St.Teresa of Calcutta

Born: Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu 26 August 1910 Üsküp, Kosovo Vilayet, Ottoman Empire (present-day Skopje, North Macedonia)

Died: 5 September 1997 (aged 87) Calcutta, West Bengal, India (present-day Kolkata)

Venerated: in Roman Catholic Church Beatified 19 October 2003, Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II

Canonized: 4 September 2016, Saint Peter’s Square, Vatican City by Pope Francis

Major shrine: Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Feast: 5th September

Patronage: World Youth Day, Missionaries of Charity, Archdiocese of Calcutta (co-patron).

Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), commonly known as Mother Teresa and honoured in the Roman Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. [8] She was born in Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia), then part of the Koso- vo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. After living in Skopje for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.

In 1950, Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation that had over 4,500 nuns and was active in 133 countries in 2012. The congregation manages homes for people who are dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis. It also runs soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, children’s and family counselling programmes, as well as orphanages and schools. Members take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and also profess a fourth vow—to give “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.”

Teresa received a number of honours, including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. She was canonised (recognised by the church as a saint) on 4 September 2016, and the anniversary of her death (5 September) is her feast day.

A controversial figure during her life and after her death, Teresa was admired by many for her charitable work. She was praised and criticised for her opposition to abortion, and criticised for poor conditions in her houses for the dying. Her authorised biography was written by Navin Chawla and published in 1992, and she has been the subject of films and other books. On September 6, 2017, Teresa and St. Francis Xavier were named co-patrons of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Calcutta.

Early life

Teresa was born Anjezë Gonxhe (or Gonxha) Bojaxhiu Anjezë is a cognate of “Agnes”; Gonxhe means “rosebud” or “little flower” in Albanian) on 26 August 1910 into a Kosovar Albanian family in Skopje (now the capital of North Macedonia), Ottoman Empire. She was baptized in Skopje, the day after her birth. She later considered 27 August, the day she was baptised, her “true birthday”.

She was the youngest child of Nikollë and Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai). Her father, who was involved in Albanian-community politics in Ottoman Macedonia, died in 1919 when she was eight years old. He may have been from Prizren, Kosovo, and her mother may have been from a village near Gjakova.

According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, Teresa was in her early years when she was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal; by age 12, she was convinced that she should commit herself to religious life. Her resolve strengthened on 15 August 1928 as she prayed at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Vitina-Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimages.

Teresa left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rath- farnham, Ireland, to learn English with the view of becoming a missionary; English was the language of instruction of the Sisters of Loreto in India. She never saw her mother or her sister again. Her family lived in Skopje until 1934, when they moved to Tirana.

She arrived in India in 1929 and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Hima- layas, where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa’s School near her convent. Te- resa took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries; because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes opted for its Spanish spelling (Teresa).

Teresa took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937 while she was a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta. She served there for nearly twenty years and was appointed its headmistress in 1944. Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta. The Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city, and the August 1946 Direct Action Day began a period of Muslim-Hindu violence.

Missionaries of Charity

On 10 September 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as “the call within the call” when she travelled by train to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling from Calcutta for her annual retreat. “I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith.” Joseph Langford later wrote, “Though no one knew it at the time, Sister Teresa had just become Mother Tere- sa”.

She began missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple, white cotton sari with a blue border. Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent several months in Patna to receive basic medical training at Holy Family Hospital and ventured into the slums. She founded a school in Motijhil, Kolkata, before she began tending to the poor and hungry. At the beginning of 1949 Teresa was joined in her effort by a group of young women, and she laid the foundation for a new religious community helping the “poorest among the poor”.

Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister. Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulty. With no income, she begged for food and supplies and experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months:

Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then, the comfort of Loreto came to tempt me. “You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again”, the Tempter kept on saying … Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.

On 7 October 1950, Teresa received Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity. In her words, 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”. By 1997 the 13-member Calcut- ta congregation had grown to more than 4,000 sisters who managed orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centres worldwide, caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless and victims of floods, epidemics and famine.

