Oslo, Norway, December 1980. A small stooped woman in faded blue and white sari, worn sandals is receiving an award from the hand of a king. An award funded from the will of the inventor of dynamite. In a glittering hall of velvet and gold and crystal. Surrounded by the noble and famous in formal black and I elegant gowns. The rich, the powerful, the brilliant, the talented of the world in attendance. And here at the centre of it all, Mother Teresa of India. Servant of the poor and sick and dying. To her, the coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

No Shah or president or king or general or scientist or pope; no banker or merchant or cartel or Oil Company or ayatollah holds the key to as much power as she had. None was as rich. For hers was the invincible weapon against the evils of his earth: the caring heart and hers were the everlasting riches of this life: the wealth of the compassionate spirit.

A few years later: A grand conference of quantum physicists and religious mystics at the Oberoi Towers Hotel in Mumbai. There she was conference from intellectual inquiry to moral activism. She said in a firm voice to the awed assembly: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”

Born in Skopje, in August 26 Yugoslavia 1910 of Albanian parents, her father was a grocer and named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa first met a Jesuit missionary from India when she was just twelve years old. From listening to what he said about his the Loreto sisters in Dublin. On 20 January 1929 she reached Calcutta. She spent a year as a novice in Darjeeling.

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For sixteen years Mother Teresa taught geography in Calcutta at Entally. It was not long before she became aware of the intense poverty and suffering among the poor among the poor. Finally through the Archbishop of Calcutta she received permission to start her own congregation, the order of the Missionaries of Charity. This was on 11 October 1950. The young congregations were those students that Mother Teresa had taught at St. Anne’s in Entally convent.

One day, during the heavy monsoon when Mother Teresa was out looking for people in need, she saw a woman’s body lying on a rubbish dump. The body was already decaying though the woman was still alive Picking her up, she brought her to the nearest hospital. The hospital refused to admit the woman. The woman died in her arms. She now realized the dire need for a place to care for the city’s dying. After pleading with the Department of Health she was finally given The Old Pilgrim’s Hostel. The place, which consisted of two large rooms and a hallway, was soon filled to capacity with dying men, women and even children. Today stands a long, low structure which has no door, it is open to all. A wooden board announces in English and Bengali-Municipality of Calcutta. Nirmal Hriday-the place of the pure Heart-Home for Dying Destitutes.

The rich and beautiful Amrita Roy, niece of the first Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr B.C. Roy, became a close friend of Mother Teresa. She died all he could to help the worthy cause.

Taking in the dying destitute was only a first step. On 15 February 1953, “Shishu Bhavan” the Children’s Home, was opened. The first little guest was a tiny baby wrapped in piece of newspaper, picked up from the pavement. He weighed less than three pounds and had to be fed through a nasal tube. Soon dozens of abandoned babies were being brought or left at the gate.

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As if this were not enough, Mother Teresa now started looking after the lepers at Titagarh. More dispensaries were owned and hordes of lepers flocked to receive medicine, dressing for their sores and abundant love. Eventually several small white vans started patrolling the city to bring treatment to the moist neglected areas.

ON the edge of Calcutta the sisters have a town called Shantinagar, the city of Peace, where over 1,000 lepers love. The pope sent Mother a long white convertible Lincoln one day. Promptly the car was raffled and it is with the proceeds from that car that Shantinagar came into existence.

In 1983 Queen Elizabeth II made her an honorary member of the order of Merit and the U.S, President Ronald Reagen presented her with the President Medal of Freedom.

The sisters live the same simple humble life-style of the people they serve. Breakfast is chapattis and banana. Their beds are hard and no mirrors are allowed in their, convents. But to meet each sister is an experience, for their faces reflect the love and joy that is only found in giving.

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Where do they their funds to manage as they do? “God will provide,” they say and He does.

Princess Diana of England who killed in a car accident was a close associate of Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa lives no more, but she will always be remembered by all for her compassionate spirit.

Compiled by P.A. Beddoe