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MOTHER TERESA by Jim Gallagher
All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society
CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY SEE
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CONTENTS Introduction ....................................................................3 Early Years and Family Life .........................................5 Sister Teresa, Loreto Nun ............................................17 Mystical Experiences and Founding a Congregation ............................................27 The Long Dark Night: Mother’s Interior Desolation .......................................58 Final Years ....................................................................72 Bibliography ..................................................................77
All rights reserved. First published 2013 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society 40-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042 Fax: 020 7640 0046. This revised edition Š 2016 The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society. 978 1 86082 189 9
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INTRODUCTION For decades she had been known worldwide simply as ‘Mother’. Barely six years after her death, on Mission Sunday, 19th October 2003, which was also the end of a special Year of the Rosary, Pope John Paul II raised her to the ranks of the blessed. In a ceremony which he later described as a highlight of his pontificate she became Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. This speedy advance to beatification came about after the miraculous cure of a woman suffering from a massive abdominal tumour, on the very first anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death, 5th September 1998. Some ten years later in Santos, Brazil, a young mechanical engineer suffering from brain tumours lay in a coma and dying. By 9th December 2008 he was in an acute clinical state: obstructive hydrocephalus. It was decided to go ahead with emergency surgery. At 6.10pm he was taken to the operating theatre but the anaesthetists were unable to perform the necessary tracheal intubation for anesthesia. Meanwhile his wife, who had been begging Mother Teresa’s intercession since March of that year, at precisely 6.10pm went to her parish church with some friends and with the parish priest to redouble their calls on Mother Teresa’s intercession.
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At 6.40pm when the neurosurgeon returned to the operating theatre he found the patient wide awake and without any pain. When he was examined fully the next morning he had no headache and was completely asymptomatic, fully conscious and with no pain. The Postulator of the Cause of Mother Teresa, Fr Brian Kolodiejchuck of the male Missionaries of Charity, issued a statement after Pope Francis approved the miracle, at the end of 2015. “It is providential,” wrote Fr Brian, “that the approved miracle which happened in Santos, Brazil, in 2008 through the intercession of Blessed Teresa was brought to the attention of the Postulation only in late 2013 and received approval in December 2015. Thus Mother Teresa’s canonisation becomes a major event of the Jubilee of Mercy. “Even in her lifetime, Mother Teresa was an icon of God’s tender mercy, radiating the light of God’s love to so many through the Works of Mercy, both corporal and spiritual. By her example and through her intercession, may Mother Teresa inspire many to ‘give their hearts to love and their hands to serve’.” The canonisation date was set for 4th September 2016, with the first Feast of St Teresa of Calcutta being the next day, the 19th anniversary of her death.
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EARLY YEARS AND FAMILY LIFE When she died in September 1997, presidents and princes from around the world flocked to India to attend her funeral. They were representing their governments, their countries, their peoples - to pay tribute to the small stooped woman who had become one of the most recognised faces on the planet. Her name, Mother Teresa, had become synonymous with goodness, kindness and a life of mercy and charity. The woman who during her life had been honoured by countries from the Soviet Union to the United States, hailed from Albania in the south-east of Europe. When she was born in Skopje (later to become part of Serbia) on 26th August 1910, her parents gave her the baptismal name of Agnes. She was the third child born to Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, having an elder sister Age, and an elder brother Lazar. As a child she was plump and round and tidy and her family usually referred to her by her middle name of Gonxha, which in Albanian means ‘flower bud’. Prosperous Family When Agnes Gonxha was born, her family lived in very comfortable circumstances. Her father Nikola, known as Kole, was a successful entrepreneur. He had three different business partnerships: with a doctor friend he
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had opened up a pharmacy/chemist shop in Skopje; then he collaborated with a builder and their company was responsible for building the first Skopje Theatre, among other things. His third successful business was in partnership with an Italian man, importing luxury products and foodstuffs into Albania. This business would sometimes take Kole away from home to other countries on buying trips. He spoke five languages. Agnes’ brother Lazar remembered in later life how joyful were his father’s homecomings and great the delight of the three children at the different gifts he would bring them. The children also noted how, even when he was working locally, every day their mother Drana would change her dress and fix her hair for her husband’s return from work to the family home for their evening meal and family Rosary. Kole was a member of the Town Council of Skopje. He also played regularly in the town’s brass band and loved to sing too. Their house was very comfortable and had a nice garden. The family also owned the house next door. They lived just down the street from the local Catholic church of the Sacred Heart. Catholics formed only 10 per cent of the Albanian population and the Bojaxhiu family’s religious and social life centred around the lively parish. Dranafile was quite a bit younger than her husband and married in her teens. They loved each other dearly. Drana was a good and conscientious homemaker. She was also a
