Speaker 1: Mother Teresa was always traveling, flying here, flying there. I
Speaker 1: tend to think of her as living as part in life,
Speaker 1: but of course she took planes like anyone else. Mary
Speaker 1: Johnson remembers this one time in particular, the two of
Speaker 1: them flew from Rome to Sweden. Mary was Mother's traveling
Speaker 1: companion and assistant for the trip.
Speaker 2: We were going there for an ecumenical conference where mother
Speaker 2: was going to be honored and was going to give
Speaker 2: a talk.
Speaker 1: They boarded the plane in their blue and white sares.
Speaker 1: Mary also packed two heavy boxes of miraculous metals, these
Speaker 1: small religious tokens that Mother Teresa would kiss and hand
Speaker 1: out to people. Mary and Mother Teresa settled into their
Speaker 1: seats in first class. They booked economy, but Mary says
Speaker 1: airlines always upgraded their tickets.
Speaker 2: They're trying to avoid all that commotion that would happen
Speaker 2: if people knew Mother Teresa was on the plane.
Speaker 1: Mary says, Mother Teresa pulled on the sleeve of one
Speaker 1: of the flight attendants and said.
Speaker 2: All that extra food you know that people aren't eating,
Speaker 2: that you're gonna have to throw away anyway, Could you
Speaker 2: give it to me and I will use it for
Speaker 2: the poor.
Speaker 1: The flight attendant looked hesitant, awkward. She explained they had
Speaker 1: to throw the food waste away. It was against the
Speaker 1: rules to keep it.
Speaker 2: And she said, oh no, just tell them Mother Teresa
Speaker 2: needs it for the poor. They won't make any fuss
Speaker 2: for you. And anyway, long story short, Eventually she went
Speaker 2: around with a big black trash bag, collecting things from people,
Speaker 2: and of course that's how people came to know that
Speaker 2: Mother Teresa was on the plane. And then they all
Speaker 2: started to come, one by one and standing next and
Speaker 2: Mother would sign things for them and kiss the metal
Speaker 2: and give it to them and pray with them and
Speaker 2: all the rest of it. And when we finally landed
Speaker 2: in Stockholm and we got out of the plane and
Speaker 2: there was that the Catholic bishop and the Lutheran big
Speaker 2: shot guy whoever he was in the Salvation Army general,
Speaker 2: and they were all waiting for us there.
Speaker 1: And his Mother Teresa met them. The flight attendant came out.
Speaker 2: With these two huge trash bags full of sugar packets
Speaker 2: and ketchup packets and salt packets and little candy bars
Speaker 2: and whatever else. And you've had these big trash bags.
Speaker 2: And Mother Tessa saw it, and she turns to the
Speaker 2: Salvation Army general, and she says, you work with the poor,
Speaker 2: don't you? And she gives him the two trash bags
Speaker 2: full of all of these little things from the airplane.
Speaker 3: And I don't have any idea what he did with them.
Speaker 1: Hearing this story made me wonder about Mother treesa the person,
Speaker 1: The woman who loved to hand out miraculous metals so
Speaker 1: much she ran out. The woman who do anything to
Speaker 1: save a few scraps of food, who was tough enough
Speaker 1: to lead a worldwide organization until months before she died
Speaker 1: at eighty seven. The woman who wrote she knew from
Speaker 1: the beginning she was setting herself up for misery, all
Speaker 1: in service to the poor. I wanted to know more.
Speaker 1: She hadn't always been a living saint. She was young
Speaker 1: once she had a whole interior life. How did Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa at the Person become Mother treesat the Icon? I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk with sisters still in the order, but
Speaker 1: finding current sisters who would speak with us was not
Speaker 1: easy to do. Gosh, I'm nervous, say my name's at
Speaker 1: testing arenalist. Oh yes, my name is Erica Lance.
Speaker 4: If you would be willing to chat with me for
Speaker 4: a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Or if there's somebody else, try next. A couple of
Speaker 1: times a sister would answer a few questions as long
Speaker 1: as we didn't record. Okay, I totally understand. Oh, you'd
Speaker 1: need permission from the mother house. She said she couldn't
Speaker 1: give me any I'm not I'm not interested in because
Speaker 1: his sister personally no.
Speaker 4: Also ended the conversation with God bless sorry, God bless you.
Speaker 1: I can't remember which. That was a really quick no.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: I guess that's the way they say goodbye.
Speaker 1: Most of the time they wouldn't talk. I'm getting the
Speaker 1: sound that's still ringing, all right. That time I got
Speaker 1: the busy sogno. Instead, they directed me to a regional house.
Speaker 1: The regional houses would direct me to the Bronx House,
Speaker 1: the main house in the US.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, just imagine they're in grand silence and this
Speaker 4: phone is ringing and wark stuff.
