[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 18]
[Senate]
[Page 24820]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  TRIBUTE TO THE LIFE OF MOTHER TERESA

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the life 
of Mother Teresa and to acknowledge her upcoming beatification of the 
Vatican. The process leading up to her beatification has been the 
shortest in modern history. In early 1999--less than 2 years after 
Mother Teresa's death--Pope John Paul II waived the normal 5-year 
waiting period and allowed the immediate opening of her canonization 
process. The rule has traditionally been used to allow for a more 
objective look at a person's life and achievements. However, the life 
and works of Mother Teresa were so astounding that Pope John Paul II 
was convinced that he did not need 5 years to objectively determine 
that she should be beatified.
  Mother Teresa, the ``Saint of the Gutters,'' was born in what is now 
Macedonia in 1910. She took her final vows as a nun in 1937, and in 
1946, while riding a train to the mountain town of Darjeeling to 
recover from suspected tuberculosis, she received, as she says ``a call 
within a call'' from God to, ``serve Him among the poorest of the 
poor.'' And it is in this capacity that the world came to know of 
Mother Teresa's endless charity and love for all human life. She 
confronted this monumental task one hovel at a time. She created a 
religious order to help the aged, the poor, the hungry, the sick, and 
the disabled to live and die with dignity. She received approval from 
the Pope to establish the Missionaries of Charity, which focused much 
of its attention on giving comfort to the dying. The year before she 
died, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity were operating 517 
missions in more than 100 countries. In addition, she opened schools, 
orphanages, and homes for the needy, as well as homes for AIDS victims, 
and hospices.
  Mother Teresa was a woman who fought passionately for dignity for all 
human life--from the leper on the streets of Calcutta, to the ailing 
AIDS victim in New York, to the unborn child inside a mother's womb. 
Her passion for protecting all human life was clear when she spoke to 
Members of Congress at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 1994. 
She said,

       I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is 
     abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct 
     killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. 
     And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, 
     how can we tell other people not to kill one another?

  She continuously reminded people around the world of the plight of 
those weakest in the world; those least able to protect themselves. In 
1979, she received the Nobel Peace Prize and accepted the award ``in 
the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of 
the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, 
unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a 
burden to society and are shunned by everyone.''
  Mother Teresa touched the lives of those most in need in this world 
and she inspired others to service in every corner of the globe. 
Certainly the work she performed in her life was miraculous, and I have 
no doubt that those in need will continue to find solace and comfort in 
Mother Teresa and the continuing work that her missions still perform.

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