Knights of Columbus exhibit pays tribute to a lifetime of sacrifice

She had no children of her own, but when she died, she was mourned the world over. Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the future Mother Teresa, became mother to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India. Although as a Unitarian and irregular church-goer, I hold no deep religious convictions, I was deeply moved by the extensive exhibit about Mother Teresa at the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven.

Using large printed panels and photographs that cover several rooms, the exhibit traces her beginnings, born in 1910 in Skopje, the capital at that time of the Kosovo province of the Ottoman Empire, later to become part of Yugoslavia.

It was a multiethnic and multireligious city. Gonxha, which means flower bud, was the youngest of five children. Her father, Nikola, was a merchant, and her mother, Drana, was a woman of deep faith who greatly influenced her daughter. When her father died, her strong-willed mother provided for the family by weaving and selling Albanian linen.

When Teresa was 18, she left home and entered the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland. Her mother’s parting words were, “Put your hand in his hand and walk all alone with him and never look back.” She never saw her mother again. She was given a new name as a postulate in Ireland at the Loreto Sisters, the Irish branch of an order which had foundations in Bengal, India.

Sister Teresa applied to go to India, and after two years as a novitiate, she made her temporary vows. At first, she taught in a Bengal school for girls. In 1937, she took her vows for life, and became principal of St. Mary’s School. She became fluent in English, Hindu and Bengali. In 1942, the British army requisitioned the school as a military hospital during the war.

The great turning point in Sister Teresa’s life came in 1943, when the famous famine in Bengal took the lives of more than 2 million and Gandhi’s nonviolent movement for independence was gaining strength. Then, in September 1946, during a train ride from Calcutta to Darjeeling, Mother Teresa received an inspiration or a call from Jesus in which she was asked to found a new religious community. After a long year of waiting for permission, the archbishop allowed her to write to the Loreto superior general, and in August 1948, she left the Loreto convent and stepped alone into the slums.

By January ’49, this diminutive but determined woman opened a school and medical dispensary in the Motjhil slum, using only volunteer help. By June 1950, she had a community of 12 nuns, and a year later, had opened 11 new centers. “We cannot let a child of God die like an animal in the gutter,” she said.

In 1952, she opened Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), where the homeless sick and dying could be cared for. One of them said, “I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.”

The exhibit continues with photos of her home for unwanted children, her leprosy center, her first center outside India, in Venezuela, and with her increasing worldwide recognition, homes in Rome, Tanzania, Australia, East Germany and the Soviet Union. A home for AIDS patients opened in 1985.

The exhibit also tells us about the darkness and questioning that came to her life after her special call from Jesus. At times, she felt rejected and at a loss, but she finally came to believe that her pain and uncertainty were part of his pain, suffered on Earth.

Eventually, Mother Teresa received more than 700 awards and honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, although her simple, monastic-like room (reproduced at the exhibit) remained the same. As she aged, she suffered from heart disease, malaria, pneumonia and bone fractures, but her thoughts were always of others.

She said, shortly before her death on Sept. 5, 1997, “On the last day, Jesus will say, whatever you neglected to do unto one of the least of these you neglected to do unto me.” Her legacy lives on today in the religious community she founded, the Missionaries of Charity, which has more than 700 houses of refuge throughout the world.

The photograph of this remarkable woman, her face weathered and worn, but the eyes bright with hope, is an image I shall remember for a very long time.

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