‘Love Does Not Live By Words’ - Saint Teresa of Calcutta, 25 years after her death

Portrait of Mother Teresa, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.Twenty-five years ago, on September 5, 1997, Mother Teresa of Calcutta ended her earthly pilgrimage. On October 2003 she was proclaimed blessed by John Paul II and in September 2016 she was canonized by Pope Francis.[1] During her life she received several awards, most notably in 1979, the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

On her way back from Oslo, after receiving the award, Mother Teresa made a stop in Rome, where journalists crowded around to interview her. Among the questions, there was this provocative one: “Mother, you are 70 years old! When you die, the world will be the same as before. What has changed after so much effort?”

She could have reacted sharply to the impertinent journalist; instead, unperturbed, she smiled at him: “You see, I have never thought I could change the world. I only tried to be a drop of clean water in which God’s love could be reflected. Does that seem little to you?” There was a great silence in the room, one of embarrassment and emotion. Mother Teresa, addressing herself directly to the journalist, then said: “Try to be a drop of clean water yourself and then we’ll be two. Are you married?” “Yes, Mother.” “Tell that to your wife, too, so there will be three of us. Do you have children?” “Three children, Mother.” “Tell your children also so there will be six of us…”[2]

On another occasion, she added, “Life is the greatest gift of God. That is why it is painful to see what is happening today: life is being voluntarily destroyed by wars, by violence, by abortion. Yet we were created by God for greater things: to love and to be loved!”[3]

The work of Mother Teresa today

What has changed in the world since Mother Teresa’s death? There is something that can be said about this today. Twenty-five years have passed and the figures speak for themselves. At the time of her death (September 5, 1997), the congregation of the Missionaries of Charity numbered 594 houses in 120 countries around the world, with about 4,000 sisters.[4] On December 31, 2010, there were 5,029 religious in 766 houses. Today, 25 years later, there are 5,123 sisters in 758 houses, with over a million lay collaborators throughout the world, except in Vietnam and China (excepting Hong Kong).[5] In July they were expelled from Nicaragua.

However, such a community would not have appealed to Mother Teresa. The effectiveness  of the Missionaries can in no way be measured by the number of members. For her, it made no sense to speak of numbers, since what counts is the individual person for whom the service is carried out. “I do not agree,” she said, “with making things big. For us what matters is the individual. In order to love a person, we have to come into close contact with them. If we wait to reach a lot of people, we won’t know what we are doing and we will never be able to show love and respect for the individual person. I believe in the one-to-one relationship; for me each person represents Christ, and since there is only one Jesus, that person at that moment is the only one in the world.” [6]

This is also the reason why the work of the Missionaries cannot be criticized for not solving the social problems facing individuals. Their mission is limited to the personal and spiritual level: restoring dignity to people, being close to them by serving them, loving them without self-interest or profit, having the availability typical of children who are open to everything. “We ourselves realize that what we do is just a drop in the ocean. But if there were not that drop, the ocean would miss that lost drop. We shouldn’t think in terms of numbers. We are only able to love one person at a time, and serve only one person at a time.”[7]

In 1947, when she felt “the call within the call”[8] to attempt to establish a new foundation, Mother Teresa wrote to her archbishop: “You are still afraid [of intervening in Rome for my sake]. If the work [that I intend to do] is  exclusively human it will die with me; if it is  God’s, it will live for centuries to come.”[9]

Over time, the work of Mother Teresa has also branched out into different families: the Missionary Brothers of Charity were born in 1963; the International Association of the Collaborators of Mother Teresa in 1969; the Contemplative Missionaries of Charity in 1976; three years later, the c; then, in 1984, the branch of the Fathers – priests – Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa: a challenge to modernity?

In a 1996 interview, Tiziano Terzani, a journalist and writer, who observed the world from a secular perspective at that time, asked her: “Why give more value to love instead of medicine? To prayers instead of painkillers?”

