Mother Teresa’s mission survives beyond her life

It’s about 1pm on a muggy August afternoon in Kolkata, as a young girl from Japan knocks hesitantly at the door of 54A AJC Bose Road in the city’s central quarters. Popularly known as Mother House, the building that was Mother Teresa’s residence from the 1950s till her death in 1997, and where she was buried after her death, attracts many visitors daily from across the world – pilgrims as well as volunteers, like the young girl from Japan, keen to work with the Mission. It is also the global headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity (MC), started by Mother Teresa in 1950. The Vatican is set to Canonise Mother on September 4, but for those whose lives she touched, and changed for the better, the selfless nun was always a saint.

“Many press people used to ask her and me, what will happen to Missionaries of Charity after her. And she used to say it will grow further and that the same work and care will carry on,” recalls Missionaries of Charity spokesperson and Mother Teresa’s long-time associate, Sunita Kumar. “Missionaries of Charity has grown tremendously (since her death) and at an enormous speed. I think she (Mother Teresa) is working from up there,” she says