Mother Teresa: Advocate for The Poor

A humanitarian, advocate for the poor; Mother Teresa was a tiny woman of just 4 feet 11 inches and less than 100 pounds who spent many years lifting and carrying those who were dying or sick. Mother Teresa chose to serve the poorest of the poor and to live among them and like them. She saw beauty in every human being. She, along with others of the Missionaries of Charity, strove to make the lives and deaths of those around them more peaceful and full of love. She fed, washed, and cared for anyone who needed the assistance.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) was born in the town of Skopje, Yugoslavia (now Macedonia). Her parents were both Albanian. Agnes was one of 3 children. At the mere age of 12, Agnes felt that she had a calling to help others.

In 1928, at the age of 18, Agnes left her family to become a missionary in India. She joined the Sisters of Loreto. She was sent to Ireland to learn English because India was ruled by the British at the time. There Agnes took her first vows as a nun in 1929 and changed her name to Sister Mary Teresa. She chose the name Teresa because her favourite saint was Saint Teresa of Lisieux, a patron saint of missionaries.

Sister Teresa began her missionary work in Darjeeling, India where she taught wealthy children. A couple of years later, in 1931, she was sent to Calcutta to teach geography at St. Mary's High School. This was an all-girls school run by the Sisters of Loreto. Most of the girls were from middle-class families. St. Mary's was located near the slums of Calcutta, known as Moti Jhil. Moti Jhil was overpopulated with poor and starving people, open sewers, and disease. During Sister Teresa's years at St. Mary's, she was touched by the poverty surrounding the beautiful school. She often went to the slums on Saturdays to help the poor and suffering people of Moti Jhil.

In 1939, Sister Teresa took her final vows to the Sisters of Loreto. In 1946, she was suspected of having tuberculosis and was sent to Darjeeling to rest. It was there that Sister Teresa decided she was being called to "serve the poorest of the poor." Thus, she requested permission to leave the Sisters of Loreto to serve the poor of Calcutta.

In 1948, Sister Teresa was granted permission by Pope Pius XII to leave her order and serve the poor. She said that leaving her family to become a missionary was very difficult but leaving the convent was even more difficult for her because she loved the work she was doing, and it was there that she learned how to serve others. Sister Teresa had no place to stay, no food, and only the equivalent of two dollars with her. She began wearing the traditional clothing of India. She chose sandals and a simple, inexpensive white sari trimmed in blue. This clothing was similar to the dress of the common people of India.

During this time, Calcutta had a million poor people, most living in make-shift homes or on the sidewalks themselves. To learn more about how to care for the sick and suffering, she went to Patna, India to receive a few months of medical training from the American Medical Missionaries.

When Sister Teresa returned to Calcutta, she was alone and as poor as those she longed to serve. She once said, "(I) found myself alone on the streets of Calcutta, I experienced a strong feeling of loss and almost of fear that was difficult to overcome." Being the strong woman that she was, she did not let fear stand in her way. She begged for food and supplies to help the poor. She also began teaching children how to care for themselves. Sister Teresa saw a need for children to be educated so she taught them lessons by writing in the dirt because they had no books and nothing to write with. Each day more children gathered around for her lessons. It is during this time that she began to be called "Mother Teresa." Mother Teresa was soon given a single room to live in. She also became a citizen of India.

In 1950, Mother Teresa officially established the Missionaries of Charity with 12 members. A former student from St. Mary's was the first to join her. She was a young Hindu girl who greatly respected Mother Teresa and her work for the poor. Several other members of the Missionaries of Charity were also former wealthy Hindu students of St. Mary's High School. They all lived together in a small building that was donated to them.

Mother Teresa and Children

The Teresa Sisters are present everywhere, making their way down the streets and the alleys of the poor. They shun the glitter of the fashionable areas and the glamour spots, invariably reaching out for the city's seamy underside, seeking out not only the hungry and the naked but also the old and the alienated. the flotsam for whom society does not care and thinks that its moral obligation towards them is honoured by sweeping them under the carpet of welfare programmes.