“We are not nurses,” Mother Teresa replied, “we are not social workers, teachers, or doctors. We are sisters. Our centers are not hospitals where people are treated. They are homes where people no one wants are loved and feel they belong to something.” Mother Teresa was not concerned with poverty as such, and – in a certain sense – not even with tackling it. It was crystal clear to her that God had created us and we had created poverty.[10] “The Earth has enough for everyone’s needs but not enough for everyone’s greed,” Mahatma Gandhi said, and she added, “The problem will be solved when we give up our greed.”[11]

The journalist nevertheless insisted: “Mother, you once said that, if you needed to choose between the Church and Galileo, you would still be on the side of the Church. But isn’t that a rejection of modernity, a rejection of science, which today is the great faith of the West?” Mother Teresa asked: “Then why does the West leave people to die in the streets? Why? Why is it up to us in Washington, New York, in all these big cities to open places to feed the poor? We give out food, clothing, shelter, but above all we give love, because feeling rejected by everybody, feeling unloved is even worse than being hungry and cold. This is the great sickness of the world today, in the West as well.”[12]

Two characteristics of this work that reveal its modernity are clear in the short interview. The first is the original purpose for which the Missionaries of Charity arose, embodied in the House of the Dying in Calcutta; the second is an approach to human poverty that offends the dignity of “the poorest of the poor” in our Western world.

The House of the Dying

After 1947 – the year that marked the independence of India – two million refugees from East Pakistan arrived in the country, and many converged on Calcutta, bringing with them a considerable burden of sickness and death. Mother Teresa was immediately aware of this and, when she began to help the dying and terminally ill, she had an overwhelming need of an environment in which to house and assist them. Within a week she had seen seven Hindus die, in the street, in the rain, abandoned by everyone.

The idea of opening a home for abandoned dying people became urgent when she encountered a woman on the street, near death, whose body had been partly eaten by rats. Mother Teresa was particularly shocked and tried to take her to the nearest hospital. The doctors refused to admit her, as there was nothing more that could be done. While Mother Teresa was still insisting with them, the woman died in her arms. It was perhaps one of the most tragic experiences of her life, so much so that she immediately took courage and went to the mayor to ask for a place to care for the dying. The authorities of Calcutta understood the urgency and offered her a building in Kalighat, near the temple of Kali (the goddess of destruction and death, but also the goddess who gives her name to the city). At first the premises were a hospice for pilgrims, but over time they had become a den of petty thieves, drug addicts and prostitutes. It took the name Nirmal Hriday (House of the Pure of Heart), but was soon known as the House of the Dying.

The news of the new use of the premises spread in a flash and there were protests because “the foreigner” was allegedly taking advantage of it to convert the dying to Christianity. Someone lodged a complaint to remove the religious women and return the property to the temple of Kali. A doctor was charged to verify the use that was being made of it.

Going there without warning, the medical officer saw Mother Teresa treating the wounds of a dying man and, in an unbearable stench, freeing him from the worms that were coming out of his wounds. The sister saw this man and thought that he had come to visit the sick.  She offered to accompany him. The officer said he wished to examine the place, but preferred to do so by himself.

After the visit, some protestors were waiting for him. The doctor declared himself ready to expel the women. However, he asked those present to replace them in the work they were doing: “Tell your mothers and wives to do what they are doing. Then I will be most willing to remove those women.”[13] There was no response. In any case, up to 1997, when Mother Teresa died, about 67,071 people had passed through those beds, and 28,259 had died assisted by the sisters. Today the number of guests has exceeded a hundred thousand.[14]

If living with the priests of Kali was not easy, everything changed the day Mother Teresa picked up the head priest of the temple from the street. He was sick and dying, thrown on the ground like an old and useless rag, with no one taking care of him except the little nun.[15]

Mother Teresa’s ‘First Love’

The House of the Dying was the “first love” of Mother[16] who, in caring for the dying, saw the Gospel fulfilled, especially the parable of the Last Judgment: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”[17] The purpose of the work of the Missionaries of Charity, symbolized by the House of the Dying, is all there: to achieve a purity of heart that makes it possible to discern and love the divine in each person, and to make every person, even the most derelict, rediscover his or her divine identity. “The true end of one’s life is to die feeling loved by God, to return to that One-Everything of which we are a part.”[18]

In 1986, John Paul II visited the House of the Dying, perhaps the only place in the world where he did not make a speech: “He entered silently […], as any priest enters the room of a dying person. […] At the entrance there was a blackboard, with two flowers drawn on it and these words: “February 3. Two entered. Zero left. Four died. We do this for Jesus.” The pope did not move from that blackboard. Mother Teresa, a practical woman, took him by the hand and led him into the first room, that of the men. Then into that of the women.” The journalist reporting the episode concluded: “At the bottom of the world there is Calcutta. And at the bottom of Calcutta there is Mother Teresa’s dormitory.”[19]

