was to help individuals and bear witness to the Divine presence in the
world, not fight for social change.
As with all candidates for sainthood, the church required a divine sign
in the form of a posthumous miracle. Many claims were submitted; the
one chosen concerned a Hindu mother, Monika Besra, who came to the
sisters suffering from a life-threatening stomach tumor. The sisters prayed
to Mother Teresa for a cure and pressed a religious medal that she had
touched to Besra’s abdomen. Five hours later, the tumor had completely
disappeared.
The beatification ceremonies in Rome were only the beginning of a
media and merchandising frenzy surrounding Mother Teresa’s eventual
canonization. In Calcutta, Mother Teresa’s legacy was to be honored with
an international festival of films. The event was a first; no saint in the his-
tory of the Catholic Church has had an international festival of films held
in their honor. Among the films scheduled to be shown were Malcolm
Muggeridge’s Something Beautiful for God, two-time Emmy Award winner
Anne Petrie’s Mother Teresa—Her Legacy, Japanese director Shigeki
Chiba’s Mother Teresa and Her World, Anna & Folco Terzani’s Mother
Teresa’s First Love, and Dominique LaPierre’s In the Name of God’s Poor.
The controversial 1994 Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta was also to
be shown, but in the end was pulled.
In addition to the film festival, the Vatican issued special commemora-
tive stamps of Mother Teresa. Factories churned out additional merchan-
dise, including Mother Teresa rosaries, crucifixes, and key chains.
According to one vendor, his factory is working full time to make 10,000
Mother Teresa rosaries, key chains, and other trinkets. A stage musical
and an animated cartoon based on her life and works were to be presented
as well. In one of the more bizarre, but also more historically familiar, ways
of honoring a holy person, a display of Mother Teresa’s blood was planned.
Today, Mother Teresa’s thoughts can still be found in the more than 20
books she coauthored to offer spiritual advice and guidance to people. Her
order continues to be active and hard at work. Both the sisters and the
brothers continue to thrive, though not experiencing the rapid growth of
homes and foundations that marked the last 25 years of Mother Teresa’s
life. More than 3,000 volunteers come to Calcutta every year, hoping to
make a difference at least for a little while.
At the same time, the Missionaries of Charity have shown themselves
to be a little more worldly, as they successfully copyrighted the name of
Mother Teresa in 2003. The nuns said they sought the rights to Mother
Teresa’s name, the name of their order, and its rosary-encircled globe logo
138 MOTHER TERESA