Mother Teresa Of Calcutta Documentary

[Jerica Shilt]

Thatmeant it was time to put her back in the spotlight, said a panel of those who were promoting a new documentary about the life of this saint, known popularly as Mother Teresa, who founded the Missionaries of Charity.

Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly said at an Aug. 31 news conference hosted at Vatican Radio that the Knights made this film "to reach a new generation with the witness and example of Mother Teresa" and to inspire them.

"Thank you for promoting this type of initiative that helps, in a creative manner, to make accessible the zeal for evangelization, especially for the young generations promoting the desire to follow the Lord who loved us first," the pope said in an Aug. 25 letter written to Kelly, replying to news of the Vatican premiere.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Ganxhe Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in Skopje, now capital of North Macedonia, on Aug. 26, 1910. On Sept. 5, 1997, she died of cardiac arrest at the motherhouse of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, India.

The documentary by Emmy award-winning filmmaker David Naglieri features archival footage and interviews with dozens of commentators who knew Mother Teresa personally. It was filmed on five continents, providing interviews with many Missionaries of Charity and offering on-the-ground images of their work following in Mother Teresa's footsteps, serving in what Cardinal Sen O'Malley of Boston called "the most hellish places" on Earth to "bring the light and the love and the mercy of God."

The cardinal was overcome with emotion at the news conference, recalling attending a talk Mother Teresa gave in the 1960s before her work was widely known and when he was still a young brother preparing for ordination as a priest of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin.

He said, "this was one of the most inspiring talks I ever heard in my life." He and the small number of people who had come to hear her speak, he said, "were all weeping after a while. We were aware that we were in the presence of holiness."

The documentary shows the work Mother Teresa inspired and, "when she was feeding the hungry or holding the hands of someone as they lay dying, she was treating them as she would the most important person in her life, Jesus Christ himself," Kelly said in a media release.

In her early years, Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of Jesuit missionaries in Bengal and by age 12 was convinced that she should go to India. She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto who worked in Calcutta. After a brief period at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English, she arrived in Calcutta in 1929 and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, North Bengal. She made her first religious vows as a nun on 24 May 1931 with the name Teresa after Therese de Lisieux, the Patroness of missions. She took her solemn vows on 14. May 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto St Mary's convent school in the neighbourhood of Entally, Calcutta.

The socio-political scenario of Bengal (the famine of 1943 and the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1946) which plunged Calcutta into despair and horror disturbed Mother Teresa. On 10 September 1946 on a train journey to Darjeeling, Mother Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within a call". In 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple blue-bordered white cotton sari and adopting Indian citizenship, Mother Teresa ventured out into the slums and founded the Missionaries of Charity [MC] in 1950.

The Indian media took notice of Mother Teresa from early 1950s, soon after she started working in Mothijhil slum, close to her former convent Loreto Entally. Here was a white, western, Roman Catholic nun showing compassion and providing support for those typically impoverished and abandoned by the society left behind by 300 years of British governance. Mother Teresa was the new face of mother India rising from the humiliation of the partition of Bengal into West Bengal and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Unlike some of her Calcutta-born detractors who now live overseas and have not stooped to serve in the horrid Calcutta slums, Mother Teresa walked her talk working in the slums.

In 1962 she received the Padma Shree (highest civilian national award) as well as Magsaysay international award. Pope Paul VI gifted to Mother Teresa the car he used on his visit to Bombay in 1964 which she gave away in a raffle. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace prize, was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in 1985 and a hundred other awards in her lifetime.

It was Mother Teresa's encounter with British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge which brought her global attention. He interviewed her first in 1968 for BBC television and subsequently shot a documentary film on her life in Calcutta in 1969. The by-product of that two-part television film, nearly an hour long, was his 1971 book entitled Something Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

No saint in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church ever had three International film festivals dedicated to her name. The Mother Teresa International Film Festival (MTIFF) Calcutta 2003, 2007 and 2010 began with 10 international films, including both feature and documentary, highlighting her mission and work. This year, MTIFF has 16 films and is going global for the first time, reaching some 15 Asian countries.