Another visitor to the House of the Dying was Princess Diana, in 1992, during an official journey with Prince Charles to India. Unfortunately Mother Teresa was absent, as she was held up in Rome by health problems. Princess Diana also wanted to meet the terminally ill and the dying with simplicity and show them true affection.[20] She was very touched by this experience and, passing through Rome, she wanted to meet Mother Teresa. Afterwards, she dedicated herself to the poor, the disabled, and starving children. When Diana died in 1997 in the accident at the Alma Tunnel in Paris, her body was laid out and in her hands was knotted the white rosary that Mother Teresa had given her; the rosary was found in her purse after her death.[21]

The poverty of the soul, the lack of love

In 1985 Mother Teresa discovered in modern America, in the South Bronx in New York City, a different kind of poverty, the “lack of love.” When someone needs a plate of rice, or a blanket, or a bed, it is easy to find a remedy, “but finding people in so-called ‘developed’ countries who have within themselves bitterness, anger, profound loneliness, meaninglessness, despair, reflects a poverty even more difficult to alleviate or cure . In order to bring relief and love to these people, Mother Teresa of Calcutta established the branch of the Sisters of the Word, later called Contemplative Missionaries of Charity. They were to bring love into action, not through food, but through words and the giving of meaning,”[22] for poverty of the soul is far more devastating than material poverty. “The worst misery is not hunger or leprosy, but the feeling of being unwanted, rejected, abandoned by all.”[23]

The Sisters of Mother Teresa, in addition to the three traditional vows of religious, make a fourth vow of “free service offered wholeheartedly to the poorest of the poor.”[24] In the history of the Church such a vow is unique and represents the characteristic feature of the congregation of the missionaries.

But who are these poor, who are not simply poor, but the poorest of the poor? “My house,” replied Mother Teresa, “is the house of the poor. Not simply of the poor, but of the poorest of the poor. Of those we do not approach because we are afraid of dirt and infection. Of those riddled with disease and contagion. Of those who can’t pray in church, because they don’t have a piece of cloth to wear. Of those who cannot eat, because they have lost the strength to feed themselves. Of those who cannot weep, because they have shed all their tears. Of those who lie on the pavement of the streets, knowing that they are going to die, while everyone else passes by without caring about them. Of those who need not so much a brick house, but a heart that understands. Of those who are hungry, not so much for food, but for the word of God. Of those who have a need not so much of clothing, as dignity, purity and justice. Of those who are outcasts, unwanted, unloved, who have fallen by the wayside, for they too are the poor, the spiritually poorest of the poor, under whose guise you, my God, hide yourself, thirsting for my love, just as you hide yourself in the bread of the Eucharist.”[25]

In every chapel of the Missionaries there is a crucifix, next to which stands a quotation from the Gospel in large print: “I thirst!” (John 19:28).[26]

A love within everyone’s reach

It is not easy, however, to attain such an awareness that makes us recognize God in the most abandoned. Yet, according to Mother Teresa, this love is within everyone’s reach: “Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand. Anyone can grasp it without any limit. Everyone can attain this love through meditation, the spirit of prayer and sacrifice.”[27]

Interesting here is the reference to the Mahatma: “Gandhi loved his people as God loved him: the most beautiful things that struck me about him were his non-violence and also his comparison of service to the poor with love for God. He said, ‘Whoever serves the poor, serves God.’ ‘Non-violence’ for Gandhi does not just mean not using guns and bombs; it is first of all love and peace and compassion in our homes. This is what it means to spread non-violence outside our homes: to feel that love, that compassion for one another.”[28]

