Mother Teresa: A Biography (5 page)

The situation in India was a powder keg waiting to explode. In 1927, rioting broke out when the British Parliament placed no Indians on a commission created to investigate the government of India. Soon after, the British imprisoned Gandhi and his associates but could not silence their message. In 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the Congress. Like Gandhi, Nehru was passionately devoted to the cause of independence. Finally in 1935, the British Parliament passed the Government of India Act, which provided for elected legislatures in the provinces, but restricted the number of eligible voters based on property and educational requirements. Amid this growing agitation between the British colonial government and Indian peoples, Mother Teresa arrived to do her work.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Nonviolent resistance to the British in India continued to grow. By 1939, anti-British feelings intensified as the Indian people watched Britain once more plunge into hostilities with the Germans. The Parliament, as it had during World War I, declared a state of war with Germany on behalf of the Indian people without consulting them.

The consequences of British actions were horrendous in India, resulting in the Great Famine of 1942–1943. The transportation system was now taken over by the British military; even the small river crafts used to deliver rice to Calcutta from the paddies of Bengal were pressed into service. Burmese rice, which accounted for 10 percent of the staple food for Bengal, was cut off, causing a shortage. The Indian government, preoccu-pied by the war, saw the problem as one that needed to be solved locally.

Prices started to rise and both black marketers and money lenders prospered. Poor families in the rural areas, depleted of their meager savings, sold their land. With no food to eat, thousands fled the region for Calcutta, flocking to the city’s already overburdened soup kitchens. Housing for the poor was already overstretched, and thousands of people died in A N S W E R I N G T H E C A L L

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the streets everyday. Adding to the overcrowding and chaos were the swarms of refuges fleeing the Japanese. The noise of the streets was silenced only when people sought shelter from Japanese bombs. In the end, the Great Famine claimed the lives of at least two million, though some figures put the number of deaths closer to four or five million. The death toll was so high, that the traditional funeral pyres lit for the dead, known as
ghats,
never stopped burning in some areas.

The nuns at Entally felt the war’s effects, too. The number of war babies or small infants left at the doorsteps of Loreto multiplied. At one point, Mother Teresa was faced with the problem of how to feed 24 babies by bottle. Orphans fleeing the Japanese came to the convent and school looking for refuge. The convent also opened its doors to other Catholic missionaries escaping from the Japanese.

In time, the British requisitioned the Entally convent and school as a British military hospital; the dormitories, which once housed orphans, were now taken over by sick, wounded, and dying British soldiers. The Sisters of Loreto evacuated, taking with them their students and other orphans, and relocated to hotels in Darjeeling, Shillong, and Lucknow.

Mother Teresa stayed in Calcutta in a building located on Convent Road.

There she continued to teach and care for her young charges.

A CLOSE COMPANION

In 1937, Mother Teresa had taken on more responsibilities; she was put in charge of the St. Teresa’s Primary School as well as Sunday school classes for the children. During the war, she also took on the responsibilities of headmistress when Mother du Cenacle became ill in 1944. That she stayed in the city during the war made a tremendous impact on her students, for it was Mother Teresa’s wish that the lives of the children not be any more disrupted than necessary. The school may have been moved to a different location for the time being, but Mother Teresa worked to make sure that the children’s daily routine stayed as intact as possible.

It was during this period that Mother Teresa met a man who would serve as her spiritual advisor and companion for the next 45 years. Father Celeste Van Exem was a Belgian Jesuit who came to India in 1944. An expert in Arabic and the Muslim faith, he came to Calcutta with the specific intention of working with the city’s Muslims. On July 11, 1944, he and two other priests moved into a house in Baithakana, located not far from Mother Teresa’s small community on Convent Road. When asked whether he would celebrate Mass for Mother Teresa, Father Van Exem recalled how he initially refused, stating that he was “called to India to work 2 6

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for the Muslims and not for Sisters. I was a young priest who wanted to work with intellectuals; I did not want to be busy with nuns.”2

The following day, though, Father Van Exem met with Mother Teresa.

