Verena Hochrainer

MOTHER TERESA

After taking part at a medicial training course she went to the Slums of Calcutta to found a school for children. Called "Mother Teresa"

I will now mention the most important deeds in th life of this famous nune.

In 1950 her community, which she had started a few years before, was officially recognized by the Vatican as an pontificial congregration. This institution has grown from 12 members to more than 4000 nuns, who are running orphanages, AIDS hospices and other charity centers worldwide.

In 1952, she established a home for dying poor called the " Nirmal Hriday better known as the "Pure Heart" a home for Dying Destitutes, homeless people, uncared and unacceptable at other institutions. There these people were washed, fed and allowed to die in dignity.

In 1979, Mother teresa won the Nobel prize. To identify herself with the poor, she wore the same 1 dollar white Shari she bought when she founded her order, at the Preisverleihung award.

Pope Paul the sixth gave her a white Lincoln Continental, she auctioned the car, and with the money she got she started a leper colony in West Bengal.

In 1982, she convinced the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas to stop shooting long enough to rescue 37 children who were trapped in a front- line hospital.

When the walls of Eastern Europe collapsed she supported communist countries with dozens of projects.

Her work was almost praised but sometimes also criticised

The money for all the institutions she founded she got from public foundations, private donors and scores of prizes.

So a British television documentary called "Hell`s Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta accused her to accept donations without questioning the source.

The short statement from M. Teresa because of this

No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work.'

M. Teresa and her order dedicated her work mostly to the dying. In an abandoned temple to the Hindu goddess Kali, she founded the Kalighat Home for Dying.  The order also established Shanti Nagar "Tower of peace", a leper colony, in the mid- 1950s on land granted from Indian government.

In India and beyond, m t and her Missionaries of Charity devoted their time to the blind, the disabled, the aged and of course the poor. She opened school, orphanages and homes for needy and turned her attention to the victims of aids.

By 1996 she was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries.

Perhaps the French president Jacques Chirac summed up M t`s legacy best, when he said after her death: "This evening there is less love, less compassion, less light in the world."