In 1952, Teresa opened her first hospice with help from Calcutta officials. She converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, free for the poor, and renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and the opportunity to die with dignity in accordance with their faith: Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received extreme unction. “A beautiful death”, Teresa said, “is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted.”

She opened a hospice for those with leprosy, calling it Shanti Nagar (City of Peace). The Missionaries of Charity established leprosy-outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, pro- viding medication, dressings and food. The Missionaries of Charity took in an increasing number of homeless children; in 1955 Teresa opened Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Chil- dren’s Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.

The congregation began to attract recruits and donations, and by the 1960s it had opened hospices, orphanages and leper houses throughout India. Teresa then expanded the congregation abroad, opening a house in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Houses followed in Italy (Rome), Tanzania and Austria in 1968, and during the 1970s the congregation opened houses and foundations in the United States and dozens of countries in Asia, Africa and Europe.

The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Mis- sionaries of Charity. Responding to requests by many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa founded the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests and (with priest Joseph Langford) the Missionaries of Charity Fathers in 1984 to combine the vocational aims of the Missionar- ies of Charity with the resources of the priesthood. By 2007 the Missionaries of Charity numbered about 450 brothers and 5,000 sisters worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries. International charity

Teresa said, “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catho- lic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.” Fluent in five languages – Bengali, Albanian, Serbian, English and Hindi – she made occasional trips outside India for humanitarian reasons.

At the height of the Siege of Beirut in 1982, Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front-line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by Red Cross workers, she travelled through the war zone to the hospital to evacuate the young patients.

When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the late 1980s, Teresa expanded her efforts to Communist countries which had rejected the Missionaries of Char- ity. She began dozens of projects, undeterred by criticism of her stands against abortion and divorce: “No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.” She visited Armenia after the 1988 earthquake and met with Nikolai Ryzhk- ov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

Teresa travelled to assist the hungry in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl and earthquake victims in Armenia. In 1991 she returned to Albania for the first time, opening a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana.

By 1996, Teresa operated 517 missions in over 100 countries. Her Missionaries of Char- ity grew from twelve to thousands, serving the “poorest of the poor” in 450 centres worldwide. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx area of New York City, and by 1984 the congregation operated 19 es- tablishments throughout the country.

Spiritual life

Analysing her deeds and achievements, Pope John Paul II said: “Where did Mother Tere- sa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of oth- ers? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart.” Privately, Teresa experienced doubts and struggle in her religious beliefs which lasted nearly 50 years (until the end of her life); according to her postulator, Brian Kolodiejchuk, “She felt no presence of God whatsoever … in her heart or in the eucharist”. Teresa expressed grave doubts about God’s existence and pain over her lack of faith:

Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness … If there be God—please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.

Kolodiejchuk (the official responsible for gathering evidence for her canonisation) thought that her unhappiness might be misinterpreted by some, but her faith that God was working through her was undiminished; although she pined for lost closeness to God, she did not question his existence. Teresa may have experienced something similar to Jesus, who said when he was crucified: “Eli Eli lama sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) Kolodiejchuk drew a comparison with the 16th-century mystic John of the Cross, who coined the phrase “Dark Night of the Soul”. Other saints (including Teresa’s namesake Thérèse of Lisieux, who called it a “night of nothingness”) had similar experiences of spiritual dryness. According to James Langford, these doubts were typical and would not be an impediment to canonisation.

After ten years of doubt, Teresa described a brief period of renewed faith. After Pope Pius XII’s death in 1958, she was praying for him at a requiem mass when she was relieved of “the long darkness: that strange suffering.” However, five weeks later her spiritual dryness returned.

Teresa wrote many letters to her confessors and superiors over a 66-year period, most notably to Calcutta Archbishop Ferdinand Perier and Jesuit priest Celeste van Exem (her spiritual advisor since the formation of the Missionaries of Charity). She requested that her letters be destroyed, concerned that “people will think more of me—less of Jesus.”

However, the correspondence has been compiled in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Teresa wrote to spiritual confidant Michael van der Peet, “Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see—listen and do not hear—the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me—that I let Him have [a] free hand.”

