Mother Teresa, Pope Francis have links

Mangalore Today News Network

Sep 01, 2016: One October day in 2012, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires (Now Pope francis)  celebrated Mass for thousands of children in the Argentinean capital.

A nun from Calcutta was on his mind. “ Who said that we can find Jesus in those most in need?” he asked the children gathered in the Parque Roca stadium. “Mother Teresa!” they replied. “And what did Mother Teresa have in her arms? A crucifix? No—a child in need,” he taught them. “So we can find Jesus in each person who is in need.”

At the time, Bergoglio could never have imagined that in a few short years, he would make Mother Teresa a saint. Six months after he spoke to the children that day, the archbishop from Buenos Aires was anointed the Bishop of Rome. Now, as Pope Francis, he has named Mother Teresa for canonization, and she will forever be remembered as a Francis saint.

And yet Pope Francis could just as easily be called a Mother Teresa pope. Their mission fields were continents apart, but their lives have been woven together for years. Both served in religious orders, she as the founder of the Missionaries of Charity and he in the Society of Jesus. Both devoted themselves to the poor and drew attention to those whom society has cast to the margins—Teresa is known as a saint of the gutters and Francis as a pope of the slums. At their cores, they share a purpose in their public service and personal spirituality: to act as a channel of God’s mercy. And as Francis ushers Teresa into sainthood, her mission will continue to define his papacy.

This shared mission of compassion for the suffering is deeply rooted in the saints who have shaped Pope Francis and Mother Teresa’s respective lives. They share a special devotion to Mother Teresa’s namesake, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux of the Little Flower, a 19th-century French nun known for her simple spirituality. Mother Teresa found in Saint Thérèse inspiration to do the ordinary with deep love, and both women spoke openly of their experience of finding faith in darkness, not just light. Pope Francis has also found inspiration in Saint Thérèse—whenever he has a concern, he once said, he turns to her in prayer, asking her for a rose as a sign of God’s presence and calling in his life. When he travels, he carries a copy of one of Thérèse’s books. And in 2015, Pope Francis made Teresa’s parents the first married couple to be jointly named saints.

 Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity state a profound respect for all religions and notes that it does not impose Catholic faith on others even as its sisters reach out. Mother Teresa talked about how people of all religions belong to the same family. “There is only one God and He is God to all,” she wrote in her book A Simple Path. “I’ve always said that we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic.”

For millions, Mother Teresa was an example, decades before Francis captured the world’s attention. Hers was a mercy, like the Good Samaritan’s, that pushed boundaries. When she started her mission in the late 1940s, for example, she wrote to the archbishop of Calcutta, outlining her goals for the sisters’ work—even including having them drive a bus. “She was ahead of her time on that one,” Kolodiejchuk says. “Just the conception of the sisters, to have them dressed in the sari—in the time and context, that was very radical.”

Although their missions overlapped, Pope Francis and Mother Teresa met only briefly. In 1994, Mother Teresa was invited to audit a meeting of the bishops at the Vatican. She sat, Francis recalled later, right behind him during the sessions. “I admired her strength, the determinedness with which she spoke, never letting herself be fazed by the assembly of bishops. She said what she wanted to say.

That commitment to mercy at all costs is a reminder of what Pope Francis wants for his church. It is no accident that he will canonize Sept 4,  Mother Teresa during his declared Jubilee Year of Mercy, a dedicated time for Catholics all over the world to return to the church and experience God’s mercy anew. Just as Mother Teresa will be remembered from here on as the Saint of the Jubilee, so will Francis’s works of mercy be ever marked by her mission.