Mother Teresa canonisation: The making of a saint

Mother Teresa said: ‘The poor give us much more than what we give them.’ She narrated how once a beggar had given money for her work. She remained undaunted seeing the enormity of the task before her.

Mother Teresa will be officially declared a saint at the Vatican on Sunday, September 4. It was my privilege to be present in Rome for her beatification on October 19, 2003. Despite the weather forecast for a rainy day, the skies remained clear. Did one need another miracle?

The ancient tradition of the Church, however, requires two scientifically proven extraordinary acts (miracles) attributed to the person that natural causes could not explain and which should have occurred due to prayer to the person being considered for sainthood. One miracle is required for beatification — a pre-requisite for sainthood, and the second similarly proved for canonisation. Since both science and theology have to strictly scrutinise the said acts, it usually ends up with a case of some person cured of an incurable disease through the sole intercession to the holy person and to no other. It normally takes decades — sometimes even centuries — to complete the exhaustive inquiries that the Church deems necessary to confirm without a shred of doubt purported miracles of potential saints. Some claims of miracles don’t stand up to the scrutiny and are dropped during investigations. In the case of Mother Teresa, however, it took only 19 years, a relatively shorter period compared to many other saints in the Church’s history. It must be said here that such a process is exclusive only to the Roman Catholic Church.

Mother Teresa is more than just a saint. She became a legend in her own lifetime. Born in Albania in 1910, a faraway land from India. She joined the Loreto sisters in Ireland and was not yet 19 when she landed in Kolkata, which eventually made her a saint. And long before making her final journey to her eternal home on September 5, 1997, she had won nearly every Indian’s heart. And not just in India, but the world over.

At her beatification, a well-known Indian journalist who was critical of the Church’s canonisation process said that her life itself was a miracle and that for most Indians she was already a saint. “Do we then require this tedious process of the Church?” he had asked. While obviously not familiar with the stringent Church procedures, he did make a point. For, much before the Vatican started the long process, her statues had begun to appear next to Ma Durga at many of Kolkata’s street celebrations.

The late Pope John Paul II had approved the first finding that the healing of a Bengali tribal woman, Monica Besra, was a miracle. It is claimed that a locket with Mother Teresa’s photo on it had cured the woman of a stomach tumour in Kolkata in 1998. The second miracle, according to sources in the Vatican, involved the healing of a Brazilian man with several brain tumours in 2008.

Former chief minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu had cherished a personal friendship with this “Saint of the Gutters”. No wonder then that Missionaries of Charity, first for women and then for men, had been the fastest growing religious order in the lifetime of its founder. At the time of her death, there were 3,842 sisters serving in 594 homes across 120 countries. Today, there are 5,150 sisters serving in 758 homes in 139 countries.

Despite having been accorded such incredible honours, she had her own share of criticism too. British atheist Christopher Hitchens, who made a film against her work titled Hell’s Angels for a TV channel, was not the only one who was critical of her. She was also an object of criticism by the RSS, whose chief Mohan Bhagwat last year questioned the motive of Teresa’s charitable work.

It was in May 1987 that she visited Indore to inaugurate the first convent of Missionaries of Charity sisters. I had the unbelievable but the covetous task of translating her speeches into Hindi. I sensed distinct spiritual vibrations passing through my being as I stood next to her. It was a day filled with sheer inspiration. A great humbling experience was when I later sat with her. She not only served me tea but also removed the used cup later.

The most powerful story I heard that day, which has been often used in my sermons and writings, is about the “generosity of the poor”. Once she had brought food to a poor family who had not eaten for two days.

On receiving the food, the woman went out and returned with only half the portion. When asked where she went, instead of first serving her children, she replied: “Mother, my neighbours too have not eaten for two days. They are as hungry.”

That’s why Mother Teresa was convinced: “The poor give us much more than what we give them.” She also narrated how once a beggar had lovingly contributed money for her work.

She remained undaunted seeing the enormity of the task before her. “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop,” she would tell her sisters. On her canonisation, if we could only follow her little piece of advice: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

The writer is a founder-member of Parliament of Religion and former spokesperson, Catholic Bishops Conference of India.