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14 WWW. UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ТРАВЕНЬ 2012 MOTHER TERESA'S LEGACY 2012 marks 15 years since the death of Mother Teresa — a tiny woman of great vision, deep faith, and loving compassion who has left behind a legacy unlike any other . Although she never had a child of her own, in her lifetime Mother T e- resa had cared for thousands of poor and dying people of all ages, which makes it fi t ting to remember her in the month of May. Born to Albanian parents in what is now the Republic of Mac e- donia, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu adopted the name of Teresa after joining the Roman Catholic order of Loreto Sisters at the age of 18. She then spent almost 20 years in Calcutta, India, teaching o r- phans and girls fro m broken homes at a boarding school run by the Loreto order. In 1946, Mother Teresa received what she would later refer to as “the call within a call” — the call of God to leave her convent and start a congregation that would live among the poor and care for them. It took her a few years and much perseverance to persuade her religious superiors in the validity of her vision for a new missionary society and to obtain their permission to leave Loreto. The Missionaries of Charity, which began with Mother Teresa tracing out in the dirt the letters of the Bengali alphabet for a dozen kids in the slums of Calcutta, eve n- tually grew into an international network of o r- phanages, schools, hospices, and other charitable foundations in more than 120 countries. At least partly, the astonishing growth of the Missionaries of Charity can be attributed to what Mother Teresa’s biographer, Kathryn Spink, has described as “[her] particular gift for opening doors.” In the mid - 1980s, when AIDS still carried with it an enormous s ocial stigma, she rallied enough support and secured the funding to open a hospice for those dying of AIDS in the middle of Manhattan. She made trips to communist cou n- tries and established missions there years before the fall of the Iron Curtain. “It seeme d that she only had to tell the most skeptical and atheistic authorities in the quietly determined way she h ad that she wanted to bring God’ s tender loving care to their people, and the way would open, and if a first attempt did not succeed she kept on te lling them,” writes Spink. In 1987, Mother Teresa traveled to the Soviet Union, and her trip included a visit to the Chornobyl victims. Three years later, the Missi o- naries of Charity established a foundation in Kyiv, which started a soup kitchen for the homeless, provided food packages and other items to those in need, and took care of children from impover - ished families. In the United States, there are active foundations of the Missionaries of Charity as well, and if you look, chances are that you may find one right in your community as I did — still serving humbly those in greatest need and carrying on the vision of their founder. When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 in Oslo, Norway, Mother Teresa gave a very simple speech that, like all he r public addresses, was not prepared in advance. She spoke of her faith and of the poor not only in Calcutta but also in the West, encouraging her audience to share in their suffering and... to smile, “for the smile is the beginning of love.” Olesia Wallo From Mother Teresa's Nobel Peace Prize Lecture : “I never forget an opportunity I had in visiting a home where they had all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them in an institution and forgotten, maybe. And I went there, and I saw in that home they had everything, beautiful things, but everybody was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on their face. And I turned to the sister and I asked: How is that? How is it that these people who have everything here, why are they all looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling? I am so used to see the smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile. And she said: ‘This is nearly every day. They are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come and visit them. They are hurt because they are for gotten.’ And see — this is where love comes. (...) Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried, and these are difficult days for everybody. Are we there? Are we there to receive them? Is the m other there to receive the child?” Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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