His initial impression was of a very simple nun, concerned with the plight of the poor, but for the most part unremarkable. However, Mother Teresa came away with a much higher opinion of the priest, for not long after, she asked him to become her spiritual advisor. Again, Father Van Exem demurred, saying that he had no desire to become a nun’s spiritual father and that he considered the request a diversion from what he believed to be his true reason for being in Calcutta. But he told Mother Teresa that she needed to put her request in writing to the archbishop of the city. The archbishop granted Mother Teresa’s request. In obedience to the bishop, Father Van Exem reluctantly assumed the role of Mother Teresa’s spiritual father and director. She would turn to him often for spiritual advice and direction.

WAR’S END AND TROUBLED TIMES

By 1945, the war ended and Mother Teresa and her charges moved back to the convent at Entally. During this period, Mother Teresa had written home to her mother describing her life in Calcutta. By now, Drana had moved to Tirana, Albania, where both Aga and Lazar lived.

Drana reminded her daughter that she went to India to work with the poor; Drana also asked her daughter to recall the woman whom Drana had taken in, when no one else would. Perhaps this advice spurred Mother Teresa to rethink her duties in the convent.

No sooner had the hostilities ended with Japan, when India and Calcutta were once more plunged into hostilities and bloodshed. The Indian National Congress had been busy making preparations for India’s eventual independence from British rule. Working with the Congress was the Muslim League, under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a lawyer.

The League was pressing the Congress for the establishment of a separate homeland for India’s Muslims to be called Pakistan. The new country was to be formed from a partition of India.

On August 16, 1946, the Muslim League called a meeting—what members referred to as Direct Action Day—in Calcutta in the Maidan.

The speeches given by league members inflamed an already passionate crowd. As a result, for the next four nights, the city was the scene of bloody riots between Hindus and Muslims. Life came to a grinding halt as the city was pitched into terror. Militants set fire to shops with people still inside. Sewers were filled with the bodies of the dead. Men, women and children, cut by the deadly blades of knives, were left in the streets to A N S W E R I N G T H E C A L L

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bleed to death. Entrails spilled onto sidewalks already red with blood; most everywhere one looked there were dead bodies, while vultures circled overhead. By the end, at least 5,000 persons had perished and another 15,000 were wounded.

For Mother Teresa and the children, the riots also meant no food deliveries. Faced with the prospect of her 300 students going hungry, Mother Teresa broke one of the cardinal rules of the order: she left the convent and went into the streets alone to search for food. Years later, Mother Teresa described the scene:

I went out from St. Mary’s Entally. I had three hundred girls in the boarding school and nothing to eat. We were not supposed to go out into the streets, but I went anyway. Then I saw the bodies on the streets, stabbed, beaten, lying there in strange positions in their dried blood. . . . A lorry [truck full] of soldiers stopped me and told me that I should not be out on the street. . . . I told them that I had to come out and take the risk.

I had three hundred children with nothing to eat. The soldiers had rice and they drove me back to the school and unloaded bags of rice.3

In the aftermath of the riots, Mother Teresa became weak and ill and was directed to rest every afternoon for three hours. Her superiors feared that her condition might make her susceptible to tuberculosis, a malady that claimed many nuns in Calcutta. Father Van Exem remembered this period as the only time he ever saw his spiritual charge cry, frustrated at her weak condition and inability to carry out her duties.

Finally it was decided that Mother Teresa needed a spiritual renewal and a physical reprieve from the work at the convent and school. She was ordered to travel to the convent in Darjeeling for a retreat, which would allow her to rest and meditate. On September 10, 1946, a day that is now celebrated annually by the Missionaries of Charity as Inspiration Day, while traveling to Darjeeling on a dusty, noisy train, Mother Teresa experienced another call. Later she would have little to say about the experience, much as she did when she first received her calling to become a nun.

But to one writer, many years later, she offered her memories of that train ride: “It was on the tenth of September 1946, in the train that took me to Darjeeling, . . . that I heard the call of God. The message was quite clear: I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them.”4

Many years later she also stated that the call was quite clear, “It was an order. To fail it would have been to break the faith.”5

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NOTES

1. Navin Chawla,
Mother Teresa: The Authorized Biography
(Rockport, Mass.: Element, 1992), p. 15.

2. Kathryn Spink,
Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1997), p. 20.

3. Eileen Egan,
Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa
—
The Spirit and the
Work
(Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1986), pp. 27–28.