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devout and pious Catholic. Most mornings she took her three children with her to Mass at Sacred Heart church. Kole was considered quite progressive as he insisted on giving his daughters as well as his son a full education. The three children attended primary school in the parish halls of Sacred Heart church. Classes were conducted in Albanian and then in their final year in Serbo-Croat, the language which would be used when they went on to the state-run secondary school. Early ‘love for souls’ In later life Agnes was to write, “From childhood the Heart of Jesus has been my first love.” On making her first Holy Communion she seems to have received a special grace from Him. As an adult she remembered, as she wrote in a letter, “From the age of five and a half years, when I first received him, the love for souls has been within. It grew with the years.” This “love for souls”, for the whole person, was also easily absorbed from her mother and father. When Kole had to go away on a business trip he would ensure that he left Drana not only enough money for the family budget but also extra to ensure that she would be able to feed anyone who came to their door in need. Indeed there were so often strangers at the table that the young Agnes was to remember in later life that she just thought they were relatives come to share the family
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meal. It was only much later that she realised that her mother was in the habit of feeding and clothing complete strangers and treating them as one of her own. But Drana did not only wait for those in need to knock at her door. If she heard of anyone sick or suffering she would make her way to them. Lazar remembered that it was most often Agnes who accompanied their mother on these missions of mercy. In later life Agnes particularly remembered helping her mother to wash a poor alcoholic woman who was covered in wounds. She also remembered going with her mother to visit a young mother of six children who was dying of cancer. In 1908 the Young Turks took power and by 1910 they were insisting on the use of the traditional Arabic alphabet. The Albanians organised massive popular rallies in favour of the Latin alphabet. In March 1910 a popular revolt against the paying of taxes on imported goods to Istanbul spread very quickly. A 20,000-strong army crushed this brutally. In August of that year, after thousands of terrified Albanians had fled as refugees from a new reign of terror, the Ottoman forces took direct control of the region. During the following year this war plunged thousands of Albanian families into poverty and illness. In 1912 when the Balkan States formed an alliance to divide among themselves the Ottoman possessions in Europe, the Albanians found themselves forced to surrender their neutrality and fight on the side of the
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declining Ottoman Empire. Soon Skopje was under Serbian occupation. Thus even before the outbreak of the First World War, the young Agnes and her family experienced the bitter fruits of racial, ethnic and religious rivalry. At the end of the Second World War Agnes would once again witness such hatred and inter-ethnic violence, albeit in another country and another continent. The end of the ‘Great War’, the ‘war to end all wars’ in 1918 only renewed the debate about the new borders of the Balkans. And very shortly the comfortable existence of Agnes and her family would come to an abrupt end. Her father Kole was a passionate defender of Albanian independence. He joined a movement which wanted to keep the province of Kosovo, inhabited mostly by Albanians, in the Greater Albania. In the end, the new federation of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians - known from 1929 as Yugoslavia received most of northern Albania, including Kosovo. But in 1919 Kole was still arguing his case and even travelled the 160 miles from Skopje to Belgrade to attend a political dinner on the subject. When he arrived back home he was clearly a sick man. It was generally believed that he had been poisoned. Seeing the poor state he was in Drana despatched Agnes to fetch the parish priest. At the presbytery of Sacred Heart parish she was told that the priest had gone out. The child ran to the railway station hoping to find him and instead spotted a priest she
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had never seen before. She ran up to him and explained that her father was very ill indeed. The priest immediately left with her for the Bojaxhiu house and administered the Last Rites to Kole. The family rushed Kole to hospital where he was operated on the next morning. The following day, however, he died. Speaking in 1982 Agnes’s brother Lazar said, “Our family’s suffering began at the time the Yugoslavs and the Albanians fought for Kosovo and the other Albanian provinces, among which included the city of Skopje. Our father was very active in politics and very concerned about the national Albanian issue. He tried to obtain national rights for the Albanians and he tried with all his heart to conserve the unity of the Albanian territories of Yugoslavia with Albania. Once Yugoslavia took control of the territories the family was persecuted and my father was poisoned.” Massive crowds attended the funeral of Nikola Bojaxhiu, including an official deputation from City Hall. He was known as a just and sincere man and a great benefactor of the area. On the day of his funeral all the jeweller shops closed as a mark of respect. The children in the local schools were issued with a commemorative handkerchief to mark the day. After Kole’s death, a business partner appropriated the assets of his business and the family was left with only the house they lived in. The loss of her husband for a time paralysed Drana with grief. She relied heavily on her
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children, particularly her eldest, Agnes’s big sister Age, to whom she even temporarily entrusted the keys of the house. Hardworking Mother But Drana also now had to support her family, nine yearold Agnes and Lazar and Age. She was a hardworking woman and one of entrepreneurial spirit. She set up a business of handcrafted embroidery, moving on also to sell different types of cloth. The business further expanded to include locally crafted carpets. Her son Lazar accompanied her to the textile factories and in later life remembered how impressed he had been when the managers would seek her advice about which materials and designs to use to increase their sales. The family home continued to be filled with the friends of the Bojaxhiu children. As they were growing up the girls took a full part in school and parish life. Both Agnes and her elder sister sang in the church choir and were also members of the Albanian Catholic Choir of Skopje, which gave benefit concerts. Agnes had a fine soprano voice and was often called on to sing solo. Active Teenager Family and friends noticed that young Agnes never wasted time. When she was not helping with housework, studying, or even tutoring her friends who needed help with their studies, enjoying social activities with friends
