- Title: Mother Teresa’s order keeps alive legacy of Calcutta’s ‘Saint of gutters’
- Date: 2nd September 2016
- Summary: SISTER NATALIE, ONE OF THE CARE GIVERS AT THE SHISHU BHAVAN CENTRE FOR CHILDREN, HOLDING A BABY IN HER ARMS / DEFORMED FEET OF THE CHILD IN SISTER'S LAP (SOUNDBITE) (English) SISTER NATALIE, ONE OF THE CARE GIVERS AT THE SHISHU BHAVAN CENTRE FOR CHILDREN, SAYING: "Much we cannot do but we make them comfortable in their movements, on time we feed them and we make them happy." KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA (SEPTEMBER 01, 2016) (REUTERS) PRIEST GIVING SERMONS TO THE NUNS FROM THE MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY RELIGIOUS ORDER FOUNDED BY MOTHER TERESA PRAYING AT THEIR HEADQUARTERS - POPULARLY KNOWN AS THE MOTHER HOUSE JESUS CHRIST ON THE CRUCIFIX
- Embargoed: 17th September 2016 03:03
- Keywords: Mother Teresa sainthood church Pope Kolkata missionaries
- Location: KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA
- City: KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA
- Country: India
- Topics: Religion/Belief,Society/Social Issues
- Reuters ID: LVA0034XVGGUF
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: This bustling metropolis of Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, is where a diminutive woman at the tender age of 19 arrived in 1929 from her birthplace of Skopje and taught in a girls school.
With her tireless work among the poorest of poor, the dying and the destitute, the lepers and orphans, Mother Teresa acquired the sobriquet "saint of the gutters".
On Sunday (September 4) Mother Teresa will be made an official saint of the Roman Catholic Church, just 19 years after her death.
She began her Missionaries of Charity in 1950 with just 12 nuns. Now, the order has 4,500 nuns across 133 countries and its sisters in their distinctive blue-bordered saris are a common site in her adopted city, home to 15 million people.
At Nirmal Hriday (Tender Heart) the first care shelter set up by her in 1950, the nuns of her order continue to provide love and care to the dying and destitute in the same vein she demonstrated throughout her life.
Sister Nicole, the nun heading the centre, said their volunteers are always on the lookout for people desperate for help on the streets of Kolkata, at the railway platforms and around its slums.
The people are picked up from the streets, brought to the centre and given a proper bath, their wounds are tended, and they are given a hair cut, shave and clean clothes to wear, as well as from regular meals and basic medication, she said.
"She (Mother Teresa) had seen people dying in front of her on the streets, or they are being eaten up by maggots, rats. They are eating from the dustbins, they are lying near the dustbins or drainages. She saw it herself and her heart was paining. She wanted a place where she can (could) bring and take care of them. Give them the dignity of life," sister Nicole said as she lovingly fed a woman too week and old to feed herself.
Most of the 100 or more inmates at the centre are too weak to walk or feed themselves so volunteers help them with their basic chores.
Some of them lovingly massage the lepers while others give them a shave or a helping hand to walk.
A Nobel peace prize winner, Mother Teresa is seen as one of the most influential women in the Church's 2,000-year history.
Hundreds of thousands of faithful are expected to attend the canonisation service for the tiny nun, which will be led by Pope Francis in front of St. Peter's basilica.
Meanwhile, at a child care centre, just a stone's throw away from the Mother House where she spent a large part of her life, there is a whole section devoted to mentally and physically challenged orphans.
Volunteers from the order's global network come to Kolkata to spend time at these centres and help the children forget their miseries for a while.
Sister Natalie, one of the care givers at the Shishu Bhavan child care centre, said there was not much that they could do to improve the lot of the children who were mostly afflicted with cerebral palsy.
"Much we cannot do but we make them comfortable in their movements, on time we feed them and we make them happy," sister Natalie said.
Although criticised both during her life and following her death, Mother Teresa is revered by Catholics as a model of compassion who brought relief to the sick and dying, opening branches of her Missionaries of Charity (MoC) order around the world.
In her adopted India, a primarily Hindu nation, Mother Teresa has been accused of looking to convert the destitute to Christianity - something her mission has repeatedly denied.
Father Xavier Jairaj, who performed the prayers at the MoC in the last week before her death, said the controversies were unnecessary and deviated from the focus of her life, which was the service of God.
"She has lived a saintly life. Lived and shared her life for others, so in the eyes of people and in the eyes of God, I am sure she has done God's work," Father Xavier said after conducting a prayer at the Missionaries of Charity on Thursday (August 31).
Mother Teresa was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia. She became a nun at 16 and moved to India in 1929, creating her mission in 1950.
The Roman Catholic Church has more than 10,000 saints, many of whom had to wait centuries before their elevation.
But Mother Teresa, one of the most recognisable faces of the 20th century, was put on the fast track to sainthood after dying of a heart attack on Sept. 5, 1997.
The late Pope John Paul II bent Vatican rules to allow the procedure to establish her case for sainthood to be launched two years after her death instead of the usual five, and she was beatified in 2003.
The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven and able to intercede with God to perform miracles. She has been credited with two miracles, both involving the healing of sick people.
The latest involved a Brazilian, Marcilio Andrino, who unexpectedly recovered from a severe brain infection in 2008. He and his wife Fernanda will attend the canonisation, which is considered the highlight of Pope Francis's Holy Year of Mercy. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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