Speaker 1: The Bronx House sent me to the Mother Teresa of
Speaker 1: Calcutta Center, which has an amazing website. By the way,
Speaker 1: when you open it you hear music and Mother Teresa's voice. Antz.
Speaker 1: But they sent me to the top the mother House
Speaker 1: in Kolcutta and the Superior General sister Mary Prama Pierreic
Speaker 1: Sister Prema declined to speak with me. In some respects,
Speaker 1: the refusal to be interviewed makes sense. Mother Teresa wasn't
Speaker 1: always very open with journalists. She was careful about which
Speaker 1: writers and interviewers she talked to, so her followers don't
Speaker 1: like to talk to journalists either. The missionaries of charity
Speaker 1: are very protective of Mother Teresa and the organization. Early on,
Speaker 1: I was warned by multiple people, they're not going to
Speaker 1: talk to you, but some former sisters would, sisters who
Speaker 1: knew Mother Teresa, who worked with her directly, who have
Speaker 1: stories they haven't shared publicly before. When I say mother Teresa,
Speaker 1: what comes to mind immediately for you?
Speaker 5: Who she was? Because I know her, I know her well.
Speaker 1: From Rococo Punch and iHeartMedia. This is the Turning I
Speaker 1: America Lance, Part three.
Speaker 5: Mother, I'm feeling I'm being much too open and not
Speaker 5: guarded enough in a sense for something public. That's my fear.
Speaker 5: I mean, I do he have some apprehension about this?
Speaker 1: I don't think Sister Kathleen Hughes worried she'd tell me
Speaker 1: something horrible or some major piece of dirt. I think
Speaker 1: it's just that concern that any imperfect detail could take
Speaker 1: away from all the good Mother Teresa did. In general.
Speaker 1: One thing I've noticed is that part of Mother Teresa's
Speaker 1: power is that she's a symbol. I think sometimes there's
Speaker 1: a mindset that any blemish or misconstrule could take away
Speaker 1: from that. And I mean think about it. As an MC,
Speaker 1: you're essentially instructed not to talk much about your life
Speaker 1: with the outside world, don't write about it in letters
Speaker 1: to your family, don't discuss it with outsiders. So talking
Speaker 1: to a journalist, I can see why that might feel
Speaker 1: a little strange, even for exmc's. I can't speak for
Speaker 1: Sister Kathleen, but it was clear she wasn't sure she
Speaker 1: wanted to talk.
Speaker 5: It was a definite no from me, and I'm sure
Speaker 5: you felt that it was going to be a definite no.
Speaker 5: And then the Holy Spirit just I don't know how
Speaker 5: I did it. He was like, no, you're going to
Speaker 5: do it, and I said, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: Let me introduce you to Sister Kathleen.
Speaker 5: I was twenty nine years a missionary of charity with
Speaker 5: Mother Trece of Calcutta. I was our first American sister
Speaker 5: to join from the United States.
Speaker 1: Even though Sister Kathleen is no longer an MC, Jesus
Speaker 1: is still her spouse.
Speaker 5: I've lived the last seventeen years as a consecrated woman,
Speaker 5: a consecrated virgin here in the Archdiocese of Boston.
Speaker 1: A consecrated virgin is basically a woman declared sacred by
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, committed to a life of virginity as
Speaker 1: a bride of Christ. She's not a nun per se,
Speaker 1: but Sister Kathleen attends Mass daily and continues her mission
Speaker 1: work in the community.
Speaker 5: I'm very grateful to God for all my years in
Speaker 5: whichever path He's led me. If I may say that.
Speaker 1: Sister Kathleen was drawn to join the MC's the way
Speaker 1: a lot of women were by a British documentary filmed
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine and Kolcutta called Something Beautiful for God.
Speaker 1: When she was twenty years old. Sister Kathleen wasn't a
Speaker 1: sister yet. She was a college student in upstate New
Speaker 1: York at Syracuse University. She heard that Something Beautiful for
Speaker 1: God was going to be screened there.
Speaker 5: And when I arrived, somehow I mixed up the time
Speaker 5: or was delayed, and I missed the film, and something
Speaker 5: inside of me actually kind of gave a sigh of relief.
Speaker 5: I don't know why, it was just instinctive, you know.
Speaker 5: And I knew the guy who was the projectionist, and
Speaker 5: he said, why don't you sit down? It's so good,
Speaker 5: I'll just sit here and show it again just to you.
Speaker 5: And I thought, oh, dear, I guess I'm going to
Speaker 5: see this.
Speaker 1: This film was a big deal because it showed a
Speaker 1: lot of people who Mother Teresa was and it inspired
Speaker 1: a lot of women to join her order, including a
Speaker 1: number of the former sisters we spoke to. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to watch it, and I watched it with Alan,
Speaker 1: who's a producer on the show and also my sister.
