Mother
Teresa of Calcutta Mother Teresa, 'Saint of the Gutters' CALCUTTA,
India,
Friday September 1, 1997 5 4:10 PM EDT(UPI) _
Mother
Teresa, the diminutive Roman Catholic nun called the `
`Saint
of the Gutters,'' has died of a heart attack. She was 87.
The fatal
attack today was the fourth suffered by Mother Teresa, who was on a pacemaker.
She had suffered repeated bouts of pneumonia over the past year and The
Press Trust of India said she had been fighting a life-threatening illness
for nearly two months. She had been invited to attend the funeral Saturday
of Princess Diana, but a spokeswoman said she was too ill to make the trip
to London. Sister Christine, a nun at the Missionaries of Charity founded
by Mother Teresa in Calcutta, said: ``The death was very sudden. Mother
was very quiet ever since she heard of the death of Princess Diana. Mother
wanted to go and attend the funeral but her doctors did not advise her
to undertake such a travel.'' Sister Christine said while addressing special
prayers this week, Mother Teresa had said of Diana: ``She died very young."
"I do not understand God's ways.'' Mother Teresa had met Diana this June
18 in New York.
Mother
Teresa of Calcutta
Mother
Teresa, 'Saint of the Gutters'
Mother
Teresa, a frail Roman Catholic nun who never abandoned the poor in her
seven decades of religious service, won global accolades for her work with
the sick and downtrodden of the world. Known as the ``Saint of the Gutters''
for her work among the poor, starving and dying on the streets of Calcutta,
India's largest city, the Nobel Peace Prize winner had practically a cult
following, drawing crowds who admired her faith in humanity. ``If they
are hungry, we give them food to eat. If they are naked, we cloth them.
If they are sick, we visit them and if they are homeless, we give them
a home,'' Mother Teresa said in 1994. Her Missionaries of Charity, the
order she founded with Vatican support in 1950, provides homes for orphans,
cares for lepers and offers shelter for homeless people dying on Calcutta's
streets. Mother Teresa's order, which has a membership of more than 1,000
Catholic nuns, runs homes for the sick and destitute in far flung regions
of the globe, in countries including Russia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the United
States, Jordan, Venezuela, Britain and Australia. ``If there are poor on
the moon, we shall go there too,'' Mother Teresa once declared. Born Agnes
Gonxha Bojaxhiu on Aug. 27, 1910, in the Macedonian city of Skopje, Mother
Teresa was the youngest daughter of a successful Albanian businessman,
who died when she was 8 years old. In her teens, she became a member of
a young people's group in her local Catholic parish and became interested
in the work of missionaries. At 18, she was chosen to join an Irish order,
the Sisters of Loreto, known for their missionary work, particularly in
India. She learned English in Ireland and in 1929, she was sent to Calcutta
to teach. Her first 15 years in India were spent as a teacher at the local
Loreto Convent High School. But in 1946 _ the year before India won its
independence from British rule _ the young nun became convinced that God
wanted her to leave the convent walls and work among the poor in Calcutta's
teeming slums. Four years later, she founded the Missionaries of Charity,
an order emphasizing strict personal austerity and dedicated to the service
of the poor. The organization picked up tens of thousands of destitute
orphans, lepers, beggars and ailing people from the crowded streets of
Calcutta to provide them with shelter, food and, in her own word, love.
