Dorothy, 113
British East India Company, De Berry, Andrew, 127
22–23 Dengel, Anna, 36–37, 94
British Empire, 15, 18, 22, 23 Dewali, 93
Brother Andrew. See Travers-Ball, Dominica, Frances, 64
Ian Dublin, 15, 16
Brother Geoff, 100, 131–32 Duvelien, Jean-Cluade, 118, 126,
Byzantine Empire, 1 128
Candau, Marcolino, 94 East Pakistan. See Bangladesh

Calcutta, comparison to Darjeel- English Civil War, 14
ing, 18; poverty in, 21, 29–30, English Reformation, 14
32, 39, 40–43, 45–46, 60, 67, Ethiopia, 110, 120, 129
79–80, 84, 94, 126–27
Calcutta Corporation, 60 Fernandes, Marcus, 74–75
Calcutta Medical College Hospi- Fernandes, Patricia, 74
tal, 75 Fox, Robin, 130
Carmichael Hospital for Tropical Fumosoni-Biandi, Pietro, 48
Diseases, 85
Catholic Relief Services, 84, 94, Gandhi, Mohandas K.,
109 (Mahatma), 23, 101, 115, 137
Catholic Worker Movement, 113 Ganges River, 35, 70
Chafer, Peter, 104 Geldof, Bob, 119–20
Charles I, 14 Germany, 94, 95, 104
Charles II, 14 Gobra Hospital, 84–86
Chatterjee, Aroup, 125–26 Gomes, Albert, 44
Chiba, Shigeki, 138 Gomes, Monica, 44–45
City of Joy (La Pierre), 124, 126 Gomes, Magdalena, 45
Clinton, Bill, 128, 133 Gomes, Michael, 44–45, 47
Clinton, Chelsea, 133 Government of India Act, 24
Clinton, Hillary, 128, 133 Gracias, Valerian, 92
Constantinople, 1,2 Grade, Michael, 127
Cooke Terence (Cardinal), 108 Great Famine, 24–25
Co-Workers, 101–2, 131–32, 140 Greer, Germaine, 112, 124
Co-Workers Newsletter, 101 Grieg Edvard, 116
INDEX 149
Hamsen, Armauer, 86 Jackson, Glenda, 124

Hansen’s disease. See leprosy Jambrekovic, Franjo, 9, 10
Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa of Cal- Jesuits, history of, 4, 14; mission-
cutta (Ali), 125–28, 130, 138 ary work of, 9, 15; model for
Henry VIII, 14 Loreto Sisters, 14; model for
Henry, Julien, S.J., 21, 31, 34, 40, Missionaries of Charity, 49
47, 50, 54, 56, 59 Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, 26
Hindu, 15, 22, 26, 42, 45, 53, John XXIII (Pope), 60, 95, 96
68–70, 72, 82, 93, 135. See also John Paul II (Pope), xii, 118, 124,
specific Hindu Deities and festi- 125, 135, 136, 137
vals Johnson, Paul, 127
Hitchens, Christopher, 125–30, Johnston, George Sim, 129
137 Jubilee: A Magazine for the Church,
Holy Family Hospital, 35, 36, 38 92
Hoxha, Enver, 126
Hunkin, Oliver, 102 Kali, 68–70, 83
Kalighat, 68, 94
India, British conquest of, 22–23; Kanjc, Betika, 11, 16
British government of, 22–25; Kastrioti, Gjergj. See Skenderbeg
caste system, 134–35; English Keating, Charles, 128
presence in, 75–76; European Kennedy, Edward, 113
colonization of, 22; Hindu- Kennedy, John F., 94
Muslim conflict in, 26–27, 42; King, Martin Luther Jr., 115
independence movement in, Knox, James Robert
22, 23–24, 26; independence of, (Archbishop), 96
23–24, 42, 111 Kolodiejchuk, Brian, 137–38
Indian Mutiny. See Sepoy Revolt Kosovo, 3, 6
Indian National Congress, 23–24,
26 La Pierre, Dominique, 124, 138
Ingendaa, Stephanie, 34–35, 38 Las Vegas, NV, 92–93
Inspiration Day, 27, 29, 48 Lay Missionaries of Charity, 140
Institute of the Blessed Virgin Leprosy, 84–86
Mary, 10, 13, 14, 15. See also Little Sisters of the Poor, 39–40,
Loreto Sisters 44
In the Name of God’s Poor (La London, 74, 94, 102, 103, 106,
Pierre), 138 107, 110, 121
Irish Sisters of Charity, 64 Longley, Clifford, 130
Islam, in Balkans, 2–3; in India, Loreto Sisters, history of, 13–16;
15, 22, 25–26, 70, 72; in Pak- growth of, 14, 15; mission of,
istan, 42 13–20; model for Missionaries
Italy, 2, 14, 104, 109 of Charity, 49; Mother Teresa’s
150 INDEX
departure from, 29–30, 32–35, founding, 98–99; growth of,