4. Edward Le Joly,
Mother Teresa of Calcutta: A Biography
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 9.

5. Spink,
Mother Teresa,
p. 22.

Chapter 3

A NEW DIRECTION AND A

NEW JOURNEY

Few would disagree that Inspiration Day was a turning point for Mother Teresa. But there have been accounts of her life that have made erroneous connections between her desire to leave Loreto and her calling on the train to Darjeeling. One popular story stated that the killings and carnage she viewed during the August 1946 riots were the sole inspiration for her leaving. Another account incorrectly stated that she could view the slums of Calcutta from her bedroom window, which led to her decision.

Mother Teresa was no stranger to the poverty in Calcutta. She had seen it firsthand upon her arrival as a novitiate and later as a teacher instruct-ing the children of the poor. But until her train ride to Darjeeling, Mother Teresa firmly believed that she was carrying out God’s plan for her life and that she would best serve God as a nun living in Loreto. That was now all about to change.

THE FIRST STEPS

As Mother Teresa recalled “The message was clear, I knew where I belonged, but I did not know how to get there.”1 On her return from Darjeeling, she immediately sought out Father Van Exem, showing him two sheets of paper on which she had written down her plans. Upon returning to his room at Baithakana, Father Van Exem placed the pieces of paper underneath a picture of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Mother Teresa had given to him as a Christmas gift. Two hours later, he returned and read the papers. He found the key ingredients as to what she was supposed to do: she was to leave Loreto, but she was to keep her vows. She 3 0

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was to start a new congregation or order of nuns, who would work for the poor in the slums. The members of this new congregation would have to take a special vow of charity for the poor. There were to be no institutions, hospitals, or clinics to help in this endeavor. Mother Teresa and her nuns were to work and live among the poorest of the poor. Special attention, too, was to be focused on those people who had no family or were unwanted in any way.

Father Van Exem did not even question Mother Teresa’s explanation.

Years later, he stated that he believed her new vocation was just as true as her decision to leave Skopje and become a nun. To answer this latest calling, it did not matter to Mother Teresa that she had already made one sacrifice in leaving her mother. Now she was fully prepared to make a second: leaving the safe confines of the convent at Loreto and venturing out into the streets of Calcutta to work with the poor.

When Mother Teresa returned to Loreto in October, she led a retreat in which the seeds of her new venture began to sprout. Drawing on the story of Jesus on the cross crying, “I thirst,” Mother Teresa put forth the basic tenets that would guide her journey: “to quench the infinite thirst of Jesus Christ on the Cross for love of souls.”2 The importance of this idea was so great that as her organization grew and built chapels, each one would be inscribed with the two words: “I thirst.” In creating the Missionaries of Charity, she expected those chosen not only to take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, but to take an additional vow as well: to offer themselves to the poorest of the poor.

Leaving the convent was not easy for Mother Teresa. It was, she admitted years later, the most difficult thing she had ever done, even harder than leaving her family and homeland. Besides the emotional turmoil, she still needed permission to leave. Upon consulting Father Van Exem, Mother Teresa decided to pray about her decision for a few months. In January 1947, Mother Teresa decided to write to Archbishop Ferdinand Périer about her plans; Father Van Exem would follow up with a visit.

If Father Van Exem thought that the archbishop would readily agree to Mother Teresa’s plans, he was mistaken. Years later, Périer described the first time he learned of Mother Teresa: One day, as I was making the visit of the Entally convent, someone told me that a young nun of the Community had some queer ideas. Now, whenever anyone tried to put me on my guard in this way, I always asked my self whether the hand of God might not be there, and gave full freedom to the person A N E W D I R E C T I O N A N D A N E W J O U R N E Y

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to explain his or her case. If the religious is humble, obedient, dutiful the impulse may come from God.3

Despite his open-mindedness, Archbishop Périer was not only against the idea of a lone nun living among the poor on the Calcutta streets, but he was also alarmed that one of his priests was apparently treating the idea with some seriousness. Soon after his meeting with Van Exem, the Archbishop ordered Mother Teresa transferred to Asansol, a city located about 175 miles northwest of Calcutta. Here, she was to maintain the kitchen as well as the garden; she would also continue teaching geography. Father Van Exem then cautioned Mother Teresa to say nothing more of her plans for the time being. The two kept up regular correspondence by mail.

