The first time I had the grace to meet Mother Teresa was in St Peter’s Square. I asked her about her mission among the poorest of the poor. She replied in a few words from the Gospel: “Come and see”.

I could not resist the invitation to go to India to see her and her sisters in the field. Through the Maltese Sister Fredrick Douglas, her right hand whom I knew when she was a nun at St Joseph School, Sliema, I arranged to meet Mother Teresa in 1962.

I met her in a small, dark room looking into the courtyard in her convent in Circular Road, Calcutta. I can still feel the imprint of this first meeting with a humble, simple and smiling Albanian nun. At the time, the well-known English writer Malcolm Muggeridge had made a film for the BBC and when he asked Mother Teresa what to call it, she replied “Something Beautiful for God”.

Mother and Sister Fredrick one day took me on a jeep, outside the crowded city, to their Home for Lepers. As soon as we arrived, a throng of lepers came rushing to welcome her, and here I envisaged Christ among lepers. Some moved along kneeling on a pair of skates, all shouting, “Mother, Mother we love you.”

I celebrated Mass in a chapel where there was a Crucifix with the words “Jesus I Thirst”. I was so inexperienced that when I gave Communion, I just placed the Host on the tip of their dripping tongues, lest I get contaminated. When I met Mother I said, crying, “Sorry, I am not afraid to touch the Body of Christ, but I am scared to touch these lepers”. Mother consoled me and all she said was Jesus takes care of them.

I was also taken to see the Home for the Dying, a former temple to the god Kigali. What a unique experience! One elderly man crouched on a bed with clean white sheets shouted with joy when he saw Mother. Mother hugged him and looked at his sores. As Mother moved away he said, crying, “She is my mother”.

It was here that Mother told me, “They lived like animals, now they can die like angels”. The sisters cared for them day and night, but I wondered what made them love these poor people. Only the love of God.

The next morning, the Archbishop called me and with an anxious tone asked me, ‘Did you tell Mother what I did for the poor?’

I was so impressed I invited Mother to come to Malta for the Cana Movement. She accepted, as she had the desire to visit the families of the two Maltese nuns who had joined her congregation. She stayed with the Sisters of the Poor in Ħamrun. Following her visit, a number of Maltese nuns and priests joined the Missionaries of Charity, and a home in Cospicua was opened, while I also helped to open their home in Milan.

The highlight of her stay in Malta was the meeting with Archbishop Michael Gonzi, who was 91. He asked her, “Mother at my age, I soon appear for judgement in front of the Lord. Tell me what he will judge me on.” The Mother looked straight in his eyes, saying, “Only one thing: ‘What have you done for my poor?’ ” The Archbishop seemed to be taken by surprise and said, “Only this?” “Yes, only this,” replied Mother.

The next morning, the Archbishop called me and with an anxious tone asked me, “Did you tell Mother what I did for the poor?”

A very pleasant episode was when Lilian Miceli Farrugia and Lola Sammut, wife of this newspaper’s editor at the time, were invited by me to interview Mother Teresa in the programme Djalogu on television. She mentioned that the sisters do multiple marriages but the couples are so poor they cannot afford a ring. The sisters had a couple of rings which couples passed from one to the other.

Many married women were so impressed that they offered their wedding rings. Only recently, an elderly woman met me and with joy told me she was married only for a couple of years before donating her ring.

Lest some people think Mother Teresa was only about pity, she was also a woman of character and determination. In spite of the opposition to opening her first home in New York for Aids patients, when people thought Aids was a plague, she succeeded in her aim and was welcomed with open arms by the patients.

The bestseller Mother Teresa, the Miracle of Small Things, published last month, recounts how the book by journalist Christopher Hitchens in 1996 was very hostile towards Mother Teresa. One of the sisters was crying when she read parts of Hitchens’ book, but all Mother said was, “Why do you cry? All we should do is to pray hard for him and do not worry about him.”

This was Mother Teresa, the Saint of simple things.

Mgr Vella is founder of the Cana Movement.

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