Mother Teresa: a biography

A YEAR’S END
And then the first year was over. On August 16, 1949, Mother Teresa’s
year of exclaustration came to an end. Now Archbishop Périer had to de-
cide whether she would remain outside the cloister of Loreto or return. By
this time, the archbishop had received reports of Mother Teresa and her
growing band of young women. In his mind, there was no turning back for
Mother Teresa; she would remain outside of the cloister. If she had re-
turned, the young women would have disbanded. They were not recog-
nized as a formal order of nuns; they were simply a group of very religious
women who happened to be living with a rather unorthodox nun. A
course that would allow Mother Teresa to continue her work with her as-
sistants would be to accept them as a congregation for the diocese of Cal-
cutta answerable to the archbishop just as Mother Teresa was. This was a
real possibility since the little group now numbered more than 10, the re-
quired number needed to begin a new congregation.
Still, the archbishop remained cautious. Before making any decision,
he needed to know if there had been any negative reports about Mother
Teresa and her work. He went to Father Van Exem, who admitted that
there had been one report, that of an old Jesuit who believed Mother
Teresa was doing the work of the devil. He had gone to the mother supe-
rior at Loreto, asking her why a woman who was doing such a fine job as a
teacher in an established school would leave to wander about the slums of
Calcutta. The archbishop, so incensed by the comments, insisted that the
O U T O F A C E S S P O O L — H O P E
4 7

---

priest in question immediately apologize to the superior for his criticism of
Mother Teresa and her work.
While Mother Teresa awaited the archbishop’s decision, she took an-
other very important step: she applied for and was granted Indian citizen-
ship. The act was a potent one, signifying not only her break with her
European roots, but a pledge to become one with the people she served.
By the end of 1949, the archbishop had become so supportive of Mother
Teresa and her efforts that he stated his willingness to recognize her group
as a congregation in his archdiocese. The final approval would have to
come from Rome, but the archbishop was willing to make the journey
himself and plead Mother Teresa’s case on her behalf. He planned to go to
Rome in April 1950 to present the Vatican with the necessary documents.
Now Mother Teresa struggled with a draft of the proposed order’s con-
stitution, which outlined the rules by which the nuns would live. She
wrote of her spiritual calling on the train ride to Darjeeling and outlined
the first three vows all would take when coming into the order: poverty,
chastity, and obedience. To these she added a fourth vow: “to give whole-
hearted and free service to the poorest of the poor,”
8
which would become
known as “our way.”
9
She also decided on a name for the new order: the
Missionaries of Charity.
She turned over her draft to Father Van Exem, who worked on it, tight-
ening up the language, as Mother Teresa’s grasp of English was not good.
Father Van Exem forwarded the document to a priest who specialized in
canon, or church, law. Then five copies were made and taken to the arch-
bishop who presented the documents to Cardinal Pietro Fumosoni-
Biondi, head of the Office for the Propagation of the Faith for the
Catholic Church. The Vatican accepted the constitution, even with the
fourth vow, which over time brought many to the order and quieted even
the most skeptical. On October 7, 1950, the church had a new congrega-
tion in its fold: the Missionaries of Charity, headed by Mother Teresa.