Avoiding the glare of publicity, the 2,000 Sisters and the 400 Brothers of the Missionaries of Charity have now built up one of the world's largest ‘infrastructures of compassion’.

They run 140 slum schools all over the world, teaching, and mostly feeding, 27,542 children. Their 304 feeding centres provide cooked food to nearly 50,000 people daily.

The 70 homes for abandoned children run by the congregation house 4,000 children at any given point of time, arranging for the adoption of about 1,000 children every year. The 81 homes for the dying destitute.

It is administered by the Missionaries of Charity, admitted 13,000 people last year; 12,000 poor women were taught to earn their living; 5,000 vagrants were given night shelter; and a mind-boggling 6 million people were treated at the 670 mobile clinics.

Mother Teresa And Princess Diana

The nun and the princess first made each other’s acquaintance in 1992 at a convent in Rome, according to Mary C. Johnson, a former Missionary of Charity who was present for the meeting. Mary recalls that Mother Teresa led Diana to her private room, where they spoke alone for almost half an hour. What they talked about remains a mystery.

Afterward, the two of them spent time in the chapel since, as Johnson relays, “Mother told me she and Diana wanted to be alone with Jesus.” The two of them removed their shoes before entering, as was custom for the Missionaries of Charity, and Johnson reminisces, “I’ll never forget the sight of Diana’s shiny black pumps next to Mother’s floppy sandals … [the pumps] looked as though she had worn them only for this occasion. Mother had worn the same pair of sandals every day for more than a decade.”

Princess Diana referred to her meeting with Mother Teresa as the fulfilment of a long-held dream.

In June of 1997, they met again in New York City. According to The Independent, Diana and Mother Teresa “walked hand-in-hand through the streets of New York’s Bronx … They hugged, kissed and prayed together during the 40-minute visit and Mother Teresa blessed the Princess.” It was the last time they would be together before their deaths.

Her Canonization

She spent most of her life trying to serve the sick and poor from her base in Calcutta. Following her death on September 5, 1997, many of her admirers and followers clamoured for the nun to be named a saint in the Catholic Church. In 1999, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk was appointed as a postulator who would promote the case for her sainthood. This was an acceleration of the process, which would usually not begin until after a five-year waiting period had passed. Yet, there was a requirement for sainthood that could not be waived: miracles. Until Mother Teresa was found responsible for two miracles that took place after her death, she could not be canonized as Saint Teresa.

Cases of reported curative miracles are examined by the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Causes of Saints and a committee of medical specialists. If it can be shown the recovery fell outside the laws of nature with no scientific explanation, the prospective saint's intercession with God is considered to have brought about a cure. As the last step, the Pope gives his approval that a miracle occurred.

Mother Teresa had a few 'almost' miracles

Mother Teresa's first miracle was curing a woman with a lump growing in her abdomen.

In 1998, Monica Besra went to a Missionaries of Charity home in West Bengal, India, as she had a fever, headaches, vomiting, and swollen stomach. She had begun treatment for tuberculous meningitis the year before. However, the medications she'd taken intermittently, depending on what her family could afford hadn't kept a lump from growing in her abdomen (though some reports have described Besra as suffering from cancerous tumours, the growth could have been caused by tuberculosis). Surgery was deemed necessary, but Besra was too weak and unwell to undergo an operation.

On September 5, Besra was praying in the Missionaries of Charity chapel when she saw a light emanating from a photo of Mother Teresa. Later, a medallion that had touched Mother Teresa's body was placed on Besra's abdomen, and a sister said a prayer while asking Mother Teresa for help. Besra awoke early the next day to find her tumour had disappeared. Medical exams showed the abdominal mass was no longer there, and the doctors she'd seen agreed Besra no longer required surgery.

