Happy Friday!
It's still beautiful and somewhat unseasonably warm in Dallas for mid-October but I'm loving it. A great start to the weekend!
There are few people who exemplify goodness more than Mother Teresa, who received the Nobel Peace prize on this day in 1979. She was indeed a remarkable woman. Born in 1910, her given name was Anjezë and she was born in Sjopji, then part of the Ottoman Empire (Albania) and raised as a devout Catholic. Her father was involved in Albanian politics and was likely poisoned at a political meeting in Belgrade when she was 8. Anjezë became fascinated with stories of missionaries and decided at age 12 to commit herself to a religious life. She moved to Ireland at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto and learn English, the language of India. She never saw her mother or her sister again, partly because she was considered a "dangerous agent of the Vatican" under communist Albania rule. She was only able to return to Albania when it was too late, after the fall of the communist regime.
Anjezë moved to Darjeeling, India in 1929 where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's school. She took her first religious vows in 1931, choosing the name Teresa after Thérѐse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries, opting for the Spanish spelling. She took her solemn vows in Calcutta, where she served at the Loreto convent school for almost 20 years. However, she was greatly impacted by the poverty around her, as well as a famine. While traveling to Darjeeling by train for a retreat in 1946, she "heard the call within the call" to serve the poor of India and she left the school. Her missionary work began in 1948, and she replaced her habit with a white sari with two blue borders (which I find interesting...but the real reason is that it was initially purchased for her by one of the teachers at her school when she left the convent. White represents purity and peace, blue is for the Virgin Mary. Her sari is actually trademarked. The official saris are woven on looms in Calcutta by residents in a home for people with leprosy (Hansen disease). Mother Teresa knock-off saris are available online.)
She became an Indian citizen and founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with permission from the Vatican. It would care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone." She got some basic medical training and went to the slums to tend to the poor and the hungry. It was difficult for her as well, as she had no income and had to beg for food and supplies. Although her congregation from Loreto tried to bring her back to the convent, she refused, wanting to remain among the people she served. She opened a hospice for people with leprosy and took in homeless children.
Her congregation expanded throughout India in the 1960s, and then abroad to Venezuela, Rome, Tanzania and Austria. Houses and foundations opened in the U.S., Asia, Africa and Europe in the 1970s. At the request of priests, she founded the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984. By 2007, the Missionaries of Charity had 450 brothers and 5000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.
Mother Teresa also traveled abroad, working with the Red Cross to rescue 37 children during the Siege of Beirut, assisting the hungry in Ethiopia, helping radiation victims at Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia. She finally returned to her birthplace in Albania in 1991 to open a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home.
Her health problems began with a heart attack in 1983 while visiting Pope John Paul II in Rome, followed by a second attack in 1989, requiring a pacemaker. She developed more heart problems after having pneumonia in Mexico City and offered to resign as the head of Missionaries of Charity but was voted down. She fell and broke her collarbone in 1996, then contracted malaria leading to heart failure and undergoing open heart surgery. She resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity in March 1997 and died in September. The Indian government gave her a state funeral, and she was mourned worldwide.
Mother Teresa received many other awards besides the Nobel Prize, but she also had her detractors, particularly from Calcutta where she was accused of misrepresenting the city, exaggerating its poverty and leprosy, and proselytizing. There were controversies regarding lack of adequate medical care and nutrition in her clinics, and the hypocrisy of seeking advanced medical care for her own heart condition. Nonetheless, she was recognized by organizations and governments worldwide for her service to humanity. She declined the ceremonial banquet for the Nobel prize, asking that the cost (almost $200,000) be given to the poor in India. Efforts began to canonize her after death, which required the documentation of a miracle. After a few false leads, Pope Francis found a miracle attributed to her in the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumors in 2008. He canonized her in 2015 in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, attended by tens of thousands of people. There were over 1 million people working in her hospice, homes, soup kitchens, counseling programs, orphanages and schools at the time of her death.
So, when someone says, "She's no Mother Teresa", you know it there was really only one.
Have good weekend and do something charitable in her honor.
Deb
This video was made 16 years ago but could have been made yesterday. I think it captures what Mother Teresa was all about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWf-eARnf6U