A RELUCTANT APPROVAL

While Mother Teresa was away from Entally, Archbishop Périer made several inquiries about her. Keeping her identity a secret, he spoke with Father Julien Henry of St. Teresa’s Church, who also served as the pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Darjeeling and was a teacher of theology. The archbishop carefully asked Father Henry what he thought of a European woman dressed in the traditional sari of Bengali women, working among the poor and dying in the city. The two also discussed whether she could succeed and if such a new order would draw in young women to serve.

Then there were political questions to be considered: what would the reaction of the public be to such an idea, when already there were individuals trying to help the poor?

Father Henry believed that the archbishop’s proposal was, in theory, possible. At the very least, it was a gamble, but Father Henry told the archbishop it was a gamble worth taking. Excited at the prospect of something being done for the poor of Calcutta, Father Henry even asked his congregation to pray for the success of such a program. But little did he or anyone else realize that the person behind this idea was Mother Teresa.

The archbishop was not finished. In addition to speaking with Father Henry, the archbishop sought the advice of the father general of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuit Order), who in turn asked the provincial in India for his thoughts. The archbishop also sought counsel from a specialist in church law.

There was another difficulty to be considered as well. The Vatican did not look favorably on the unnecessary growth of religious vocations for women. As it was, there were already too many small orders of nuns. A 3 2

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bishop applying for a new congregation had to demonstrate that the existing orders did not do the work for which the new one was being established. In Calcutta, the order of the Daughters of St. Anne, with whom Mother Teresa had worked while at the Loreto school, already ministered among the poor. They also dressed in Indian style, slept in a dormitory, ate simple food, and spoke Bengali. How would Mother Teresa’s new congregation be different?

The archbishop asked Mother Teresa if she could work with the Daughters of St. Anne. Mother Teresa did not think so. The Daughters had their own way of doing things and their own traditions. What Mother Teresa was proposing was quite different. Her congregation would be more mobile; they would visit the poor where needed. And she did not want just to work among the poor; she made it clear that she intended to work among the “poorest of the poor.”4 She also wanted to start from scratch and train her novices in her own way.

An entire year passed before the archbishop was satisfied with the information he had received. Only then did he give permission to Mother Teresa to write to the mother general of the Loreto Sisters, asking for permission to be released from the Order. In the letter that Father Van Exem typed for her, Mother Teresa explained her reasons for seeking her release: she wished to continue her vocation among the poor. In asking the mother superior to leave, Mother Teresa requested
exclaustration,
which simply meant that she would continue to live by her vows but would serve as a Loreto Sister in a new setting.

However, when the archbishop read the letter, he insisted that Mother Teresa change
exclaustration
to
secularization.
To be secularized meant that Mother Teresa would no longer be a member of the Loreto Order, but she would continue to honor her vows as a nun. Having to leave the Loreto Order was a severe disappointment, but as Archbishop Périer explained, she was to trust God fully and send the letter.

With a heavy heart, Mother Teresa posted the letter to the mother general in Rathfarnham in early January 1948. Less than a month later, she had her reply:

Since this is manifestly the will of God, I hereby give you permission to write to the Congregation in Rome and for the indult. Do not speak to the Provincial. Do not speak to your Superiors. Speak to nobody. I did not speak to my own coun-selors. My consent is sufficient. However, do not ask for the indult of secularization, ask for the indult of exclaustration.5

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The mother general could not have sent stronger support. Both Mother Teresa and Father Van Exem were overjoyed with the response. Mother Teresa now wrote another letter, this time to the office of the Vatican in Rome. Although the mother general told her to consult no one, Mother Teresa again gave the letter to Father Van Exem, who in turn gave it to Archbishop Périer. The archbishop again stipulated that if the letter was to be sent to Rome, Mother Teresa include her request for secularization.