39; Mother Teresa’s member- 100; Missionary of Charity Fa-
ship in, 10, 11, 13, 16–21, 25, thers, 140;
29; persecution of, 14; philoso- Missionary Position: Mother Teresa
phy of, 13; relations with the in Theory and Practice
Roman Catholic church, 13–14 (Hitchens), 128–30
Loyola, Ignatius, 14 Mother Teresa, appearance of: as
child, 5; as old woman, 120; as
Macmillan, Kenneth, 103–4 nun, 40; as young adult, 10
McNamara, Robert, 113–14 awards: Magsaysay Award for
Madonna of Letnice, 10, 11, 109 International Understanding,
Martin, Thérèse, canonization of, 106; Medal of Freedom, 136;
18; death of, 17; inspiration for Nehru Award for International
Mother Teresa, 17–18 Understanding, 106; Nobel
Mattael Meskin, 113 Peace Prize, 105, 113–17;
Mauli, Ali, 40 Padma Shri, 106; Pope John
Maxwell, Robert, 121, 128 XXIII Peace Prize, 106; Temple-
Medical Mission Sisters, 34, 36, ton Prize for Progress in Reli-
37, 38, 39, 40, 94 gion, 106; beatification of, xii,
Meeting Point, 102 137–38; birth of, 4, 109;
Miseror, 94 celebrity of, xi–xii, 89, 91,
Missionaries of Charity, charitable 93–94, 96, 104, 105, 108,
activities of, 56–58, 60, 63, 64, 112–15, 120, 131, 137–39;
69–73, 76, 79–84, 87, 93, 97, character of, xi–xii, 17, 20–21,
112, 138; criticism of, 62–64, 36, 42, 44, 76, 1008, 112, 114,
70–71, 73, 115, 118, 126, 134; 120, 140; charitable work: chil-
daily routine of, 55–57; found- dren; 79–84; in Bangladesh,
ing of, 46, 48 49–50; future of, 111–12; in India, 17–20, 30, 32,
139; growth of, 56, 59, 92, 38, 39–46, 54, 60, 67–71, 73,
95–98, 104–6, 108, 110, 76, 84, 93; in Rome, 97–98; in
118–19, 123, 136, 140; Mother South America; 96–97; lepers,
Teresa’s leadership of, 53–64, 84–89, 94; childhood of, 4–10
92, 107–8, 124, 131–32, criticism of, xii, 73–76, 83–84,
135–36; Mother Teresa’s resig- 95, 105, 110, 112, 115, 117–19,
nation as mother superior, 136; 121, 124–31, 133–35, 137, 139;
philosophy of, 48–49, 54–55, death of, 136; education of, 6,
61, 63, 107–8, 139; resistance 9, 16, 17; faith of, xi–xii, 8–9,
to, 57–58, 76, 85, 87; setbacks 27, 39, 42–43, 59, 63, 85, 88,
of, 109–10 93, 108, 119, 120, 130, 140;
Missionary Brothers of Charity, funeral of, 137; health of, 8–10,
charitable work of, 99–101; 27, 34, 123–24, 131, 132, 136;
INDEX 151
Indian citizenship of, 48; jour- National Council of Catholic

