I was untrained as a public speaker, yet during the four years after the beatification I was invited to speak about Mother Teresa for audiences around the United States. I came to realize that my witness was a gift that needed to be shared with people who would never be able to make the journey to Calcutta or to meet Mother Teresa personally. Standing that day on the rooftop overlooking St. Peter’s Square, I knew this new journey would not be an easy one, and it would require faith and confidence in God. Yet, probably thanks to Mother Teresa’s intercession, I realized also that we are all called to recommit to our callings and to delve deeper into our faith.
Pope John Paul II addresses a multitude of pilgrims as he announces the newly beatified Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. (October 19, 2003)
The author attended the beatification of Mother Teresa with a group of pilgrims from North Carolina, led by Bishop Emeritus William Curlin, a friend of Mother Teresa and an advocate for the poor.
I.
Bishop William G. Curlin
I first met the retired bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina, at the airport in Philadelphia. We were preparing to embark on a two-day pilgrimage to Assisi before heading to Rome for Mother Teresa’s beatification. My book Come and See had just been released, and the day before I had appeared on the ABC program Good Morning America to talk about Mother Teresa. The elderly, humble man greeted me at the airport gate and took my hands with a smile: “I saw you on Good Morning America and laughed when you told the story about Mother Teresa loving Godiva chocolates.”
Feeling slightly embarrassed, I told the bishop that it was one of the few quotes the program had chosen to include. Her sisters in Atlanta had given me a small gift package for Mother Teresa when I first traveled to Calcutta in 1995. I was surprised to find the small box of Godiva chocolates in the paper bag. A sister told me that Mother loved expensive chocolates. I imagined that Mother Teresa might have eaten one chocolate and given the remainder to her sisters. The small indulgence also seemed so human to me. I have never tasted chocolate since without thinking of Mother Teresa.
During the retreat in Assisi, Bishop Curlin shared his personal stories about his years working with Mother Teresa. He first met her in the early 1970s, when he was pastor of St. Mary’s Church in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, DC. He was the homilist at a convention at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Mother Teresa was present during one of her visits to Washington. In their first meeting, Mother told then-Father Curlin she had seen food being thrown away at a gathering. She asked him if they could collect it and give to the poor instead, but he told her it was against the law to give away food that could be contaminated. She accompanied him to St. Mary’s Church and observed the homeless being given food from the parish kitchen. She advised the church’s pastor that what the people he served really needed was love. “She saw Christ at the door in the poor,” Bishop Curlin told us in his homily in Assisi. Mother developed a friendship with this priest who served the poor that would extend to his flying to India on more than one occasion.
Bishop Curlin listens to a pilgrim in our group during our tour of Rome before the beatification.
Bishop Curlin took the pilgrimage group to Assisi before attending the beatification. He felt that Mother Teresa’s humble charism and her dedication to serving the poorest of the poor was similar to the spirit of Saint Francis.
Atlanta’s Archbishop John Donoghue blesses the Missionaries of Charity Gift of Grace Home in Atlanta, Georgia for women afflicted with HIV/AIDS. The special Mass was held shortly before Mother Teresa herself visited Atlanta to witness the work. (1995)
Mother Teresa places a blue-and-white flower garland around a statue of Mary in honor of her visit to the Gift of Grace Home in Atlanta, Georgia. Mother Teresa was a strong advocate of grottoes for the countless blessings of Mother Mary, to whom she consecrated her Order of the Missionaries of Charity.
“She saw Christ at the door in the poor.”
Soon after that first meeting in the 1970s, Mother Teresa called Father Curlin out of the blue and said she would see him the following week. Father Curlin thought she was planning a trip to Washington, DC. Instead, she told him, “You come to India. I have 150 of my superiors all coming together.” At her request to lead a retreat for the sisters in India, some of his friends said they would pay his way if he would pray for them.
When he arrived in the blistering heat of India, Mother Teresa greeted him with, “Where are my things?”
Mother Teresa and Bishop Curlin first met when he was the pastor of a poor parish in Washington, D.C. After their meeting, with the help of friends, he was able to travel to Calcutta for more encounters with the beloved caretaker of the poor.
A man lies curled up on a plastic tarp and dirty bedsheet on a Calcutta sidewalk.
These pavement dwellers on Sudder Street have made a makeshift home out of straw mats, tarps, and a few wooden poles. (October 2018)
This poverty-stricken man, walking near New Market in Calcutta, is gathering recyclable items in canvas bags to earn a few rupees. (December 2015)
Nearby travelers began touching her feet and putting the dust on their foreheads.
“I thought you wanted me,” he said.
“Yes, but I want my things, too.”
Mother Teresa was referring to boxes of supplies she hoped would come with him from New York City, but Father Curlin had not known that British Air would fly the supplies free of charge. His point of departure had been from Washington, DC.
Father Curlin ran into some trouble getting through passport control. He did not have a visa and did not know he was supposed to have one. “On the plane or to jail,” said the official. Mother Teresa told the official that Father Curlin would not go to jail, and she even threatened to call Mrs. Gandhi. Father Curlin and Mother sat on two plastic chairs waiting for the official to decide. While they waited, she joked with him: “Thank you for allowing me to have one of your great works of mercy.”
“Which one?”
“To visit the prisoners in jail,” referring to Father Curlin’s close encounter with going to jail that day.
While they continued to wait, nearby travelers began touching her feet and putting the dust on their foreheads. She would pat their heads and hand them miraculous medals. Finally, they made it out of the airport and into the famous beat-up ambulance that served as Mother Teresa’s main form of transportation in Calcutta in the early years. People were banging at the window of the ambulance, and Mother Teresa advised Father Curlin against donating money, or he would not make it down the street.
That first night, a sister walked Father Curlin down a dirty alley flanked by trenches. A man was urinating in one, while another man washed pots