Mother Teresa's contribution to Church and society

It is difficult to judge the impact Mother Teresa had on the Church and society. It would be true to say that her dedication to helping those who couldn't help themselves has been an inspiration to the world. I know of a young man who volunteered in her Kalighat home for the dying. Inspired by her philosophy of service, he made a film entitled "My Karma" which won several international awards. Not only, this Hindu Bengali youth quit his job as an officer in the Indian Navy and now works in a Muslim slum in Narekeldanga area of Calcutta, calling Mother Teresa his mother and Mahatma Gandhi his father.

Mother Teresa did more than inspire. She taught that the greatest way to show God's love is to meet the needs of others, one person at a time, here and now. She offered no magical solution to the problems and injustices in the world. But, she showed how we can make a difference in the life of one person at a time!

The Nirmal Hriday (home for the dying), her first institution started in 1952 in the temple precincts of Calcutta's presiding deity, Kali, is still the hallowed spot which makes her friends and foes stand in awe. It was the place where Mother Teresa met every journalist who interviewed her for the first time. Since its creation, some 50,000 men, women, and children taken from the streets have been transported to this home. Of these, one half died surrounded by love and kindness. For those who survived, the Sisters helped to find a job or they were sent to homes where they could live happily.

Her Shishu Bavan (home for babies), as well as other orphanages have offered shelter and hope to countless children around the world. Many of the children that were raised in them went on to become productive citizens and some even joined her mission.

The leper colony which Mother Teresa founded with monies from her 1971 Pope John XXIII Peace Prize has offered a place where the outcasts can find acceptance. When she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she convinced the committee to cancel the official banquet and use that money to buy meals for 15,000 poor.

She opened houses for alcoholics, drug addicts, AIDS patients, and the homeless and destitute even in Rome. Mother Teresa also supported the rehabilitation of women prisoners with the help of late West Bengal Marxist Chief Minister, Mr Jyoti Basu.

Mother Teresa and her critics

She has been praised by many individuals, governments and organizations; however, she has also faced a diverse range of criticism. These include objections by various individuals and groups, including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Parenti, Aroup Chatterjee, Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council), against the proselytizing focus of her work including a strong stance against

contraception and abortion, a belief in the spiritual goodness of poverty and alleged Baptisms of the dying. Medical journals also criticised the standard of medical care in her hospices and concerns were raised about the opaque nature in which donated money was spent.

The radical-atheist assaults on Mother Teresa are the intellectual equivalent of mugging an old woman, says Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked-online. He says, cowardly muggers target little old ladies because they're usually slow, frail and unlikely to fight back. Attacking the wrinkled, hunched-over Sister of Calcutta, accusing her of being a goggle-eyed fanatic and a mad and disgusting celebrator of poverty, is the atheistic equivalent of mugging an old woman. And a dead one, to boot!

To take us into Mother Teresa's world, celebrated British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge sets up a contrast between his commonplace perceptions of the world and those of Mother Teresa. Early in his book Something Beautiful for God (Harper & Row, 1971) Muggeridge mentions a brief stay (as the assistant editor of The Statesman newspaper) in Calcutta in the 1930s during which he became disgusted by the slums and wretched social conditions. He remembers self-righteously asking people, "Why don't the authorities do something?". And he quickly left.

A British journalist (now living in the U.S.) Christopher Hitchens was a witness which the Vatican called to give evidence against Mother Teresa's Beatification and Canonization process. "It was by talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she wasn't working to alleviate poverty", Hitchens told the tribunal. He quoted Mother Teresa, "I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it for Christ. I do it for the Church".

Mother Teresa had absolute belief in providence. She did not depend on monies from any body not even the government. She believed financial dependence becomes financial enslavement. She often said, "If ever people stop supporting the apostolate of the Missionaries of Charity, they will simply cease to exist".

3a8082e126