With her deeply furrowed face and her bent frame, Mother Teresa became
a worldwide symbol of compassion for those at the bottom of the social
heap. When she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Mother Teresa said
her work would not have been possible without divine support. ``We depend
on divine providence. We get everything as we need it, at the right time,
with no difficulty. I believe this is part of God's maintenance of our
work.'' The Nobel committee said she earned the coveted honor ``because
she gave up her job as a teacher to devote herself to the work among the
poorest population in India.'' As the years passed, Mother Teresa became
increasingly outspoken against abortion, condemning it as a selfish act
that means ``killing a child just to live a better life.'' She urged people
to ``fight abortion through adoption,'' adding, ``If a mother can kill
her own child, what is there left to kill?'' Mother Teresa, who traveled
widely to promote her charity, emphasized her anti-abortion campaign during
her international trips and meetings with heads of state. Her efforts were
reflected in her face: strong, heavily wrinkled, compassionate. But Mother
Teresa had her detractors. A 1994 British-made documentary, ``Hell's Angel,''
and a subsequent book accused Mother Teresa of denying painkillers to her
dying patients due to her personal belief that physical suffering was beneficial
for spiritual well-being. The editor of The Lancet, one of the world's
leading medical journals, also said Mother Teresa's staff made few efforts
to distinguish patients who were critically ill from those who could be
cured some with basic medical treatment. To illustrate the purpose of her
work, she quoted a leper, to whom she gave shelter in her Calcutta home
for the destitute, as saying: ``For so long I was living the life of an
animal, now I am going to die like an angel.'' She often repeated her maxim,
``When we all come face to face with God, we are going to be judged on
how much we have loved. Love has to be built on sacrifice.'' Financial
problems and lack of other resources led her to devise her own techniques
for raising money. On his trip to India in 1964, Pope Paul II gave Mother
Teresa a limousine that she raffled off to raise $13,000. In 1971, Mother
Teresa was named the first winner of the $25,000 Pope John XXIII Peace
Prize. This gift also went to buy medical supplies. When Mother Teresa
heard she won the Nobel Prize, then worth 800,000 Swedish crowns or $191,000,
she said, ``I am unworthy of this honor, but I have accepted the prize
as through it the world has acknowledged the need to work for the poor,
the sick and the homeless.'' She said she would spend the money on building
homes for the poor and lepers. In 1993, India awarded her the first Rajiv
Gandhi Award for National Harmony, named after the prime minister who was
assassinated two years earlier. Though Mother Teresa always was in need
of money for maintaining her charity, she never accepted government grants
for her medical work. She said this would involve bookkeeping, too heavy
a task for her one battered typewriter. Mother Teresa underwent cataract
surgery in New York in 1985. In 1989 she received a pacemaker in Calcutta
to regulate her heartbeat. Two years later, she underwent surgery at the
Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif., to widen her coronary arteries. In
December 1992 she developed pneumonia, and in August 1993 suffered a bout
with malaria. In April 1996 she was hospitalized after a fall that fractured
her collar bone, medical authorities said. Then in August 1996, she had
a heart attack _ her third _ and was placed on a respirator. Despite failing
health and chronic medical problems, Mother Teresa maintained a hectic
schedule supervising her order and traveling the world. Mother Teresa had
celebrated her 87th birthday on Aug. 26 by inviting 200 street children
to a celebration at which she gave them food packets and blessed them,
saying they were the people ``very close to my heart.''
|
POPE PROCLAIMS MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA
BLESSED
(AGI) - Vatican City, Oct 20 - John Paul II proclaimed
Mother Teresa of Calcutta blessed yesterday morning at about 10.15, in
response to the petition pronounced by the Archbishop of Calcutta, Lucas
Sirkar. The banner bearing her image on the facade of St Peter's Basilica
was immediately unfurled. Monsignor Sirkar said, "Most Blessed Father,
the Archbishop of Calcutta humbly asks His Holiness to include the Venerable
Servant of God Teresa of Calcutta among the Blessed". The Pope replied,
using the royal we of infallible declarations, "we accept the wishes of
Our Brother Lucas Sirkar, Archbishop of Calcutta, and many other Brother
Bishops and many faithful Catholics all over the world, after hearing the
opinion of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, by means of Our Apostolic
Authority, we concede that the Venerable Servant of God Teresa of Calcutta
be called Blessed from now on and that her feastday be celebrated in the
places and according to the rules established by the law, every year, in
the day of her ascent to heaven, September 5. Only Saint Francis, canonised
by Pope Innocent IX one year after his death, has enjoyed such a recognition
more rapidly than the diminutive Albanian nun, who died seven years ago.
Two hours before the Mass began, punctually at ten o'clock, Saint Peter's
Square was already filled with people. The crowds spilled out into via
della Conciliation and surrounding streets. The huge TV screens reached
as far as largo Giovanni XXIII. It is estimated that the crowd was bigger
than the Pontifical Prefecture had expected. They had issued 250,000 invitations.
It is difficult to say exactly how many people attended the beatification,
in any case more than 300,000 people. This is a real record, equalling
the celebrations in Saint Peter's Square during the Jubilee Year and the
beatification of Padre Pio in June 1999. A Mass celebrated by the Pope
followed the beatification rite with a procession of people in Indian costume
carrying flowers and candles to the altar. The esplanade in front of the
church, where 100 Cardinals and 100 Bishops were sitting, was decorated
with 43,000 flowers which came from Liguria this time and not Holland.
In honour of Mother Teresa and her commitment to those in need, the privilege
of decorating Saint Peter's Square was awarded to a co-operative "Il Cammino"
whose aims are to help socially sensitive people to recover a position
in society. |