Speaker 1: So basically, there was this.
Speaker 4: Guy, Malcolm Muggridge who was a TV commentator and filmmaker,
Speaker 4: and he interviewed Mother Teresa in London for TV and
Speaker 4: he honestly thought the interview wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: I think he called it barely usable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they aired it anyway and it ended up
Speaker 4: getting this huge response. So he decided to go to
Speaker 4: Kolkata to make an entire film about her, and it's
Speaker 4: this film something beautiful for.
Speaker 1: God, It's an interesting film to watch. You see all
Speaker 1: of these Indian locals who are in difficult situations. They're
Speaker 1: sick or dying, they have leprosy. I doubt the film
Speaker 1: crew ask their permission to film them. They don't talk
Speaker 1: with them directly, they don't feature interviews with them. It's
Speaker 1: like Muggrige is interested in what Mother Teresa is doing,
Speaker 1: but not so much in the people she's doing it for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And basically what happens is Mother Teresa shows Muggriage
Speaker 4: around and at one point she comes up to these
Speaker 4: cribs of babies just crammed in these cribs like sardines,
Speaker 4: and she picks a baby up that's really a tiny baby,
Speaker 4: and she kind of holds it out for the camera
Speaker 4: and strokes the baby's head, and the baby.
Speaker 1: Looks very sick. I could see if you are watching
Speaker 1: this and you wanted to help people in the world,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, these people need help. They're right in
Speaker 1: front of you.
Speaker 4: And that becomes even more clear when they go to
Speaker 4: the Home for the Dying, where there are just rows
Speaker 4: of cots of very thin looking people, their hair cut short,
Speaker 4: and Mother Teresa tells Margridge that they've cared for over
Speaker 4: twenty three thousand people.
Speaker 1: There that half of them have died, and Muggridge asks
Speaker 1: this question. He basically says that some people might say,
Speaker 1: why keep these people alive at all?
Speaker 4: And Mother Teresa says that she wants to show them
Speaker 4: love before they die, and she quotes someone she says,
Speaker 4: they live like animals, but now they die like angels.
Speaker 1: Now they die like angels. Sister Kathleen watched all of
Speaker 1: this alone in the auditorium in Upstate New York. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, she joined the Missionaries of Charity, and
Speaker 1: she remembers the first time she met Mother Teresa.
Speaker 5: Somebody said Mother's here, and when I saw her something
Speaker 5: struck me. I felt like I fell back a little bit.
Speaker 5: There was a force, a power, a presence that moved
Speaker 5: me somehow, and she said, come, come, and that's how
Speaker 5: I met her.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies, Mother Teresa was just at
Speaker 1: the start of her rise to fame, but over the
Speaker 1: coming years she'd become an international figure, meeting with the
Speaker 1: likes of Kofiannan, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Queen Elizabeth the
Speaker 1: Dalai Lama. There were critiques of Mother Teresa, to be sure,
Speaker 1: and we'll get to those. But in the public eye,
Speaker 1: she was a living saint.
Speaker 5: She could look right through you. She would look right
Speaker 5: into your soul, into the depths of your soul.
Speaker 6: I loved her she was. I mean, people say, well,
Speaker 6: she's just human and all of that. Yes she was,
Speaker 6: but she was a little bit above humanity.
Speaker 1: Joan Worcester was a sister with the Missionaries of Charity
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, and she said the same type
Speaker 1: of thing about Mother Teresa.
Speaker 6: And when you talk to her, you could that because
Speaker 6: when she talked to you, she wasn't looking at you
Speaker 6: like we look at each other and we're talking. She
Speaker 6: almost looks through.
Speaker 1: You, almost, Joan says, like she could see into your soul.
Speaker 1: But what was in hers? It surprises me sometimes how
Speaker 1: much is it known about Mother Teresa's life. The information
Speaker 1: we do have is often clouded with inaccuracies, repeated over
Speaker 1: and over. But here's what we do know. Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen ten in an Albanian family in
Speaker 1: the city of Scorpia, now part of North Macedonia. Back
Speaker 1: then her name was Anya s Gonya Boyaju. We think
Speaker 1: of Mother Teresa as an impoverished figure, but her family
Speaker 1: was pretty well off. When she was young, her father
Speaker 1: was sort of a celebrity in their town. He was
Speaker 1: a member of the town council, a businessman, and an activist.
Speaker 1: But when she was around nine years old, her father died.
Speaker 1: He may have been murdered because of his political activism.
Speaker 1: A few months after that, seven more close relatives died.
Speaker 1: It was the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic, and they'd gotten
Speaker 1: the Spanish flu. Years later, when she was famous mother,
Speaker 1: Teresa wouldn't publicly talk about her childhood much, but it
Speaker 1: seems her Catholic family became even more religious after her
Speaker 1: father's death and the loss of her other family members.