The theologians and medical experts who delved into the case found there was no earthly explanation for Besra's recovery. Her cure was therefore attributed to the miraculous intervention of Mother Teresa. This miracle was recognized by the Vatican in 2002.

Mother Teresa's second miracle was curing a man who had brain abscesses.

Marcilio Andrino and his wife Fernanda Nascimento Rocha attend the Canonization Mass for Mother Teresa by Pope Francis, on September 4, 2016, in Vatican City, Vatican.

In 2008, Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino was close to death. An infection had left his brain with abscesses and accumulating fluid, and his worsening condition made him fall into a coma. His wife, Fernanda, prayed to Mother Teresa for help. A priest gave Fernanda a relic of Mother Teresa when the couple got married and she "put the relic on Marcilio’s head, where he had the abscesses. I recited the prayer of beatification and also what came from my heart."

In a last-ditch effort to save his life, he was sent into surgery to drain the fluid around his brain. But before the operation could begin, Andrino miraculously woke up and asked, "What I am doing here?" His wife's prayers were answered as Andrino made a fast and complete recovery. The abscesses and fluid around his brain disappeared without the need for surgery. (In addition, though the drugs he'd taken were thought to have rendered him infertile, Andrino and his wife went on to have children.)

As before, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and a medical committee examined the case. No medical explanation was discovered for how Andrino had been cured. In 2015, his recovery was deemed to be Mother Teresa's second miracle. Pope Francis recognized this in December of that year.

Mother Teresa was canonized nine years after her death

Under Vatican law, the first miracle attributed to a candidate for sainthood means beatification can be conferred. If a second miracle follows, canonization and entry into sainthood can take place.

Recognition of her first miracle resulted in Mother Teresa's beatification in 2003. She was canonized on September 4, 2016, as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.

Pope Francis praised Mother Teresa for her radical dedication to society’s outcasts and her courage in shaming world leaders for the “crimes of poverty they themselves created.”

An estimated 120,000 people filled St. Peter’s Square for the canonization ceremony, less than half the number who turned out for her 2003 beatification. It was nevertheless the highlight of Francis’ Holy Year of Mercy and quite possibly one of the defining moments of his mercy-focused papacy.

Francis has been dedicated to ministering to society’s most marginal, from prostitutes to prisoners, refugees to the homeless. In that way, while the canonization of “St. Teresa of Kolkata” was a celebration of her life and work, it was also something of an affirmation of Francis’ own papal priorities, which have earned him praise and criticism alike.

“Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer,” Francis said in his homily.

For Francis, Teresa put into action his ideal of the church as a “field hospital” for those suffering both material and spiritual poverty, living on the physical and existential peripheries of society.

In his homily, Francis praised her as the merciful saint who defended the lives of the unborn, sick and abandoned, recalling her strong opposition to abortion which often put her at odds with progressives around the world.

“She bowed down before those who were spent, left to die on the side of the road, seeing in them their God-given dignity,” he said.

“She made her voice heard before the powers of the world, so that they might recognize their guilt for the crimes of poverty they themselves created,” he said, repeating for emphasis “the crimes of poverty.”

On October 17, 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work with the poor.

Accepting the honour, she said:

“Lord, make me a channel of your peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that where there is error, I may bring truth; that where there is doubt, I may bring faith; that where there is despair, I may bring hope; that where there are shadows, I may bring light; that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; to understand, than to be understood; to love, than to be loved. For it is by forgetting self, that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying, that one awakens to eternal life. Amen.”

Her humanitarian work transcended the confines of India. She set up an American-based charity in New York City in 1971, secretly travelled to help children in war torn Beirut in 1982 and instituted a home to care for HIV/AIDS victims in New York City in 1985.

Aside from winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Teresa received the Jewel of India, the highest honour awarded to Indian civilians.

She is considered one of the greatest humanitarians of the 20th century. Today we remember her for all the good she has contributed to this world and as she says:

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”