a practice that would continue and later become a source of much criti-
cism. As Mother Teresa later argued, making out separate reports to each
sponsor would be so time-consuming that the poor would suffer. Although
she and her sisters recorded each donation with a letter, they did not keep
detailed financial records of donations accepted and monies spent. As was
her nature, Mother Teresa ignored complaints about the order’s account-
ing practices.
Before leaving Germany, Mother Teresa also stopped to visit Dachau,
one of the most infamous concentration camps in Nazi Germany, where
more than 28,000 Jews died between 1933 and 1945. After listening to
the history of the camp, Mother Teresa stated that the camp was to his-
tory what the Colosseum in Rome was to the Romans who threw the
Christians to their death. In Mother Teresa’s eyes, modern humans were
behaving no better, and if anything, far worse.
After a brief visit to Switzerland, Mother Teresa stopped in Rome
where she hoped to make a formal and personal plea to Pope John XXIII
for the Missionaries of Charity to become a Society of Pontifical Right. If
the pope agreed, it would mean that the Missionaries of Charity could
begin working in other countries. However, when it came time to meet
the pope, Mother Teresa, frightened at making the request directly to the
pope, instead only asked for his blessing. She then made her request to
Cardinal Gregory Agagianian, who agreed to take the matter under con-
sideration. But it was clear that the Church recognized the value and im-
portance of Mother Teresa not only to its missionary and humanitarian
efforts, but to its efforts to spread the Gospel.A BRIEF REUNION
While in Rome, Mother Teresa arranged a reunion with her brother
Lazar, whom she had not seen in more than 30 years. Lazar now lived in
Palermo, Sicily, where he worked for a pharmaceutical firm. He was also
married to an Italian woman and was the father of a 10-year-old daughter.
During World War II, he had joined the Italian army after the Italian oc-
cupation of Albania. His defection to the Italian army earned him a death
sentence in Albania; Lazar could never return to the land of his birth.
When the two met, they discussed the terrible predicament of Aga and
their mother, who were still in Albania. The country, now a communist
satellite of the Soviet Union, had made it virtually impossible for its resi-
dents to leave Albania. Mother Teresa had applied for a visa to visit the
country, and possibly because of her brother, but more likely because of
her own activities, she had been refused. Albania’s atheist government
THE GROWTH OF A MIRACLE 95