Speaker 1: As she told Malcolm Muggridge, she felt the religious call
Speaker 1: when she was just twelve years old.
Speaker 7: And since then this forty years, I've never doubt it
Speaker 7: even for a second, that I've done the right thing.
Speaker 5: It was the will of God, that was his choice, and.
Speaker 2: That has given you complete serenity and peace.
Speaker 7: And happiness, the happiness that no one can take from them,
Speaker 7: and has never been a doubt or unhappiness.
Speaker 1: When she was eighteen, she joined the Loretto Sisters a
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic order in Ireland known for its schools, and
Speaker 1: so Anya's became Sister Mary Teresa. She chose the name
Speaker 1: Teresa after Saint Terrez, a saint known for valuing simple
Speaker 1: acts of kindness. The Loretto Sisters stationed Sister Teresa and Kolcutta, India,
Speaker 1: the city she becomes synonymous with.
Speaker 8: What happened was when Mother Teresa was here. You know,
Speaker 8: she's saw white, a white run city.
Speaker 1: This is Shantony Jacobardy. He's a history professor at the
Speaker 1: University of Kolcutta and an expert on contemporary Indian history.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen twenties and thirties, when Mother Teresa arrived,
Speaker 1: India was under British rule.
Speaker 8: Of course, there was a lot of colonial exploitation. Indian
Speaker 8: industrialization was hampered to a large extent. But you know,
Speaker 8: colonial connection also linked up India globally.
Speaker 1: People are moving to Kolkatta from all over. There is
Speaker 1: a Buddhist revivalist movement, and in the thirties it was
Speaker 1: an epicenter to the country's film industry.
Speaker 8: All the major movie studios were located here.
Speaker 1: With the Loretto Sisters, Mother Teresa Todd at a school
Speaker 1: for girls and later became headmistress. In nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: she took her final vows and, following Loretto custom, became mother.
Speaker 1: She was no longer Sister Teresa. She was now Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: Then came September nineteen forty six. Mother Teresa's thirty six
Speaker 1: years old. She's on a train to a retreat in
Speaker 1: the foothills of the Himalayas, and she hears a voice.
Speaker 4: The voice, as she called it, it was very clear
Speaker 4: and distinct.
Speaker 1: That's Father Brian Koladaichik. He's an MC priest and Superior
Speaker 1: General of the MC Fathers. The one person from the
Speaker 1: Missionaries of Charity who agreed to record an interview. He
Speaker 1: edited the book on Mother Teresa's divine calling, compiled her
Speaker 1: personal letters, and studied her spirituality. Father Brian says Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa knew that the voice was Jesus and that Jesus
Speaker 1: told her to follow a new calling. He said to quote,
Speaker 1: give up all and follow him to the slums to
Speaker 1: serve him in the poorest of the poor. In a letter,
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa writes that Jesus told her, quote little one,
Speaker 1: give me souls, Give me the souls of the poor,
Speaker 1: little street children. He said, I want Indian missionary sisters
Speaker 1: of charity who would be my fire of love amongst
Speaker 1: the very poor. The sisters that would offer their lives
Speaker 1: as victims of my love, would bring these souls to me.
Speaker 9: Jesus will say, speaking of the poor, they don't know me,
Speaker 9: so they don't want me. You go and be my life.
Speaker 1: Her call came at a pivotal time in come Cutta's history.
Speaker 1: August sixteen to nineteen, nineteen forty six is known as
Speaker 1: the Great Calcutta Killing in India. Mother Teresa was there.
Speaker 1: Here's Shantony Chakabardi again.
Speaker 8: In nineteen forty six, you had severe communal rats in
Speaker 8: the cities between Hindus and Muslims, as a result of
Speaker 8: which you know, you had dead bodies festering in the
Speaker 8: drains for five to ten days, a lot of people,
Speaker 8: you know, killed or maimed for life.
Speaker 1: Somewhere between five and ten thousand people died. This all
Speaker 1: happened just a month before Mother Teresa heard that voice
Speaker 1: on the train. Then, in nineteen forty seven, India gained
Speaker 1: independence from Britain from the country was partitioned into India
Speaker 1: and Pakistan. Violence broke out near the border with what
Speaker 1: is now Bangladesh. Fifteen million people were displaced from their homes.
Speaker 1: Refugees flocked to Kolcutta.
Speaker 8: And the first thing which must have struck her was
Speaker 8: the huge number of people simply living on the streets,
Speaker 8: and she started catering to them and perhaps to her.
Speaker 8: This strengthened a sense of mission.