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and taking part in parish activities, she would have her head in a book, an avid reader. A young Jesuit priest, Fr Jambrenovic, had set up a parish library. He became parish priest in 1925 and seemed to have a great rapport with the young people of his parish. He set up for them the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the youngsters were challenged by the words of the Jesuit founder St Ignatius Loyola: “What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What will I do for Christ?” The young people were encouraged to serve Christ in His poor. They also learned about the lives of saints and missionaries. It was possibly via the parish library that Agnes first learned about and was exposed to the writings of the young French Carmelite nun who was canonised in 1925: St Thérèse of Lisieux. In 1927 the young saint was declared patroness of missionaries. That same year in far-away India, Mohandas Gandhi suggested to the Christians in India, “... start at the bottom ... In a word, ... go to the people not as patrons, but as one of them, not to oblige them, but to serve them and work among them.” Little could he have known that in a farflung corner of south-eastern Europe there was a young Albanian girl who would one day be revered as India’s greatest citizen alongside Gandhi himself! But all that was far in the future. In 1927 in Skopje Agnes and two of her friends were receiving mandolin
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lessons from a second cousin of the Bojaxhius’. His name was Lorec Antoni who became a well-known musician and composer. He directed the mandolin orchestra and gave Agnes and her friends lessons without ever thinking of charging for this service. Agnes told him that if he didn’t want the money he should at least take a dinar from each of the girls and she could send it to the missions in India! For the youth group, the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, heard lots about the various Jesuit missions from their young pastor. Agnes loved to read the magazine published by the Association for the Propagation of the Faith called ‘Catholic Missions’. Young Catechism Teacher Agnes, like all her family, was very involved in the life of Sacred Heart parish. She often acted as interpreter from Serbo-Croat to Albanian for the priest. As well as giving lessons to those of her classmates who needed tuition in various subjects, she taught catechism class to the little ones of the parish. This, and her ‘love for souls’ seems to have instilled in her a great love of teaching which would mark her future life. Friends of the time remembered that on social gatherings such as picnics (when they would sing as they made their way into the countryside on horse-drawn carts) or at other get-togethers, Agnes would always carry a notebook with her. Sometimes she would read to them
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Young Agnes Bojaxhiu before she left home and family to enter religious life.
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some of the poems she had written. She also had a couple of articles published in a local newspaper, ‘Blagovest’. Her cousin Lorenc Antoni was convinced that she had talent and could have made it as a writer. Fr Jambrenovic had helped the young members of the Sodality to organise little prayer groups to pray for the missions. The ‘Call’ was becoming more insistent within Agnes’s heart. At first it seems that she did not want to become a nun and leave her family. Her love was for teaching and she enjoyed particularly teaching the Faith to the little ones of the parish. She later said that she had known from the age of twelve that she wanted to dedicate her life to God in some way. How to know a vocation? Her cousin Lorenc remembered that Agnes wondered how you could know if God was calling you and even if you could know? He also remembered that Fr Jambrenovic spoke of vocation in terms of joy. If God were calling you, you should feel deep joy at the thought of serving God and neighbour within this vocation. In 1927 and 1928 Agnes spent longer times than usual on retreat at a well-known Marian shrine in the region. Approaching her 18th birthday, she went there for the last time on the Feast of the Assumption, 15th August, 1928. Having discerned her call, Agnes Bojaxhiu did not hold back. As she said later, “I wanted to be a missionary. I
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wanted to go out and give the life of Christ to the people.” Priests from the same Jesuit province as Fr Jambrenovic were working in Bengal. They wrote that sisters from another international order had been working in the area for some time. They were sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin and were of the Irish branch of that community. Agnes would apply to join them and contact was made with the motherhouse in Rafthfarnham, Dublin. When she told her mother of her decision, Drana, well aware that it would mean she would never see her daughter again, could not come out of her room for twenty-four hours. When she did emerge, once more composed, she told her daughter, still not quite eighteen, “Put your hand in His hand and make your entire journey with Him.” On 1st September 1928 Albania became a monarchy under King Zog I. Agnes’s brother Lazar, now 21, had been made a lieutenant and was to become an equerry to the king. When Agnes wrote to him to congratulate him, and also to tell her of her decision to enter religious life for the missions in India, Lazar was understandably upset and wrote back asking how a lovely young girl like her could give up everything and go so far away, probably never to see him and the rest of the family again? In her reply Agnes wrote one sentence which Lazar remembered word for word for the rest of his life. “You will serve a king of two million people,” she wrote. “I shall serve the king of the whole world.”