Mother Teresa: a biography

parties for the children. After her own children were born, she made a
point of having birthday parties for the children in Shishu Bhavan on the
same day as her own children’s celebrations. She also made a point of tak-
ing her children with her to Shishu Bhavan to impress upon them how
fortunate they were. Paul also had access to a textile factory; through her
efforts, the sisters received new saris every year. Years later, Paul recalled
that Mother Teresa, prior to her traveling, never seemed hurried and that
she always had time for everyone who came to see her. But that would all
soon change as Mother Teresa began capturing the attention of a much
wider audience, while recognizing there were other places in the world
that might benefit from her vision.
SETTING FOOT ON THE WORLD STAGE
For nearly 10 years, the work done by the Missionaries of Charity had
been confined to Calcutta. This was in agreement with church law, which

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prohibited new orders to open houses outside of the diocese. Initially,
Mother Teresa realized that between the archbishop’s emphatic enforce-
ment of this rule, and the horrific problems she faced in Calcutta, expan-
sion of any kind was clearly out of the question.
But, in 1959, things had changed. There was one year left before the
probationary period of the Missionaries of Charity formally ended, and
the sisters were eager to take their mission outside of Calcutta and begin
work in other parts of India. When Mother Teresa went to Archbishop
Périer, he relented. But he told Mother Teresa that her work could only
expand into other areas of the country, not beyond. She agreed. New
houses of the Missionaries of Charity were established—and warmly wel-
comed by church and city officials—in Delhi and Jhansi. The news of
their work reached the highest echelons of Indian government; at the
dedication of a children’s home in Delhi, the Prime Minister of India,
Jawaharlal Nehru, was in attendance. When introduced to him, Mother
Teresa proceeded to tell the prime minister of her order. Gently stopping
her, Nehru replied that he did not need to hear of her work; he knew all
about it and that was why he had come to the ceremony. The Missionar-
ies of Charity also sent a group of nuns to Ranchi, a city located in the ex-
tremely poor state of Bihar. Here, many girls from the local tribes were
recruited to become Missionaries of Charity with great success.
In Bombay, a city with numerous Catholic churches and schools, the
Missionaries of Charity were welcomed by none other than the head of
the Roman Catholic Church in Bombay, Cardinal Valerian Gracias.
After a short tour of the city, Mother Teresa angered many of the residents
with her comment that the slums of Bombay were worse than those in
Calcutta. But many others recognized that beside the many palatial
homes found in the city were also tall buildings with little ventilation, no
indoor plumbing, and very little fresh air. With Cardinal Gracias’s bless-
ing, Mother Teresa soon opened a home for the dying, similar to Nirmal
Hriday.
In the autumn of 1960, Mother Teresa looked beyond the borders of
her adopted country and accepted an invitation to speak at the National
Council for Catholic Women to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Although
it seemed an unlikely destination for a woman considered a saint through-
out India, Mother Teresa went with the hope of raising more funds for the
Missionaries of Charity.
By this time, Mother Teresa was 50 years old and in charge of 119 nuns,
all but three of whom were Indian, and she wished to carry her message
further. As it turned out, her reputation was already becoming established
on the world stage. In the United States, she had appeared on the front
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page of an American magazine called 
Jubilee: A Magazine for the Church
and Her People
in 1958, which introduced her at least to the American
Catholic community.
That October, Mother Teresa arrived in Los Angeles; from there she
traveled to Las Vegas in the company of a former volunteer with the Mis-
sionaries of Charity, Katherine Bracken. Mother Teresa was to give a
speech entitled “These Works of Love,” in which she outlined the work of
the Missionaries of Charity.
Mother Teresa had never spoken in public before; previously she had
relied on others to do her talking for her. But speaking before 3,000
women, she discovered that what might have been a disadvantage actu-
ally was an advantage. Instead of a professional giving a polished speech,
Mother Teresa showed herself to be a natural orator. She spoke easily of
her life’s work and that of the Missionaries of Charity in India. She stated
she was not there to beg for donations; instead she continued to rely on
God’s providence for help. But she did remind her audience that they, too,
could participate in doing something beautiful for God. As she was to dis-
cover, this approach proved far more effective in raising money than a di-
rect appeal ever would. Afterwards, sitting in a booth in the convention
hall, she watched as person after person stopped to put cash in a bag she
carried with her. During the course of the day, the bag was emptied several
times. Mother Teresa had discovered a powerful and successful way in
which to raise funds for her projects. It was a formula from which she
rarely deviated in the following years.
During her time in Las Vegas, Mother Teresa was less interested in the
goings-on in the nearby casinos and nightclubs than she was to traveling
in the desert. When asked what she thought of the city, she replied that
the neon lights of the city’s casinos and hotels reminded her of Dewali,
the yearly Hindu festival of lights. As a souvenir of her visit to Nevada,
she took some long cactus spines that she found in the desert. These were
later twisted into a crown of thorns and placed on the head of the cruci-
fied Christ hanging behind the altar in the novitiate chapel of the Mis-
sionaries of Charity in Calcutta.