Speaker 1: After Mother Teresa's calling on the train, she experienced visions
Speaker 1: for months. Father Brian writes that during this time she
Speaker 1: enjoyed an intense degree of union with our Lord. He
Speaker 1: likens it to a kind of spiritual ecstasy. Mother Teresa wrote,
Speaker 1: I have been longing to be all for Jesus, to
Speaker 1: identify myself with Indian girls completely, and so love him
Speaker 1: as he has never been loved before. I thought it
Speaker 1: was one of my many mad desires. She tells her
Speaker 1: confessor what Jesus said. Eventually she tells the archbishop too.
Speaker 1: She wants to start a new congregation of religious sisters,
Speaker 1: as Jesus instructed, but she's rebuffed. They want her to
Speaker 1: slow down. They need prayer and reflection and timed see
Speaker 1: if her call is true. At one point to even
Speaker 1: say she's not allowed to think about it anymore. Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa obeys, but when they open the door, she goes
Speaker 1: full force, writing letter after letter she needs to obey
Speaker 1: Jesus's call too. Finally, after two years it pays off.
Speaker 1: The Pope grants her permission to form a new congregation.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty, Mother Teresa officially founds the Missionaries of
Speaker 1: Charity under the Archdiocese of Kolkatta. By the way, what
Speaker 1: she created was technically a religious institute, not a religious order,
Speaker 1: and they're not actually nuns, they're religious sisters. Nuns live
Speaker 1: contemplative lives, while religious sisters are active out in the world.
Speaker 1: But these terms are used interchangeably all the time, and
Speaker 1: even former MC sisters will call themselves nuns. The Missionaries
Speaker 1: of Charity started with just twelve sisters. At first, Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa plans they'd live off of just rice and salt,
Speaker 1: but she was advised that's not enough to survive on.
Speaker 1: They were an inn Indian sorry is their habit. Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa said. Jesus told her to quote, dress in simple
Speaker 1: Indian clothes, or rather like my mother dressed simple and poor.
Speaker 1: So Mother Teresa chose a sorry that resembled what women
Speaker 1: who swept the street would wear the blue stripes and
Speaker 1: the border would represent the virgin Mary and purity, and
Speaker 1: their mission would be to serve the poor. But not
Speaker 1: quite how most people understand it. I think Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: often said that the Empces were not social workers because
Speaker 1: for her, helping the poor was not an end in itself.
Speaker 1: It was the means of expressing love for God. It
Speaker 1: was all for God. Let me explain. In empty houses
Speaker 1: around the world you'll find painted in big letters the
Speaker 1: words I thirst. It comes from the Bible, the Gospel
Speaker 1: of John, when Jesus is dying on the cross and
Speaker 1: says I thirst. Mother Teresa interpreted his words metaphorically. She
Speaker 1: said he thirsted not for water, but for love, for sacrifice.
Speaker 1: She believed the MC mission was to satiate that thirst,
Speaker 1: and the way to do it was to quote love,
Speaker 1: suffer and save souls. Here's Mother Teresa addressing a group
Speaker 1: of sisters before they take their vows.
Speaker 10: We are fully consecrated to Jesus to serve the poorest
Speaker 10: of the poor, and by so doing, to say she
Speaker 10: it is tusts the tust of Jesus on the cross
Speaker 10: for love for souls. By working at the salvation and
Speaker 10: sanctification to the poorest of the poor.
Speaker 1: In short, love the poor like you love Jesus and
Speaker 1: bring souls to him. Or you could say conversion. Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa knew this would be hard. Father Brian says, she
Speaker 1: signed up for suffering.
Speaker 9: Your vocation is to love and suffer and save.
Speaker 1: Souls, to love, suffer and say and save souls.
Speaker 9: Because she would say thirst, quench, say shiate Jesus, thirst
Speaker 9: for love and souls.
Speaker 1: And Mother Teresa did just that, even when her suffering
Speaker 1: became great and she did suffer. This is how she
Speaker 1: put it in her letters. In the work, there will
Speaker 1: be complete surrender of all I have and all I am.
Speaker 1: There will be nothing absolutely left. Most of us have secrets,
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves we try to hide, and Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: wasn't any different. She labored with a deep darkness, a
Speaker 1: spiritual darkness, but none of the sisters and the congregation knew.
Speaker 1: She kept it to herself.
Speaker 7: I've never doubt it even for a second that I've
Speaker 7: done that right.
Speaker 5: Think it was the will of God, that.
Speaker 2: Was his choice, that has given you complete serenity and
Speaker 2: peace and happiness.
