[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 120 (Thursday, September 11, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1732-E1733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HONORING MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. JON D. FOX

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 11, 1997

  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor, Mother 
Teresa of Calcutta, the closet person to a living saint we may ever 
know, a woman who transcended religious and political differences 
wherever her presence was felt. Whether she was opening an AIDS hospice 
or, as she did in my own district, establishing a homeless shelter, she 
reached out to all people.
  When Mother Teresa died on Friday, the heart of a world already in 
mourning for Diana, Princess of Wales, broke in grief over the death of 
this humble Indian woman and for the passing of what many have called a 
``living saint.''
  Mr. Speaker, I was personally deeply saddened by the announcement 
from the Missionaries of Charity that Mother Teresa, the founder of the 
order, had died. For the past 50 years, Mother Teresa defined 
compassion as she devoted her life entirely to poor, the homeless, the 
disenfranchised, and the sick.
  This woman who, during her lifetime, walked with Popes, Presidents, 
royalty and the most powerful individuals on Earth, clothed in the 
simple blue and white habit of her order, was happiest when she was 
attending to the needs of the destitute and ill dying in the gutters of 
Calcutta, India. She and the sisters of her order literally rescued 
abandoned children from trash heaps and gave them a lifetime of care 
and love. She bathed the wounds of lepers and those wracked with AIDS 
who most would not even touch and she brought peace to those suffering 
the agony of mental illness. To her, compassion was a vocation--her 
gift to mankind which she offered as part of her devotion to God.
  This tiny, frail woman, whose own body was bent with arthritis and 
wracked with pain, put her own physical suffering aside as she worked 
to bring comfort to others. She said ``I see God in every human being. 
When I wash the lepers wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is 
it not a beautiful experience?'' There is much we all could learn from 
this simple woman of God.
  Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhu on August 27, 1910, in Skopje in what is 
now Macedonia, she was the youngest of three girls of Albanian parents. 
In 1928, she became a novitiate in the Loretto Order which runs mission 
schools in India. She chooses the name Teresa after a French nun, 
Thesese Martin who was canonized in 1927.

  In 1929, Sister Teresa arrived in Calcutta, India and began to teach 
at St. Mary's High School. However, teaching was not to be the 
fulfillment of her life of religious service. In 1946, while riding a 
train to the mountain town of Darjeeling to recover from suspected 
tuberculosis, she received a calling from God ``to serve Him among the 
poorest of the poor.'' In 1947, she was permitted to leave her order 
and she moves to the slums of Calcutta to establish her first school. 
In 1949, a former student, Sister Agnes, becomes her first follower and 
within a year, Sister Teresa has papal approval to form an order called 
``Missionaries of Charity.'' It was founded on October 7, the Feast of 
the Holy Rosary. Mother Teresa chose for her habit a plain, white sari 
with a blue border and a simple cross pinned to the left shoulder. This 
same year, she becomes a citizen of India.
  In 1952, Mother Teresa received permission from India to use an 
abandoned Temple to Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. 
There she opened the Kalighat Home for the Dying. That same year, she 
opens Nirmal Hriday (``Pure Heart''), a second home for the dying 
followed the next year by her first orphanage.
  The Indian Government gave Mother Teresa a 34-acre plot of land near 
the city of Asansol in the mid-1950's. There she opened a leper colony 
called Shanti Nagar (``Town of Peace'').
  Mother Teresa won her first prize for her humanitarian work in 1962 
when she was given the Padma Shri Award for Distinguished Service. It 
was at this time that she began her tradition of giving the money from 
such prizes to the poor.
  In 1965, His Holiness, Pope Paul VI places the Missionaries of 
Charity under direct papal authority and directs Mother Teresa to 
expand her calling beyond India. In 1971, Pope Paul honored her by 
awarding Mother Teresa the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. The 
Government of India honored her in 1972 with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award 
for International Understanding.
  In 1979, Mother Teresa's tireless efforts on behalf of world peace 
brought her the Nobel Prize for Peace. Even as the world honored her, 
the poor were never far from her thoughts saying that such honors were 
important only if they helped the world's needy. Unlike most Nobel 
ceremonies, for Mother Teresa there was no lavish banquet and she 
insisted that the monetary award be given to the poor. When accepting 
her Nobel Prize she said, ``I choose the poverty of our poor people but 
I am grateful to receive it (the Nobel Prize) in the name of the 
hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the 
lepers, of all those who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout 
society, people that have become a burden to the society and are 
shunned by everyone.''
  She once said that ``The poor give us much more than we give them. 
They are such strong people, living day-to-day with no food. And they 
never curse and complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. 
We have so much to learn from them.''
  As if to prove her influence on the peace process, in 1982 she 
persuades Israelis and Palestinians to stop shooting at each other long 
enough so she and her sisters could rescue 37 mentally-handicapped 
children from a hospital in besieged Beirut.

