“I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: ‘My son did it to me…”, once said Mother Teresa. Here is one of Mother Teresa’s common examples of serving “the poorest of the poor” after she had received a call from God. Before long, the helpless, broken-hearted woman expired in the Nirmal Hriday (home for dying destitute) in Calcutta (now Kolkatta), which Mother Teresa opened in 1952.

As Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa and her fellow nuns brought dying Indians from the streets before they died in peace and with dignity. It is only nine years since Mother Teresa passed away on 5th September 1997. She was 87. Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on 27th August 1910 to Albanian parents in Skopje (now the capital of former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). As early as at 12, she made up her mind to become a nun.

At 18, she joined the Order of the Sisters of our Lady of Loreto in Dublin, Ireland for training. She next moved to Darjeeling, India for further training before taking her vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and service to the poor in 1937. She was named Teresa after Saint Teresa of Lisieux, the patron saint of foreign missionaries.

Her first assignment was principal of a Roman Catholic high school in Calcutta. But as she was deeply touched by the sick and the dying in the city’s streets, she was in 1948 allowed to give up her post to work among the unaided and the poor; she also became an Indian citizen that year. In their traditional blue- trimmed saris , nuns of the Missionaries of Charity serve in the various foundations of Mother Teresa: Nirmal Hriday (home for dying Destitute); Shishu Bhavan (home for abandoned and unwanted babies); Shanti Nagar (colony for lepers ) and others.

Mother Teresa believed that prayer opens the heart till it is capable of containing God Himself. For her selfless dedication to the abandoned and the destitute, Mother Teresa has been called the “Angel of Mercy’’ and the “Saint of the Gutter’’. Among the prizes she was awarded are the Pope John XX111 Prize in 1971, the Templeton Prize in 1973, the Dr Albert Schweitzer International Prize in 1975, the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1979 and India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna in 1980. She was the first and only person to be featured on an Indian postage stamp while still alive.

Despite her outstanding services to the poor, the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the unloved and the uncared for throughout society, critics have been there to say things against her. This is life and it is inescapable. Some readers may wish to disagree but I consider Dr Albert Schweitzer and Mother Teresa as the most deserving of all Nobel Peace Prize winners without belittling laureates as Dr Martin Luther King, Dr Norman Borlaug and others.

<B>Kaviraj SOHUR</B>