Speaker 7: The happiness that no one can take from me. It
Speaker 7: has never been a doubt or unhappiness in reality.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately after she formed the MCS, the foundation of
Speaker 1: her life cracked. That Jesus, who'd been speaking to her
Speaker 1: calling her, he went silent. She couldn't feel God's presence anymore. Instead,
Speaker 1: prayer felt dry. She wrote, there is such terrible darkness
Speaker 1: within me, as if everything was dead, and it would
Speaker 1: stay that way the rest of her life. Almost fifty years.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa's darkness was profound. She only told a handful
Speaker 1: of people about it, her confessors and the Archbishop. She
Speaker 1: wrote early on to him, your grace, there's so much
Speaker 1: contradiction in my soul, such deep longing for God, so
Speaker 1: deep that it is painful, a suffering continual no faith,
Speaker 1: no love, no zeal. Souls hold no attraction. Heaven means
Speaker 1: nothing to me. It looks like an empty place. But
Speaker 1: to the world she smiled. By the nineteen seventies, Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa's Order was booming. They'd expanded through most of South America,
Speaker 1: and after the success of the documentary Something Beautiful for God,
Speaker 1: they just kept growing. It seemed like Mother Teresa was
Speaker 1: everywhere at once. She received international awards, empcy houses opened
Speaker 1: around the world, including the US with a continent in
Speaker 1: the Bronx. Despite her unyielding schedule, she still spent time
Speaker 1: with sisters like Kathleen. Sister Kathleen remembers what she calls
Speaker 1: the early days when Mother Teresa would visit the Bronx
Speaker 1: in the summer.
Speaker 5: She would come and the first thing we would do
Speaker 5: was pack the van and go on the picnic with her.
Speaker 5: It was so much fun.
Speaker 1: Sister Kathleen remembers one of these picnics, someone had donated
Speaker 1: a tin of chocolate chip cookies.
Speaker 5: Homemade, which we never got. And one of the sisters
Speaker 5: knew I loved cookies. She used to call me cookie Monster,
Speaker 5: even though we didn't have a lot of cookies around.
Speaker 5: But she brought this tin over to me, and my
Speaker 5: eyes popped open and I showed great delight, and I
Speaker 5: looked over the front of the van and I saw
Speaker 5: mother looking at me. Mother Teresa, and I felt so embarrassed,
Speaker 5: and so I composed myself. And we never saw those
Speaker 5: cookies during the picnic. And it was on the way home.
Speaker 5: I was driving the van and Mother Teresa got the
Speaker 5: cookies and started breaking them up and was reaching from
Speaker 5: behind me and putting them on my lap so I
Speaker 5: could eat little pieces of cookies, and I think I
Speaker 5: got more than anybody else too. She was so afraid
Speaker 5: I would be left out, But that was her thoughtfulness.
Speaker 5: She had that mother instinct with the sisters as well
Speaker 5: as the poor.
Speaker 1: Of course, Sister Kathleen has lots of fond memories of
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa, like one groggy morning when she and Mother
Speaker 1: arrived in Rome after being up all night in an
Speaker 1: airport for a layover.
Speaker 5: I was dead tired. I was ready to drop, and
Speaker 5: I said to the sister in charge there, please let
Speaker 5: Mother go to bed.
Speaker 1: Sister Kathleen insisted Mother get some rest. She hadn't had
Speaker 1: any sleep.
Speaker 5: Mother would not hear of it. Mother Teresa was not
Speaker 5: going to bed, And I saw her go in and
Speaker 5: sit down with these young postulants that were joining, and
Speaker 5: her face became the face of an eighteen year old
Speaker 5: with rosy cheeks, and I couldn't believe it. She wanted
Speaker 5: to inspire them in her own quiet way. And I
Speaker 5: went off to bed.
Speaker 1: After these touching moments with her sister, she'd be off.
Speaker 1: She received more awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize. She
Speaker 1: opened a contemplative branch resisters, another one for brothers. She
Speaker 1: added priests.
Speaker 5: The congregation grew really exponentially for a congregation within a
Speaker 5: founder's lifetime.
Speaker 1: With this growth meant Mother Teresa worked constantly.
Speaker 5: Every time she opened a new foundation, a new house
Speaker 5: of sisters, she always had something to suffer. One time
Speaker 5: she got up during the night to go to the bathroom,
Speaker 5: and instead of the bathroom door, it was the staircase
Speaker 5: to the basement, and she fell down the basement stairs
Speaker 5: broke her arm. Another time she did something to her foot.
Speaker 5: She said, every new foundation she had to suffer. She
Speaker 5: had to make a sacrifice for it. It's mysterious, it's deadly,
Speaker 5: and it's baffling medical science.
Speaker 8: Acquired immune deficiency syndrol.
Speaker 9: The gay plague, as AIDS has been called, is the
Speaker 9: center of a political storm, the.
Speaker 1: Moral majority claiming AIDS is God's punishment for the gay lifestyle.
Speaker 1: On Christmas even nineteen eighty five, Mother Trees opened one
Speaker 1: of the first AIDS hospice centers in the United States.
Speaker 1: It was a fourteen bed guest house in Greenwich Village.
