When the funerals of the world's two best-known women fall just one week apart, it's tempting for a reporter covering both of them to draw comparisons. Like Princess Diana, Mother Teresa found a way to use her fame to direct public attention to her concerns. But the fact is, there is no fair comparison.
In Britain, millions mourned a tragedy in Diana's death. In India, they celebrated a spirit in Mother Teresa's life. And while Diana's was a life cut brutally short, Mother Teresa's was a life lived out fully.For those who had the privilege to meet her, one thing was very clear about this "saint of the gutter." Mother Teresa was no otherworldly prayer-book saint. No eyes cast heavenward and hands folded primly over heart.
If Mother Teresa was a saint, and there's a good chance she'll be named one in our lifetime, then she will be a saint with eyes searching for those in need and her sari sleeves rolled up to help.
When it came to her work with the poorest of the poor, Mother Teresa may have been humble, but she was no doormat. She built an organization with more than 500 missions in more than 100 countries. While other groups of nuns were shrinking, her community grew dramatically despite the heavy demands the work made on her sisters. Some 5,000 Missionaries of Charity carry on her work today.
Anyone who's covered her at a press conference knows she was a presence, one of those rare people whose electricity you felt in a room, even before you saw her. There was a force of moral power about it. And she wasn't hesitant to use it for the good of her work.
If popes or presidents, bishops or mayors weren't doing all they could to help that work, then the frail-looking 4-foot-11-inch nun didn't hesitate to prod the powerful. The hospices and AIDS centers, the shelters for the abused and the abandoned that circle the world are all tributes to Mother Teresa's persuasive powers.
Early this summer, Mother Teresa went to see Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City. She wanted that most precious of New York commodities, parking space. Her nuns, she explained, were having trouble visiting their AIDS patients because they couldn't find legal parking spots. "I'd do anything Mother Teresa wanted," the mayor said at the time. "If Mother Teresa wants more parking, she can have more parking." The nuns got special permits.
Make no mistake about it - for all her shelters and orphanages and food lines, Mother Teresa was no social worker. She was a Catholic nun motivated by her Christian convictions and gospel mandates. Mother Teresa never made any apologies for those beliefs. She spoke out unapologetically about her opposition to the death penalty and abortion, about her concern that affluent Westerners were warehousing their aged parents in nursing homes.
Mother Teresa never watered down her message to fit her audience. She was as willing to afflict the comfortable as to comfort the afflicted as a startled President and Hillary Clinton discovered at a National Prayer Breakfast when the nun moved seamlessly from family values to abortion.
But instead of turning people off, Mother Teresa's straightforward and consistent message gained her respect and even a degree of celebrity, both inside and outside her religious community.
She was one tough lady on a mission from God.