In Deus caritas est (his first encyclical), Pope Benedict XVI mentioned Teresa three times and used her life to clarify one of the encyclical’s main points: “In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving service to our neigh- bour but is in fact the inexhaustible source of that service.” She wrote, “It is only by mental prayer and spiritual reading that we can cultivate the gift of prayer.”

Although her order was not connected with the Franciscan orders, Teresa admired Fran- cis of Assisi and was influenced by Franciscan spirituality. The Sisters of Charity recite the prayer of Saint Francis every morning at mass during the thanksgiving after Com- munion, and their emphasis on ministry and many of their vows are similar. Francis em- phasised poverty, chastity, obedience and submission to Christ. He devoted much of his life to serving the poor, particularly lepers.

Canonization

Miracle and beatification

After Teresa’s death in 1997, the Holy See began the process of beatification (the second of three steps towards canonisation) and Kolodiejchuk was appointed postulator by the Diocese of Calcutta. Although he said, “We didn’t have to prove that she was perfect or never made a mistake …”, he had to prove that Teresa’s virtue was heroic. Kolodiejchuk submitted 76 documents, totalling 35,000 pages, which were based on interviews with 113 witnesses who were asked to answer 263 questions.

Stained glass depiction of key moments in the lifetime of Mother Teresa at the Cathedral of Saint Mother Teresa in Prishtinë, Kosovo The process of canonisation requires the documentation of a miracle resulting from the intercession of the prospective saint. In 2002 the Vatican recognised as a miracle the healing of a tumour in the abdomen of Monica Besra, an Indian woman, after the appli- cation of a locket containing Teresa’s picture. According to Besra, a beam of light em- anated from the picture and her cancerous tumour was cured; however, her husband and some of her medical staff said that conventional medical treatment eradicated the tumour. Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, who told the New York Times he had treated Besra, said that the cyst was caused by tuberculosis: “It was not a miracle … She took medicines for nine months to one year.” According to Besra’s husband, “My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle … This miracle is a hoax.” Besra said that her medical records, including sonograms, prescriptions and physicians’ notes, were confiscated by Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity. According to Time, calls to Sister Betta and the office of Sister Nirmala (Teresa’s successor as head of the order) elicited no com- ment. Officials at Balurghat Hospital, where Besra sought medical treatment, said that they were pressured by the order to call her cure miraculous. In February 2000, former West Bengal health minister Partho De ordered a review of Besra’s medical records at the Department of Health in Kolkata. According to De, there was nothing unusual about her illness and cure based on her lengthy treatment. He said that he had refused to give the Vatican the name of a doctor who would certify that Monica Besra’s healing was a miracle.

During Teresa’s beatification and canonisation, the Roman Curia (the Vatican) studied published and unpublished criticism of her life and work. Hitchens and Chatterjee (au- thor of The Final Verdict, a book critical of Teresa) spoke to the tribunal; according to Vatican officials, the allegations raised were investigated by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The group found no obstacle to Teresa’s canonisation, and issued its nihil obstat on 21 April 1999. Because of the attacks on her, some Catholic writers called her a sign of contradiction. A separate medical committee ruled that the miracle of Mon- ica Besra, one of three considered by Kolodiejchuk, was evidence of divine intercession. Teresa was beatified on 19 October 2003, and was known by Catholics as “Blessed”.

Canonization

On 17 December 2015, the Vatican Press Office confirmed that Pope Francis recognised a second miracle attributed to Teresa: the healing of a Brazilian man with multiple brain tumours back in 2008. The miracle first came to the attention of the postulation (officials managing the cause) during the events of World Youth Day 2013 when the pope was in Brazil that July. A subsequent investigation took place in Brazil from 19–26 June 2015 which was later transferred to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who issued a decree recognizing the investigation to be completed.

Francis canonised her at a ceremony on 4 September 2016 in St. Peter’s Square in Vati- can City. Tens of thousands of people witnessed the ceremony, including 15 government delegations and 1,500 homeless people from across Italy. It was televised live on the Vatican channel and streamed online; Skopje, Teresa’s hometown, announced a week- long celebration of her canonisation. In India, a special mass was celebrated by the Mis- sionaries of Charity in Kolkata.