Speaker 1: To our aviator sunglasses and a stony expression to the
Speaker 1: press conference, all business more lou reed than the Saint
Speaker 1: of the Gutters. Sister Kathleen was an MC at the time.
Speaker 5: We would take the people that really had no place
Speaker 5: else to go. We didn't have televisions for them and
Speaker 5: all the amenities. It was really bare bones.
Speaker 1: After New York they opened eights hospices in other cities.
Speaker 5: That was a very controversial move. There was a lot
Speaker 5: of opposition from the neighbors, particularly in Washington, and they
Speaker 5: would have meetings and they would present these hypotheses. If
Speaker 5: somebody up at the aid's home blows their no or
Speaker 5: bleeds into a Kleenex or something and drops it on
Speaker 5: the ground, and then my dog grabs the kleenex and
Speaker 5: brings it to my house, are we all going to
Speaker 5: be contaminated. They did not want us in their neighborhood,
Speaker 5: but Mother was determined.
Speaker 1: Did you get a sense were any sisters scared when
Speaker 1: opening these AIDS homes so early on?
Speaker 5: None of us would ever express that, because it's like
Speaker 5: being in the army, you're prepared for war. In a sense,
Speaker 5: we were always in a war of good against evil.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, Americans agreed Mother Teresa was the
Speaker 1: most admired woman in the world. In an annual Gallupole twice.
Speaker 2: Everybody in Rome knew who Mother Teresa was and she
Speaker 2: would be accosted every.
Speaker 1: Mary Johnson says Mother Teresa drew huge crowds, especially at
Speaker 1: professions when new groups of sisters professed their vows.
Speaker 2: People would fill the church every time, no matter how
Speaker 2: big it was, and on the way from the church
Speaker 2: to the convent, we'd have to form like this kind
Speaker 2: of honor guard.
Speaker 1: The sisters surrounded Mother Teresa to hider when they walked
Speaker 1: in public, but the saris were a dead giveaway. Eventually
Speaker 1: they came up with a new method using Vatican ushers.
Speaker 2: These are big guys and they would come and form
Speaker 2: like a circle around Mother Teresa walking from the church
Speaker 2: to the convent, just so that people wouldn't wouldn't crush her,
Speaker 2: literally crush her wanting to touch her.
Speaker 1: Sister Kathleen says Mother Teresa didn't enjoy the attention.
Speaker 5: Once we were in the airport with her and a
Speaker 5: woman came up to her and said, oh, Mother Teresa,
Speaker 5: I'm writing a book about you. I can't believe you're
Speaker 5: here and to meet you. And Mother Teresa looked at
Speaker 5: her as though she had two heads. So puzzled looking,
Speaker 5: and she said to the woman, have you nothing better
Speaker 5: to do? The last thing on Mother Teresa's mind. With
Speaker 5: any notoriety publicity, she found it a terrible burden.
Speaker 2: Actually, she hated to have her picture taken. She just
Speaker 2: genuinely hated it.
Speaker 5: So she said, I told the Lord for every photo,
Speaker 5: I want a soul out of purgatory to go to heaven.
Speaker 2: And that was the only reason that she would agree
Speaker 2: to get her photo taken.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of photos taken of Mother Teresa.
Speaker 2: Oh a gazillion Gazilian purgatory has to be empty.
Speaker 1: Right close to it. At this point, people already saw
Speaker 1: her as a saint. They're pretty sure she'd be can someday,
Speaker 1: and Mother Teresa saw the possibility.
Speaker 2: To one day. I remember so much. She had all
Speaker 2: of us gathered around and she told us, you know,
Speaker 2: I think all of you should hurry up and die,
Speaker 2: and is what you should all hurry up and die,
Speaker 2: because this pope is canonizing everybody WHOA completely WHOA. It
Speaker 2: also didn't feel like her commanding us all to die. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's be clear, but it confirmed to me something that
Speaker 2: I had very long suspected, that being named a saint
Speaker 2: was something very significant in Mother Teresa's eyes.
Speaker 5: When I think of looking at Mother's face, I remember
Speaker 5: it as tired and in later years like stretched, stretched,
Speaker 5: with a kind of gravity of burden of labor. And
Speaker 5: she asked Pope John Paul the Second, what am I
Speaker 5: to do? I have all these invitations and at the
Speaker 5: same time I have the responsibility for the congregation. And
Speaker 5: he said, you give loving care to the people, and
Speaker 5: then you give necessary attention to the sisters.
Speaker 2: Give necessary care to the sisters, but loving care to
Speaker 2: all the people. And she took this to mean that
Speaker 2: the Pope and therefore God wanted her to limit her
Speaker 2: time with the sisters to what was only essential, and
Speaker 2: to spend all the rest of it accepting all of
Speaker 2: these invitations. She was getting to give speeches, to receive doctorates,
Speaker 2: to whatever, And this's not what she wanted.
