Mother Teresa: a biography

A GROWING MISSION
Over the next several years, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of
Charity continued to open new homes around the world. In 1967, the
order opened its first home in Sri Lanka. In September 1968, a month
after traveling to Rome, Mother Teresa journeyed to Tabora, Tanzania,
where the sisters opened their first mission in Africa. A year later, the
Missionaries of Charity were in Australia, where they opened up a center
for the Aborigines. From this point on and well into the next decade, a
new mission center opened somewhere in the world approximately every
six months.
The Missionaries of Charity were growing in other ways, too. By 1963,
Mother Teresa realized that men were better suited for certain kinds of
work, such as working with young boys, than her nuns were. After con-
sulting with Father Van Exem, she petitioned the archbishop of Calcutta
for his permission to create a new branch of the order: the Missionary
Brothers of Charity. The archbishop did not have to think very long; al-
most immediately he agreed to the request.
But there were issues to settle before the new order could get underway.
Men were reluctant to join because the order was still unrecognized. To
become recognized meant that the order needed to grow and have the
proper leadership to provide guidance and direction. Even though the
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brothers were aligned with the Missionaries of Charity, under Church law
Mother Teresa could not head a male congregation. She tried to engage
the services of two other priests, but for a number of reasons could not
convince either man to leave his order to take charge of the new congre-
gation. Finally, a young priest applied for the position; Mother Teresa,
even though she did not know him personally, agreed to have him take on
the responsibility of directing the new order.
In 1966, an Australian Jesuit, Father Ian Travers-Ball, became the
head of the Missionary Brothers, changing his name to Brother Andrew.
Travers-Ball was a young and charismatic presence within the order. He
was familiar with conditions in India having come to the country in 1954
as a new priest. He was interested in working with the poor, and specifi-
cally with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity.
Early on, Brother Andrew believed it was necessary for the Brothers of
Charity to establish their own presence and identity. Although he ad-
mired Mother Teresa, Travers-Ball also wished to escape her domination.
To establish a base for the Brothers, Brother Andrew rented a small house
in Kidderpore, which Mother Teresa purchased. Along with a dozen
young homeless boys, Brother Andrew moved into the home. In time, the
house settled into a routine that was far different from the goings-on at
Motherhouse.
In general, the Brothers adopted a style of working with the poor that
was far less regimented. They were less sheltered than the Sisters, which
allowed them access to the poor community in ways that the Sisters did
not enjoy. The more informal approach enabled the Brothers to be more
adaptable to cultural and regional differences than the Sisters. And be-
cause their focus was on helping poor boys, their homes tended to be
smaller and more close-knit.
One of the first places the Brothers began work was at the Howrah rail-
way station where many young poor boys lived. Much as Mother Teresa
did when she began working among the poor, the Brothers started out by
establishing contact and helping the boys in small ways, such as passing
out bars of soap or helping get medical treatment for those in need. Grad-
ually, the Brothers organized an evening meal for the boys at the station.
Some boys were taken in and given refuge where they could receive voca-
tional training. Along with boys residing at the Shishu Bhavan, several
were then transferred to other houses in and around the city, such as Nabo
Jeevan (New Life), or Dum-Dum where there was a radio-repair work-
shop. Boys suffering from medical or mental handicaps were taken to Nur-
pur, a farm located about 20 miles outside of Calcutta, where they learned
to farm. The Brothers also became heavily involved with mobile leprosy
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clinics and, in time, would take over the day-to-day work at the leprosy
colony in Titlagarh.
Like Mother Teresa’s own Missionaries of Charity, the Brothers grew
rapidly. Within a decade of their creation, Brother Andrew opened up the
first overseas house in war-torn Vietnam. From there, the order began
opening houses all over the world, usually in places where the Missionar-
ies of Charity did not have a presence. In 1975, the Brothers opened a
house in a poor, crime-infested neighborhood in Los Angeles, California,
where they began working with drug addicts and alcoholics who had been
living on the street.
There was no shortage of rough neighborhoods in the world, and
Brother Andrew sought out as many as he could find, establishing homes
in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Guatemala, the Philippines, El Sal-
vador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Brazil. Everywhere they went,
the Brothers undertook the jobs they knew best. Their mission, more than
that of the Missionaries of Charity, brought them into contact with the
residents of many a city’s mean streets and society’s outcasts: the crimi-
nals, the drug addicts, and the hopeless alcoholics. The Brothers also con-
tinued their work with orphaned and wayward boys. Wherever they went,
they established soup kitchens and helped those in need to receive medi-
cal attention.
Still, the Brothers’ road to success was not without its bumps. Pre-
dictably, Brother Andrew and Mother Teresa clashed over the order’s
management. One issue was dress; Brother Andrew requested that the
brothers wear no uniform and instead dress in jeans and T-shirts. While
this made them more accessible, it also made them at times harder to dis-
tinguish, and on more than one occasion, a brother was picked up along
with those he was helping to spend a night at the city jail. Mother Teresa
wished for the Brothers to wear their clerical garb. She also did not agree
with Brother Andrew’s willingness to delegate authority and wished for
tighter, stricter management, much as she did with her own order. The
final straw came when Mother Teresa established a contemplative branch
of the Brothers without consulting Brother Andrew. Her actions caused a
temporary rift between the two orders; in 1987, Brother Andrew left the
order. His replacement, Brother Geoff, brought with him a management
style and an attitude that was more complementary to Mother Teresa’s vi-
sion for the Missionaries of Charity Brothers.