  What a sight it must have been for the combatants, watching this tiny 
woman leading a group of children through the rubble of war to safety. 
The courage it must have taken her and her followers to walk that path, 
knowing that weapons of all kinds were trained on her and her charges. 
Yet, it was what God told her to do. She had to save those children and 
she later said that she knew God would not let her be killed until she 
saw them to safety.
  In 1983, while at the Vatican visiting with His Holiness, Pope John 
Paul II, Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack. In 1989, she suffered a 
second, nearly fatal heart attack and was given a pacemaker--the 
beginning of a long list of personal illnesses which never slowed her 
pace.
  Mother Teresa traveled to the United States in 1985 where President 
Ronald Reagan awarded her the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian 
award given by the United States. A frequent visitor to the United 
States, Mother Teresa returned in November 1996 when this 105th 
Congress authorized that she be granted honorary American citizenship--
a rare honor.
  I had the distinct honor of meeting Mother Teresa at that time and it 
was one of the most memorable moments I have ever experienced. I have 
never felt such a presence of compassion, faith, and charity in my 
life. I had previously worked with her followers and saw their good 
work at a homeless shelter in my district run by members of her order.
  The day she visited our Nation's capital and Congress paid tribute to 
her with honorary citizenship, I will never forget the sight of her. 
Clad in her simple robe and sandals she stood there among the ornate 
surroundings of the Capitol Building. This symbol of American freedom 
and liberty which had seen the like of Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, and 
Roosevelt had never seen the likes of her. She accepted the honor but 
took the opportunity to remind

[[Page E1733]]

us of all the gifts we as Americans sometimes take for granted and 
urged us to use our position as a world power to strive for peace and 
recognize the beauty of the human spirit.
  She devoted her soul to God and dedicated her life to His children 
and while I believe her contributions are so enormous that she may be 
irreplaceable, her humility led her to believe otherwise. In 1989 
Mother Teresa announced her retirement saying, ``God will find another 
person, more humble, more devoted, more obedient to Him, and the 
society will go on.'' But her devotion to her order and the need to 
continue her missionary work let her to withdraw her resignation the 
following year. ``I was expecting to be free but God has his own 
plan,'' she said.
  Combined with the recent death of Princess Diana, we have lost two of 
our most compassionate souls. Very different in style and appearance, 
they found an affinity of each other by fulfilling the needs of the 
forgotten. They became friends. Diana raised millions for people with 
AIDS, lepers, the homeless and the forgotten by selling the designer 
gowns she not longer needed. Mother Teresa owned only two outfits, both 
of them the simple habit she designed. It is proof positive that it 
really doesn't matter if you wear designer clothes or wrap yourself in 
a simple sari. What lies in your heart is what will ultimately define 
your humanity. While Princess Diana was a master of loosening our purse 
strings, Mother Teresa spent a lifetime opening our hearts. 
Princess Diana called Mother Teresa her role model and this simple nun 
from Calcutta accepted the Princess into the family of man and asked 
her to be nothing but herself. The Princess and the nun, glamour and 
simplicity, royalty and humility and yet somehow, the partnership 
worked.

  The world grieved the loss of Diana, Princess of Wales at the highest 
levels of society. The depth of Mother Teresa's loss might be felt most 
in the gutters of Calcutta where an abandoned child first felt the 
touch of human kindness and the love of God all through this tiny 
vessel--a simple nun from Calcutta.
  The loss of Mother Teresa who has dedicated herself to the service of 
others forces us to examine our own lives and rededicate ourselves to 
helping those who are in need. I will never forget Mother Teresa and 
the way she lived her life, never seeking a spotlight except that which 
God chose to shine on her. Her faith guided her actions and her 
kindness sparked the humanity in each of us.
  In 1996, Mother Teresa showed that she also possesses a sense of 
humor when she told Prince Michael of Greece, ``The other day I dreamed 
that I was at the gates of heaven and St. Peter said, `Go back to 
Earth, there are no slums here.' '' She toiled on behalf of others for 
half a century. I believed she has earned her place in heaven with God.
  Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be included as a member of the official 
delegation from the United States to the State Funeral for Mother 
Teresa of Calcutta. The power of her faith and the strength of her will 
must become our own as we honor Mother Teresa who I believe is the 
single, most-loved human being of our times. The goodness, humanity, 
and faith she possessed must also guide our actions as we legislate. 
Like her, no one can be excluded. We must be willing to cradle the 
least among us if we are to be worthy of the positions we hold.

                          ____________________