Mother Teresa: a biography

AN UNHAPPY VISIT
In 1988, Mother Teresa traveled to London to visit with Prime Minis-
ter Margaret Thatcher. She also visited Cardboard City, the site of the
city’s homeless. She asked Thatcher for help in setting up a hostel for
them, but Thatcher pointed out that there were voluntary organizations
in the city that specifically worked with the homeless, and there was no
need for Mother Teresa’s help.
There were other problems as well. Mother Teresa’s trip coincided with
a hearing in Parliament for a bill that would reduce the time limit for al-
lowing abortions from the current 28 weeks to 18 weeks. Mother Teresa
again went to Thatcher asking her to support the bill. Again she was re-
fused. At a conference in Oxford, Mother Teresa told the audience that
couples who used contraception other than the rhythm method, as al-
lowed by the Catholic Church, would not be accepted as potential adop-
tive parents for any children coming from the Missionaries of Charity
homes.
Shortly afterward, Mother Teresa met with Robert Maxwell, the Aus-
tralian owner of the London newspaper the 
Daily Mirror.
Maxwell, al-
ready known for his dubious business dealings, offered to help raise money
for a new Missionaries of Charity home in London. Maxwell loved the
publicity, and Mother Teresa, either in the dark about Maxwell’s personal
business dealings or refusing to acknowledge them, accepted his offer. It
also allowed her a chance to do something without going through gov-
ernment channels. In all, £169,000 (appx. $302,000) was raised and de-
posited in an account held by Maxwell and the paper. In addition,
another £90,000 (appx. $160,000) was raised by the readers of a Scottish
paper to be used for Mother Teresa’s efforts. With the funds, she hoped to
set up two facilities for the homeless in London.
But Mother Teresa never saw the money. Some speculated that
Maxwell had appropriated the funds. A spokesman for the 
Daily Mirror
later charged that Mother Teresa never seemed to find an appropriate
home or piece of land to suit her purposes. He further denied that any of
the money was missing. There was also the stigma attached of having ac-
cepted the money in the first place from a man who was a known swindler
and unsavory businessman. If Mother Teresa had any regrets about any of
her actions, her association with Maxwell was one. Finally, though, in
1993, a 35-room hostel was opened in London for the Missionaries of
Charity. Mother Teresa came for the opening ceremony and once again
thanked readers of the 
Daily Mirror
for their generosity. Mother Teresa
B L E S S I N G S A N D B L A M E
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complained, though, that officials of the British government did little to
ease the suffering of homeless in their country, despite her offers of help.
Although the last 20 years had brought great recognition for Mother
Teresa and her organization, it was also a period of loss, regret, and con-
troversy. With a new decade looming before her, Mother Teresa, at the
age of 80, showed no signs of slowing down. However, the coming years
would be less than kind to her, both personally and professionally, as she
strove to continue her work with the poor.
NOTES
1. Kathryn Spink, 
Mother Teresa
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1997),
p. 102.
2. Germaine Greer, “Heroes and Villains,” 
Independent,
September 22, 1990.
3. Raghu Rai and Navin Chawla, 
Mother Teresa: Faith and Compassion
(Rock-
port, Mass.: Element, 1992), p. 184; Anne Sebba, 
Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image
(New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 100.
4. Eileen Egan, 
Such a Vision of the Street: Mother Teresa
—
The Spirit and the
Work
(Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1986), p. 396.
5. Egan, 
Vision,
p. 398.
6. “The Week,” 
National Review,
January 4, 1980, p. 12.
7. Nobel Foundation, “Mother Teresa Nobel Lecture,” http://www.nobel.se/
peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html (accessed November 19, 2003).
8. Nobel Foundation, “Mother Teresa Nobel Lecture,” http://www.nobel.se/
peace/laureates/1979/teresa-lecture.html (accessed November 19, 2003).
9. Anthony Burgess, “Mother Teresa,” 
Evening Standard,
January 3, 1992.
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M O T H E R T E R E S A

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Chapter 10
“THE MOST OBEDIENT
WOMAN IN THE CHURCH”
Even though Mother Teresa kept up her busy schedule, it was clear by the
early 1990s that traveling from place to place, visiting many of the world’s
most troubled spots, could not last forever. Beginning in 1989, her health
began deteriorating. In September of that year, she suffered a near-fatal
heart attack and underwent major surgery. The heart trouble was not new;
she had first been diagnosed with it almost 15 years earlier. Still, she con-
tinued her frenetic pace.
After being fitted with a pacemaker in December 1989, Mother Teresa
traveled to establish new homes for the Missionaries of Charity. But in
1991, she was hospitalized again, this time at the Scripps Clinic and Re-
search Foundation in La Jolla, California, where she was treated for heart
disease and bacterial pneumonia. Later, she took ill while visiting in Ti-
juana, Mexico, and doctors were forced to perform surgery to open a blood
vessel.
Although increasingly frail, Mother Teresa did not slow down. Then,
in 1993, while in Rome, she fell and broke her ribs. That July, she was
hospitalized for two days in Bombay for exhaustion; not more than a
month later, she was back in the hospital in New Delhi, this time for a
malarial infection, which was further complicated by heart and lung
problems. She was transferred to the All India Institute of Medical Sci-
ences, where she recuperated in the intensive-care coronary unit. She
was home in Calcutta for less than a month, when she was treated by
doctors yet again, this time for a blocked heart vessel. Clearly, age and
the years of deprivation, travel, and work were taking their toll on
Mother Teresa’s health.

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