With regard to the House of the Dying, Mother Teresa recounted an episode rooted in her heart: “Walking through the streets of Calcutta I heard a rustling coming from a pile of rubbish. I walked over to it and, seeing that something was moving, I stretched out my hand and, rummaging through the garbage, I saw that under that pile there was a person with his body covered with worms and dirt. Immediately I got help to transport that man to Nirmal Hriday. It took three hours to clean his body and rid it of the vermin. When the sisters finished cleaning and dressing him, the man, in a faint voice, whispered, ‘I have been living on the street like an animal. I am dying surrounded by love and attention. Sister, I am going home with God.’ He bowed his head and expired.”[29] Mother Teresa commented, “That’s it. This is our work: love in action. Simple.”[30] Then she added: “I felt that [that dying person] rejoiced in this love, in the fact of being wanted, loved, in the fact of being someone for someone.”[31]

Mother Teresa also carefully noted down the people to contact for the dying person, in order to fulfill his or her last wishes, whether they were Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Anglican or Catholic. Her faith was solid: Jesus had died for everyone, so she was deeply convinced that salvation, albeit in a mysterious way, was given to each person. This belief of hers was not always understood and several times caused misunderstandings, but she did not give in. “I have always said that we must help a Hindu to become a better Hindu, a Muslim to become a better Muslim, and a Catholic to become a better Catholic. […] God works in God’s own way in the hearts of men and women. […] We are not to judge or condemn… The only thing that matters is that we love.”[32]

The home for abandoned children

Some years later Mother Teresa opened the Children’s Home, Shishu Bhavan, where the sisters gathered together the abandoned children from the streets of Calcutta. For them they were guardian angels: they took them in their arms, cared for them, fed them, let them play, and above all loved them. For Mother Teresa it was a very serious crime to abandon a newborn child or to prevent it from being born. Unlike the other homes, this is a lively and joyful home. Children play here; there are girls who have been thrown out of the house and are waiting to give birth, young married couples who come to adopt a child. Today the structure has become a small village, with several buildings. It is worth mentioning the ones for newborns, for disabled children, and the one for lepers or serious illnesses, and even an outpatient clinic with a medical service. Over time, this type of structure has multiplied considerably. Currently, in India alone, there are 61 such centers.[33]

The home for lepers and AIDS patients

In 1959, 300 km from Calcutta, a center for lepers, the City of Peace, Shanti Nagar, was founded. At that time leprosy was widespread in India, and even now it is still a problem. Today India is the country with the highest number of lepers in the world. In Calcutta there was a hospital for lepers, but it was closed. Mother Teresa had difficulty in finding a place for them, because no one wanted to have the “plague victims” near them.

One episode links the City of Peace to Paul VI during his visit to India in 1964, for the Eucharistic Congress.[34] The pope gave Mother Teresa a Lincoln convertible, a gift from American Catholics. Mother Teresa was very happy, but she could not afford to maintain such a car. A rich Hindu bought it, offering her a large sum, half in money and half in a piece of land far from inhabited areas, where a village could be built to welcome, take care of, and even provide work for these people rejected by everyone. In addition to crops and livestock, there are also handicraft industries: the saris of the Missionaries of Charity are made here.

Not far from Calcutta, in Titagarh, Mother Teresa managed to set up a second leprosarium, run by the Missionary Brothers: it was dedicated to Gandhi on the centenary of his birth. About 46,000 lepers have been assisted in the various houses.[35]

Christmas 1985, at the insistence of the Cardinal of New York, Mother Teresa was also able to set up a center to care for AIDS patients, called the “Gift of Love.”[36] Even in the richest and most modern metropolises there are the excluded, the unloved, often thrown out of their homes and reduced to misery. The poverty of the poorest was evident. A second house was built in Washington at the request of President Ronald Reagan.

It is worth mentioning the Dono di Maria house in Rome, desired by John Paul II, in Vatican City itself, with a door facing Via Gregorio VII. Here, too, there is no shortage of needy people whom no one cares for.

It should also be remembered that in many countries devastated by wars, the Sisters have remained in place as their presence has become more necessary, places such as Iraq, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Colombia, in Gaza and Nablus, and even in the heart of Jerusalem. Today they remain in Ukraine. They are silent but effective presences, discreet but active.