ney to India, 16–17; legacy of, Women, 113
139–40; medical training of, National Council for Catholic
34–39, 94; relations with the Women, 92
Albanian government, 95–96, Nehru, Jawaharlal, 24, 92, 94,
109, 117; teaching career, 137
19–21, 25, 29; theology of, 64, New Delhi, 92, 94, 96, 106, 123,
139–40; travels of: to Africa, 134
118; to Albania, 109; to Carib- New York City, 93, 94, 107, 108,
bean, 118; to China, 132; to 119
Eastern Europe, 118; to Mexico, Nirmal Hriday, 64, 69–76, 80, 83,
123; to Middle East, 119; to 88, 92, 94, 103, 104, 117, 118,
South America, 118; to Soviet 130, 133, 136
Union, 120; to Western Europe, Nirmala, Sister, 135–36, 139
94–95, 121–23, 131, 132, 136; Nixon, Richard, 106
to United States, 93–94, 119,
129, 133, 136; support for, Office for the Propagation of the
75–76, 92, 93, 105–6, 125, Faith, 48, 94
127–30, 132, 137; views on Oslo University, 116
abortion, 83–84, 112, 116–18, Ottoman Empire, Albanian resis-
121, 126, 129, 130, 133, 135; tance to, 2–3; persecution of
views on family planning, 83, Christians in, 2; political crisis
121, 135; vocation of 8–11, 13, of, 3
16, 27, 30, 32, 35, 140 Oxfam, 94
Mother Teresa and Her World,
(Chiba), 138 Pakistan, 26, 42, 116
Mother Teresa’s First Love, (Terzani Palestinian Liberation Organi-
and Terzani) zation, 124
Mother Teresa—Her Legacy, Paris, 11, 13, 16
(Petrie), 138 Patna, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 94
Motijihl, 21, 40–42, 46, 68 Paul, Aruna, 91
Muggeridge, Malcolm: book about Paul VI (Pope), 88, 96, 97, 106
Mother Teresa, 105; death of, Périer, Ferdinand, 30–34, 38,
105; documentary about 39, 41, 47, 48, 49, 59–60,
Mother Teresa, 103–5, 138; 98
interview with Mother Teresa, Petrie, Ann, 138
xi–xii, 102–3; nominates Pius XI (Pope), 18
Mother Teresa for Nobel Prize, Poplin, Mary, 129–31, 139–40
113 Prem, Dan, 73, 133
Mushti bhikka, 47 Princess Diana, 136
Muslim League, 26 Prizren, 3, 4, 109
152 INDEX
Queen Geraldine, 117 Sodality of Children of Mary, 9,

