PROLIFE PROFILE

Everything Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta did around the world came wrapped as a living pro-life message.

“She was a major pro-life figure, from conception to natural death,” reminds Missionary of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator for the canonization of Mother Teresa.

Now to keep her teachings, message and inspiration constantly available to new generations, her Missionaries of Charity order recently launched the Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center. Father Kolodiejchuk is also director of the center.

Whether via today's website or in the four physical locations in the works, the center will be the source on Mother Teresa, with the goal of spreading devotion to her, protecting her words and image from misuse, and encouraging people to love and serve Jesus — particularly in devotion to the Eucharist and the poor.

“Because Mother Teresa was a major Church and world figure,” explains the priest, “we want to preserve the legacy and also keep Mother Teresa's message and mission alive in the Church.”

People looking to the center can be assured they're getting the real deal, he adds. “One of the key words at the center is authentic Mother Teresa.”

To fulfill this aim, the center is already hard at work in world of publishing, making sure texts and translations by others are true to Mother Teresa. (Many out there are not.) And they'll be publishing their own books and devotional materials.

“Hopefully we'll be able to have the Mother Teresa Center logo on books,” says Father Kolodiejchuk. “As soon as you see the logo, you can have confidence that this is dependable and authentic.”

The logo has already attracted attention. On his recent visit to a Missionaries of Charity's house in New England, the sisters told him of a handicapped couple they help. When the couple saw the logo on a center pamphlet, they were inspired to make a carrying bag. They stitched the logo in white on one side and “Mother Teresa Center” on the other, then gave it as a surprise gift to the sisters.

“I'm going to put it in the center in Tijuana,” Father Kolodiejchuk says. “Mother would love that story.”

The Mother Teresa Center will also offer physical places for people to come and meet the saint-to-be in museum-like exhibitions, a library, multimedia exhibits and artifacts — possibly her sari, her sandals and letters she wrote.

“But in that center there will also be a Mother Teresa chapel with relics,” says Father Kolodiejchuk.

He points out visitors to Mother's tomb and chapel in Calcutta already see a “mini-exhibition” that includes pictures, a chronology and quotes from her.

Since many people can't go to Calcutta, but do travel to Rome, the Eternal City will serve as the site of another center. So will Tijuana, Mexico, and the United States.

Right now the main center vehicle is the website motherteresa.org, where people can visit while the center works toward setting up the other facilities.

The website was launched on the feast of the Sacred Heart this June 3 because Mother loved the Sacred Heart. By the end of the first week, there were 40,000 hits.

Thomas Gallagher, special assistant for administrative affairs of the center, explains the center's challenging task: Mother was truly a modern disciple of Christ, traveling the world to spread the Gospel, so the center must have a global perspective.

“We are not U.S.-centric in our mission,” he says. “We have to address the needs around the world. People everywhere yearn for Mother's message.”

Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, who has encouraged and supported the center from the beginning, agrees.

“Mother Teresa, as everyone knows, had a tremendous reverence for life and the culture of life,” says the archbishop. “Now with mass communication via the website, recordings, film and other things, that message can be extended globally. I think the center is a means of keeping that reality that was hers alive.”

Plans also call for four physical locations where people can learn that reality.

“Ideally, we want to have a Mother Teresa Center near or next to a Missionaries of Charity house,” says Father Kolodiejchuk. “When Mother spoke to all kinds of audiences she'd like to say, ‘Come and see.’”

Once the centers are built, visitors can learn Mother Teresa's pro-life message and also experience it in action in the order's nearby homes, like the Gift of Love home caring for AIDS patients in Greenwich Village or the Shishu Bhavan orphanage in Calcutta, or the homes for elderly in Tijuana.

Archbishop Flynn explains that, at a recent archdiocesan Eucharistic Congress, a Missionary of Charity reflected on how Mother Teresa saw Christ in everyone.

“This is something we need today in the Church and society,” he says, “and a center could make that message so much stronger and clearer to people to see Christ in others, no matter who the others might be.”

The ideal U.S. Center location would be by the Missionaries of Charity house in the Bronx, which is the primary home of the sisters in the Americas. According to Gallagher, the center is working hard to make that come to fruition and looking for help finding an appropriate building there.

Already major help in another form came from the Knights of Columbus. With them, the center produced and sent almost 1 million copies of the first official novena to the Missionaries of Charity's 700 houses that gave them to the poor and the friends of the order on Mother's first feast day, Sept 5, 2004.

This summer, again with major help from the Knights and Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, the center produced nearly 1 million pieces of devotional material in several languages and distributed them at World Youth Day. And youth hungered for the messages.

“One Missionaries of Charity priest in Cologne observed that none of the Mother Teresa materials were found on the ground or left behind,” says Gallagher. “It's an important responsibility of the center to constantly be bringing Mother's message, which is inherently pro-life, to the next generation of young people.”

“We feel the center is helping to evangelize the world,” adds Gallagher. “Most people cannot travel to Calcutta. We need to bring Calcutta to the people.”

Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.

Information

Mother Teresa Center

Web: motherteresa.org

Phone: (203) 637-7578