Speaker 1: At the risk of overstating it, Mother Teresa became a
Speaker 1: victim of her own success, as she would put it,
Speaker 1: a willing victim of Jesus's love. One expert told me
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa was used by individuals, institutions, and countries for
Speaker 1: their own purposes. But he said Mother Teresa was shrewd.
Speaker 1: She had her own mission, and as he put it,
Speaker 1: she used her users just as much. One of the
Speaker 1: more unusual images of Mother Teresa was filmed on a
Speaker 1: street in the Bronx in nineteen ninety seven, Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: and Diana, Princess of Wales holding hands. Mother Teresa and
Speaker 1: her sorry and Sandal's Princess Diana in a suit and heels.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, Mother Teresa was very ill. She'd
Speaker 1: had three surgeries in the previous year. Her recurring hard
Speaker 1: issues were getting worse. Plus, according to the Associated Press,
Speaker 1: she had London kidney problems too. In just a couple
Speaker 1: of months she would die. Princess Diana visited because of
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa's poor condition. It wasn't the first time they met.
Speaker 1: Mary Johnson remembers she was there in Rome a few
Speaker 1: years earlier, in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 2: For me, Diana and Mother had so many things in common.
Speaker 2: Was it was crazy.
Speaker 1: It does seem crazy, given how differently they lived, the
Speaker 1: class difference alone, but they were both icons in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and nineties, sort of symbols of love, promoting
Speaker 1: humanitarian causes and advocating for the downtrodden. They both navigated
Speaker 1: old institutions, won the Catholic Church, the other the British monarchy,
Speaker 1: both of them.
Speaker 2: Working within these very closed systems, these very demanding traditional
Speaker 2: roles of one sort or another.
Speaker 1: And both of them had internal suffering they tended to hide.
Speaker 1: Princess Diana once said public side was different, obviously from
Speaker 1: the private side.
Speaker 3: Public side they wanted a pair of and set.
Speaker 2: Touched them and everything returned to gold, and all they're worried,
Speaker 2: we've forgotten.
Speaker 7: Sure did they realize that the.
Speaker 3: Individual was crucifying herself inside.
Speaker 1: On the day of princes Diana's first visit, Mary Johnson
Speaker 1: woke up at her usual four forty in the morning.
Speaker 1: Paparazzi were already crowded around the convent. That afternoon, Diana
Speaker 1: arrived by limousine, and.
Speaker 2: Mother told me, don't let anyone else in the chapel,
Speaker 2: and just Mother and Diana for now, all right, And
Speaker 2: so I kind of stood guard out there, not letting
Speaker 2: anybody else in.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa removed her worn out sandals, and Diana took
Speaker 1: off her shoes.
Speaker 2: Too, and Diana these beautiful black pumps, and these two
Speaker 2: shoes were the only ones right outside the chapel, and
Speaker 2: you saw the shoes and these two women inside praying,
Speaker 2: and it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well Diana visited her again five years later in the Bronx.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa looked pale. After they both waved to the crowd.
Speaker 1: Lady Died bent over to say goodbye to Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: with a hug and a kiss, and then drove off.
Speaker 1: It was the last time they would see each other.
Speaker 1: Princess Diana died in a car crash six weeks later.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa died a week after that. She was eighty seven.
Speaker 1: According to testimony, On the day of her death, she
Speaker 1: lay in her room at the mother House in Kolcutta.
Speaker 1: Her breathing was labored, She complained of back pain, and
Speaker 1: an hour and a half before she died, there is
Speaker 1: a power outage. The lights went out in Kolkatta. During
Speaker 1: her life, Mother Teresa had her critics, harsh critiques Behind
Speaker 1: her simple message of love, they saw something else.
Speaker 9: I would say that practically everything about Mother Teresa is
Speaker 9: a result of myth, conscious lies and hyperbole.
Speaker 1: Next time on the Turning. The Turning is written by
Speaker 1: Allen Lance, Lester and me. Our producers are Allen Lance
Speaker 1: Luster and Emily Foreman. Our editor is Rob Rosenthal. Andrea
Speaker 1: Assuage is our digital producer. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amy Gaines, Sarah Ohlunder, Catherine Joyce, Beth
Speaker 1: Ann Macaluso, Travis Dunlap, and consulting producer Mary Johnson. Her
Speaker 1: memoir and Unquenchable Thirst provided inspiration for this series. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Jessica Alpert and John Trati at Rococo
Speaker 1: Punch and Katrina Norville at iHeartMedia. Our theme music is
Speaker 1: by Matt Reid. For photos and more details on the series,
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram at Roccoa Punch. You can reach
Speaker 1: out via email to the Turning at Rococo Punch dot
Speaker 1: com I America. Lance, thanks for listening, Oh