Despite her fears about having to leave her religious order, Mother Teresa was more worried about how to write to a cardinal. She asked Father Van Exem for help; he simply replied that a “Dear Father” would suffice and not to worry about titles, but to state her case clearly and simply. Finally in February 1948, she sent the letter to Rome. In addition to Mother Teresa’s request, Archbishop Périer also included a letter that outlined her life and service in Calcutta.

Weeks and then months went by with no response from Rome. Finally in July 1948, Archbishop Périer summoned Father Van Exem to his office.

He had received news from the Vatican that very afternoon. Rome had granted Mother Teresa’s request for exclaustration. She would be allowed to remain a member of the Loreto Order and work outside of the convent.

It was a wonderful victory for Mother Teresa and a vindication of the very principals that the Loreto Sisters’ founder, Mary Ward, had been denied.

There was, however, one condition: Mother Teresa would remain outside the cloister for a year, at which time, the archbishop would review her progress and decide whether she would return to the convent.

The archbishop also made it clear to Father Van Exem that the news from Rome was not to be given to Mother Teresa until after the school week was completed. Despite Mother Teresa’s appeals to be told of the decision, the archbishop was adamant: she would be told the following Sunday. An elated Father Van Exem agreed to the archbishop’s request.

On Sunday, August 8, 1948, Father Van Exem arose as usual and celebrated mass in the chapel at the Loreto convent. Following his usual custom, he gave the first sermon in Bengali, and then, after mass was concluded, another sermon in Hindi. He then asked Mother Teresa to meet with him in the convent parlor. When she arrived, he told her that he had received news from Rome. According to his account, Mother Teresa turned pale and requested to go to the chapel to pray. When she returned, he gave her the good news: not only did Rome agree to her request to leave the convent, but also that she continue her life as a Loreto Sister. She then signed three copies of the permission: one for Rome, one for the archbishop, and one for herself. She then asked, “Can I go to the slums now?”6

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AN EMOTIONAL DEPARTURE

Despite Mother Teresa’s willingness to leave immediately to begin her work, there was still much to be done to prepare for her departure. First, she needed to inform the convent that she was leaving. Archbishop Périer had feared a shocked reaction from the sisters. His fears were justified.

When the decree was made public, the mother superior took to her bed for a week. Another sister wept uncontrollably; many were shocked at the announcement or mystified as to why one of their own, particularly one who seemed happy in her surroundings, would want to leave the convent.

Those close to Mother Teresa worried about her health and whether she could sustain a rigorous life on the Calcutta streets. A notice posted on a Loreto blackboard requested that the sisters not criticize or praise Mother Teresa, but pray for her and her decision.

In preparation for her departure from the convent, Mother Teresa purchased three saris from a local bazaar. Each one was white with three blue stripes; this simple garment would become the distinctive habit of her new order. The fabric was the cheapest available at the time, and was of the kind usually worn by poor Bengali women. The blue stripes held a special meaning for Mother Teresa, as the color is usually associated with the Virgin Mary. Father Van Exem later blessed the garments, along with a small cross and rosary, which had been placed on each garment in the St.

Mary’s chapel while Father Henry and another nun watched. Among the last tasks that needed to be done required Father Van Exem’s help.

Mother Teresa needed to write a letter to her mother, explaining all that had happened. She believed that if her spiritual advisor also wrote the letter, that would settle any fears or worries her mother might have about her daughter’s decision to leave Loreto.

Father Van Exem suggested that Mother Teresa take some medical training. Working in the slums, there would be plenty of opportunity to offer medical assistance. She agreed and decided to go to Patna in the state of Bihar where she would receive training from the Medical Mission Sisters at their hospital. Archbishop Périer supported the decision and Sister Stephanie Ingendaa, the mother superior at the hospital, warmly agreed to the request to help Mother Teresa in whatever way the sisters could.