cared for the sick on the spot as they lay in the streets and alleys of the
city.
Mother Teresa worried about her charges. Remembering the advice of
the sisters at Patna, she was especially concerned that they were getting
enough to eat. Michael Gomes remembers one instance in which Mother
Teresa, sitting in the back of a truck with some bags of rice and flour, re-
turned at the end of the day from one of her begging expeditions. She had
not eaten all day nor gotten any water for fear that someone would steal
the food meant for her postulants. She went without in order that the
food would be delivered safely to the house.
To help the sisters, Father Van Exem and Father Henry made an an-
nouncement at Sunday mass calling for mushti bhikka,a Bengali custom
where any families that were able put aside a handful of rice for a beggar.
This effort marked the start of the feeding program that the Missionaries
of Charity oversaw and that would in time include not only food, but
clothing and soap for the poor.
A YEAR’S END
And then the first year was over. On August 16, 1949, Mother Teresa’s
year of exclaustration came to an end. Now Archbishop Périer had to de-
cide whether she would remain outside the cloister of Loreto or return. By
this time, the archbishop had received reports of Mother Teresa and her
growing band of young women. In his mind, there was no turning back for
Mother Teresa; she would remain outside of the cloister. If she had re-
turned, the young women would have disbanded. They were not recog-
nized as a formal order of nuns; they were simply a group of very religious
women who happened to be living with a rather unorthodox nun. A
course that would allow Mother Teresa to continue her work with her as-
sistants would be to accept them as a congregation for the diocese of Cal-
cutta answerable to the archbishop just as Mother Teresa was. This was a
real possibility since the little group now numbered more than 10, the re-
quired number needed to begin a new congregation.
Still, the archbishop remained cautious. Before making any decision,
he needed to know if there had been any negative reports about Mother
Teresa and her work. He went to Father Van Exem, who admitted that
there had been one report, that of an old Jesuit who believed Mother
Teresa was doing the work of the devil. He had gone to the mother supe-
rior at Loreto, asking her why a woman who was doing such a fine job as a
teacher in an established school would leave to wander about the slums of
Calcutta. The archbishop, so incensed by the comments, insisted that the
OUT OF A CESSPOOL—HOPE 47