‘My inner darkness’

In the process of the cause for beatification something previously unknown about Mother Teresa emerged: she suffered with an inner darkness throughout her life. After the revelation and the consolations she had enjoyed because of “the call within the call,” Mother Teresa’s existence was troubled for a very long time, and until her death, by a spiritual aridity, by the awareness of living far from God and of experiencing interiorly “the night of faith.”[37] “In my soul, I feel that terrible pain of loss, that God does not want me, that God is not God, that God does not really exist (Jesus, please forgive my blasphemies, but I have been told to write everything down). This darkness surrounds me on every side. I cannot raise my soul to God. No light or inspiration enters my soul.”[38]

Mother Teresa had taken care of derelicts, the abandoned, the unwanted, in short those in  the most unhappy situations in life, and now she was having the dramatic experience of being one of the unloved, the unwanted, the forgotten. God, her God, who had called her and confirmed   her in the work of salvation, seemed to have abandoned her . She lived “the dark night of the soul.”

Yet there was no lack of evidence of great spiritual value, above all of union with the Lord, as one of her confessors revealed: “Every time I met Mother Teresa, any embarrassment left me. […] She emanated peace and joy, even when she made me share in the obscurity of her spiritual life. […] I think I can say that I felt myself in the presence of God, in the presence of truth and love.”[39]

Behind her smile was a drama which she communicated both to her spiritual father, Father Celeste Van Exem, and to Father Joseph Neuner of the Theologate of Poona: that smile was “a great cloak covering a multitude of sorrows.”[40] What those “sorrows” indicated was learned only after her death, when letters were made public in the process of beatification. In about 1961 Mother Teresa wrote to Father Neuner: “For the first time in these 15 years I have learned to love my inner darkness, because I now believe that it is a part, a small part of the darkness and pain of Jesus on earth. You have taught me to accept it as a spiritual part of my work. Today I really feel the joy of [being united with] Jesus, since He cannot continue His agony, He does it through me.”[41]

When that inner darkness was made public, the media misinterpreted the dramatic spiritual experience and some newspapers even claimed that Mother Teresa was an “atheist,” that she no longer believed in God.[42] As we have seen, it was not a crisis of faith, but of the silence of God, of not feeling the presence and consolation of the Lord. In reality, she remained faithful to the vocation to which she had been called. The trials and the awareness of her own nothingness purified her and, even though her prayer and spiritual life were tiring and stressful, she was on a painful journey toward holiness.[43] The experience of the cross and the abandonment that Jesus himself had experienced  in his passion and death were her path toward a deeper communion with the Lord and with her abandoned brothers and sisters.

The publication of the letters to her spiritual father thus revealed her mystical experience, but it also testified to the real depth of which faith is capable. It can also involve an intimate participation in the sufferings of Christ, up to the cry that Jesus, in his dark night, uttered on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”[44] Mother Teresa is not only the saint of the poor, but also a great mystic of Christianity. She herself had written, “If I ever one day become a saint, I shall certainly be a saint of darkness. I will be continually absent from Paradise in order to give light to those on earth who live in darkness.”[45]

It is thus understandable that she made a request to John Paul II, after an audience: “Holy Father, pray that I do not ruin the work.” The pope promptly answered: “And you, Mother, pray that I may not ruin the Church!”[46]

DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 6, no.10 art. 1,  1022: 10.32009/22072446.1022.1

[1].    Cf. G. Marchesi, “La beatificazione di Madre Teresa di Calcutta”, in Civ. Catt. 2003 IV 474-483; G. Pani, “Madre Teresa di Calcutta. La canonizzazione di una Missionaria della Carità”, ibid., 2016 III 420-432.

[2].    A. Comastri, Santi dei nostri giorni, Padua, Messaggero, 2001, 146.

[3].    Ibid., 148.

[4].    Cf. A. Devananda Scolozzi, Una chiamata nella chiamata. Testimonianza dei miei ventun anni di vita accanto a Madre Teresa di Calcutta, Vatican City, Libr. Ed. Vaticana, 2014, 172.

[5].    Cf. the site of the Missionaries of Charity: www.motherteresa.org

[6].    G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi. L’etica in azione, Milan – Udine, Mimesis, 2016, 190.

[7].    Ibid., 190f.

[8].    Note the title of the book by A. Devananda Scolozzi, Una Chiamata nella chiamata, which translates as A Call Within A Call. At that time Mother Teresa belonged to the institute of the Sisters of Loreto and, feeling a new call from the Lord, she wanted to leave them for a new apostolate .