Queen Victoria, 23 11, 40
Somerset, E. John, 75
Rae, Daphne, 117–18 Something Beautiful for God,
Rathfarnham House, 15, 16, 32 103–5, 138 (documentary,
Reagan, Ronald, 128 Muggeridge); 105 (book, Mug-
Red Cross, 109, 119 geridge)
Rome, 95, 97, 106, 109, 123, 132, Soviet Union, 95, 120
136, 138
Roy, B.C., 80 Terzani, Anna, 138
Ryder, Sue, 75 Terzani, Folco, 138
Thatcher, Margaret, 121, 128
Sacred Heart Parish, 6, 8, 9 Time magazine, 112–13
St. Joseph’s Home, 39–40 Titlagarh, 86–88, 100
St. Mary’s School, 18, 19, 20, 21, Travers-Ball, Ian, SJ, disputes
27, 40, 42, 44, 45 with Mother Teresa, 100; lead-
Sakharov, Andrei, 113 ership of the Brothers of Char-
Saunders, Cicely, 64, 113 ity, 99, 100
Schweitzer, Albert, 115
Scripps Clinic and Research Urban VIII (Pope), 14
Foundation, 123
Sebba, Ann, 75 Van Exem, Celeste, SJ, death of ,
Second Vatican Council, 60–62, 132; spiritual advisor to Mother
64 Teresa, 25–26, 29–30, 32, 34,
Sen, Dr., 85 37–40, 44
Sepoy Revolt of 1857, 22, 23 Vishnu, 68
Shantinagar, 88–89 Vlorë Proclamation, 4
Sheen, Fulton J. (Bishop), 94
Shishu Bhavan, 80–84, 89, 91, 99, Ward, Mary, charged with heresy,
114, 133 14; death of, 14; founding of
Shiva, 68 Loreto Sisters, 13–14; papal
Sicily, 2, 95, 97 reinstatement, 14
Sisters of Sion, 63 Washington, D.C., 129, 133
Skau, Annie, 113 World Child Welfare Fund, 82
Skenderbeg, 1–2 World Health Organization, 94
Skopje, history of, 1, 4; Mother World War I, 23
Teresa’s visit to, 118; Roman World War II, affect on India,
Catholics in, 6 24–25; end of, 26
Society of Jesus. See Jesuits
Sodality of the Blessed Virgin, 21 Zagreb, 11, 13, 118
About the Author
MEG GREENE is an independent scholar and author of many books for

young adults.
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Recent Titles in Greenwood Biographies

Margaret Mead: A Biography

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright © 2004 by Meg Greene

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004009232

First published in 2004

Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

The paper used in this book complies with the

Series Foreword vii

Photo essay follows page 66.

In response to high school and public library needs, Greenwood devel-

thorough account relates family background and education, traces per-

Writing about Mother Teresa can be both a frustrating and challenging

1900 Nikola Bojaxhiu (father) and his bride, Drana

10 September 1946 Inspiration Day; while riding a train, Sister Teresa

1979 Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Located in Macedonia, in a region that was formerly part of Albania, the

FAITH AND FATHERLAND—FE Y ATDHE

Nikola may have passed on to his children a sense of ethnic identity

“HOME IS WHERE THE MOTHER IS”

FINDING THE PATH

formed Albanian army as a Second Lieutenant. When Lazar received the

ANSWERING THE CALL

THE INSTITUTE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

THE LORETO SISTERS

LIFE IN THE LORETO CONVENT

ST. MARY’S SCHOOL

THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

THE BRITISH RAJ

TOWARD A FREE INDIA

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

WAR’S END AND TROUBLED TIMES

A NEW DIRECTION AND A

THE FIRST STEPS

One day, as I was making the visit of the Entally convent,

to explain his or her case. If the religious is humble, obedient,

Despite his open-mindedness, Archbishop Périer was not only against

called. This experience not only gave Mother Teresa an opportunity to

to draw on and were completely dependent on donations of food and

BEGINNING RIGHT ON THE GROUND

to be amputated. Saying a prayer and taking a pair of scissors, she snipped

THE DARK NIGHT

The infectious enthusiasm of the children spread throughout the com-

Our Lord just wants me to be a “Free Nun,” covered with the

Father Van Exem finally stepped in. He spoke to a member of a Bengali

“IT WILL BE A HARD LIFE”

priest in question immediately apologize to the superior for his criticism of

DRAWING ON THE PAST FOR THE FUTURE

hearted free service to the poorest of the poor, according to the

Mother Teresa sought to reinforce the vow of poverty in other ways,

of Charity as a new congregation limited to the diocese of Calcutta. That

Father Henry organized a procession every evening. He ac-

“RIGOROUS POVERTY IS OUR

Lower Circular Road is a humming center of activity in Calcutta. The

Despite the spacious new surroundings, Mother Teresa was determined

JOINING THE ORDER

By noontime, many sisters returned to Motherhouse for prayers and a