Order prevails
The paint is peeling off a three-storey grey building in a run-down part of Calcutta teeming with beggars and disabled street children. But busloads of western tourists flock to the spartan house for a guided tour of the new must-see monument in a city rich in colonial history. The visitors usually emerge humbled, often dabbing their eyes, wondering about their own materialistic lives after the face-off.
Mother House - the nondescript Calcutta address where Mother Teresa lived and is buried in a simple grave - is once again under the international spotlight ahead of the 10th anniversary of the death of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun.
Missionaries of Charity, the global order founded by the iconic nun, has announced that special prayers will be said and the poorest of the poor fed in Mother House, the order's headquarters, on September 5 to mark what it describes as the 'tenth anniversary of Mother Teresa's going home to God'.
Mass will also be held and special tributes paid to the 'Saint of the Gutters', in the Vatican, the US and many other countries, according to Sister Nirmala, who succeeded Mother Teresa as superior-general of the humanitarian mission six months before her death.
Sister Nirmala also said that a book containing Mother Teresa's unpublished letters and notes is being prepared for release on September 4, a day before the anniversary. Apparently, some of the correspondence was preserved against Mother Teresa's wishes - she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church. The book highlights a crisis of faith suffered by Mother Teresa for much of her life.
Entitled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, the 416-page book has been compiled by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, a Canadian priest who was one of Mother Teresa's closest confidants and spiritual associate for two decades.
An excerpt from the book quotes Mother Teresa saying: 'If I ever become a saint - I will surely be one of 'darkness'. I will continually be absent from Heaven to light up the lives of those in darkness on earth.'