[9].    Cf. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Sii la Mia luce, Milan, Rizzoli, 2008, 101. She is alluding to  Acts 5:38-39, Gamaliel’s judgment on the work of the apostles.

[10].   Cf. G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi…, op. cit., 34.

[11].   Ibid.

[12].   T. Terzani, “Madre Teresa”, in G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi…, op. cit., 50f.

[13].   J. L. González-Balado, Il sorriso dei poveri. Aneddoti di Madre Teresa di Calcutta, Rome, Città Nuova, 1982, 23.

[14].   Cf. S. Gaeta, Madre Teresa. Il segreto della santità, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2016, 78.

[15].   Cf. M. Ricci, Govindo. Il dono di Madre Teresa, ibid., 2016, 23.

[16].   M. Bertini, La santa. Accanto a Madre Teresa, Brescia, La Scuola, 2016, 16.

[17].   Matt 25:40.

[18].   G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi…, op. cit., 29.

[19].   L. Accattoli, “Il Papa tra i moribondi di Calcutta. Incontro con Madre Teresa nella Casa del cuore puro”, in Corriere della Sera, February 4, 1986, 11.

[20].   Cf. L. Regolo, L’ultimo segreto di Lady Diana. Il mistero del rapporto tra la principessa più amata e Madre Teresa, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2017, 77-82.

[21].   Cf. ibid., 237. Immediately after Diana’s death, journalists sought out Mother Teresa to learn her thoughts about her much-discussed spiritual daughter. Mother Teresa was very ill, but she authorized a significant statement: “She was very sincerely concerned for the poor. She was anxious to do something for them […]. And that was the reason why she was so close to me” (ibid., 239). Five days later Mother Teresa died.

[22].   G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi…, op. cit., 36.

[23].   D. Lapierre, “Indimenticabile Madre Teresa”, in R. Bose – L. Faust, Madre Teresa. Leader per missione, Milan, Egea, 2013, XI.

[24].   G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi…, op. cit., 170.

[25].   Ibid., 184f.

[26].   Cf. S. Gaeta, Madre Teresa…, op. cit., 109.

[27].   G. Germani, Madre Teresa e Gandhi…, op. cit., 186.

[28].   Ibid., 187.

[29].   S. Carlucci, Madre Teresa di Calcutta. Un meraviglioso dono di Dio, Rome, Ave, 2003, 59.

[30].   T. Terzani, “Madre Teresa”, op. cit., 48.

[31].   P. Laghi, Madre Teresa di Calcutta. Il Vangelo in cinque dita, Bologna, EDB, 2003, 63.

[32].   Ibid., 61f.

[33].   Cf. S. Carlucci, Madre Teresa di Calcutta…, op. cit., 61.

[34].   Cf. A. Devananda Scolozzi, Una Chiamata nella chiamata…, op. cit., 193f.

[35].   Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Amiamo chi non è amato. Testi inediti, Bologna, Emi, 2016, 27.

[36].   In this regard, it is said that the Cardinal had inquired about the salary to be given to the sisters for assistance. Mother Teresa replied: “Serving Christ is the only salary of the Missionaries of Charity” (D. Lapierre, “Indimenticabile Madre Teresa”, op. cit., XI).

[37].   Cf. R. Farina, Madre Teresa. La notte della fede, Milan, Piemme, 2009.

[38].   Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Sii la Mia luce, op. cit., 200f.

[39].   Ibid., 274: this is Fr. Michael Van der Peet.

[40].   Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Sii la Mia luce, op. cit., 183.

[41].   A. Devananda Scolozzi, Una Chiamata nella chiamata…, op. cit., 88.

[42].   Cf. D. Van Biema, “Mother Teresa’s Crisis of Faith”, in Time, August 23, 2007; M. Moore, “Mother Teresa’s 40-year Faith Crisis”, in The Telegraph, August 24, 2007.

[43].   Cf. S. Gaeta, Madre Teresa. Il segreto della santità, op. cit., 99-108.

[44].   Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46; cf. Phil 3:10. Cf. R. Cantalamessa, Madre Teresa. Una santa per gli atei e gli sposati, Cinisello Balsamo (Mi), San Paolo, 2018, 49.

[45].   Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Sii la Mia luce, op. cit., 13.

[46].   A. Devananda Scolozzi, Una Chiamata nella chiamata…, op. cit., 149.