Encountering Mother Teresa. Linda Schaefer

water supplies. She led him to a four-floor concrete building where he would be sleeping. He slept on a hard, wooden bed with a mosquito net to prevent infectious mosquito bites.

      Father Curlin did not sleep his first night because of the pounding of hammers on walls. This is fairly typical in India, which is a country that never sleeps. There is always some kind of outdoor noise, whether it be people chatting outside a window, music blaring, or

      Woman in one of the poorest slums of Calcutta, near Titagarh. She is sifting through plastics to find recyclables as income for her family. (June 2008)

      A row of blind Muslim beggars waits on a Calcutta street corner for alms from passers-by. (October 2018)

      A woman washes dishes from a municipal tap filled with buckets of water. This is a common sight throughout the city. (October 2018)

      She never viewed anyone as above or below herself, and she teaches us that we are all equal in God’s eyes.

      The bishop also told me about the moment during that visit when Mother Teresa invited him into her office area. “Would you like to see Jesus?” she asked him. Caught by surprise, at first he thought she meant that Jesus was physically present in the room. Instead, she took him out on the streets of Calcutta, where they came upon a dying man lying in the gutter. She picked him up in her arms and said, “This is Jesus.”

      Bishop Curlin would later collaborate on several projects with Mother Teresa, including founding the Gift of Peace convent and home for AIDS patients in 1986. His work with Mother Teresa was always about seeing Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor. It was evident to me at the beatification that the humble Bishop Curlin was the ideal priest to assist me in understanding Mother Teresa’s calling.

      Mother Teresa viewed herself as an instrument in God’s hands, and her work as his. Motherhood calls each of us to be attentive to the spiritual and physical well-being of those in our care. Mother Teresa introduced Bishop Curlin to the poor of Calcutta on the very streets where her apostolate began, where she saw the suffering Jesus. She never viewed anyone as above or below herself, and she teaches us that we are all equal in God’s eyes. When we view the world through his eyes, we are united in one purpose and in service of one community.

      The look of “Mother.” This was one of the author’s rare opportunities to photograph Mother Teresa when they met privately at the Mother House in Calcutta. the sounds of horns and construction. The following morning, Mother Teresa showed her concern for the exhausted priest. “I made a mistake,” she said. “They make steel lamps next door.” He was then moved to a quieter facility. Mother Teresa’s concern for his comfort was an ordinary, motherly response.

      A grotto with Our Lady encased in glass overlooks St. John’s cemetery, where the deceased Missionaries of Charity sisters are buried.

      II.

      Hugh Markey

      Hugh A. Markey was a robust New Yorker, a wealthy international businessman who provided millions of miraculous medals to Mother Teresa and her sisters, the same medals she kissed and offered as gifts to volunteers. As a longtime volunteer for the Missionaries of Charity and other Catholic charities in New York City, Markey would often serve as Mother’s driver on her visits to the city. Mother Teresa nicknamed him “Uncle Hugo.”

      In his funeral homily for Uncle Hugo on September 28, 2015, his beloved friend Father James McCurry recalled how Mother Teresa told Markey, “The MCs have one Mother — I’m the ‘Mother’; we have fathers, the ‘MC Fathers’ [priests]; we have sisters; and we have brothers; but we don’t have any uncle — So YOU can be our uncle: ‘UNCLE HUGO!’” Mother Teresa’s successor, Sister Nirmala, gave Markey a written document attesting that he was indeed the only “Uncle” in the Missionaries of Charity. He even had a “habit” of sorts to match theirs — a white golf shirt with a blue-bordered collar.

      I met Uncle Hugo on the flight back from Mother Teresa’s beatification, and he struck me as a very unlikely devotee of Mother Teresa. He was a large and loud-spoken man, the kind one might find at a baseball game cheering on his favorite team, not the sort of man one expected to see driving Missionaries of Charity around New York City in his Lexus.

      When he asked Mother Teresa how many children she cared for in India, she told him there were fourteen thousand children in her care.

      • • •

      Uncle Hugo had a deep devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes. He recounted the dozens of pilgrimages he had taken to Lourdes and how he had tried to convince Mother Teresa to travel with him to the holy grotto.

      For instance, at a gathering he attended in Rome for Mother Teresa’s eighty-second birthday, Uncle Hugo attempted to persuade Mother to go to Lourdes. “An Irishman can never be presented without a toast,” he said. So when she came into the room, “I toasted Mother Teresa and invited her to Lourdes.” Instead, Mother Teresa invited Uncle Hugo to Calcutta. Although he had spent decades working with the Missionaries of Charity in New York City and Tijuana, Mexico, he had never visited the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity in India. He admitted to “holy blackmail”: He tried to get Mother Teresa to agree to go to Lourdes if he would go to Calcutta.

      If he was going to travel to Calcutta, Uncle Hugo wanted to be “Santa Claus” by bringing gifts for about five hundred children. To his shock, when he asked Mother Teresa how many children she cared for in India, she told him there were fourteen thousand children in her care. “Santa Claus will have to get another sleigh and another set of reindeer!” he told her. When he asked Sister Monica, who generally accompanied Mother Teresa, what she thought the children needed most from Santa Claus, her answer further surprised him: The children needed soap. Uncle Hugo said, “I didn’t know the president of Dial, but I found out and called him in Phoenix and asked for fourteen thousand kegs of soap. He sent thirty thousand kegs of soap. Quaker Oats then provided oatmeal, and Hershey Chocolates donated chocolate for the children living in Mother Teresa’s orphanages in Calcutta.”

      Uncle Hugo also managed to collect, through donations, thousands of statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus to send to Calcutta. Then Uncle Hugo said he heard his angel yelling in his ear, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are going to Calcutta without Lourdes water.” “So I ordered the water in time to arrive in Calcutta for Christmas.” Before he left, Mother Teresa warned him not to travel to the city because of growing animosity between religious groups. He traveled to Calcutta anyway, but at the airport an official refused to allow him through customs. He told the official that Mother Teresa had invited him but that he did not have written permission. As he told me: “My angel whispered in my ear. ‘Why don’t you tell them to look outside the airport?’” They did, and there were two sisters from the Missionaries of Charity waiting for their friend. Uncle Hugo was then permitted to leave the airport with the sisters. He had brought boxes of Lourdes water with him on the flight to India. Mother Teresa attributed the holy water to helping him through his difficulties entering India.

      Mother Teresa nicknamed Hugh Markey “Uncle Hugo.” He was a regular contributor and volunteer to the Missionaries of Charity. PHOTO COURTESY OF BERNARD MARKEY

      Uncle Hugo was a beloved patron to charitable organizations, particularly to the Missionaries of Charity. PHOTO COURTESY OF BERNARD MARKEY