Mother Teresa work aside, but I simply can’t. In fact, I was told on my first flight to Calcutta that this would become my purpose. A man who sat next to me on that 1995 flight told me, “Never, ever stop doing this work.”
My journey with Mother Teresa continues today. In October 2018, I traveled to Calcutta to visit the Missionaries of Charity and photograph their work. On this short trip, I fully recognized Mother’s spirit present through her sisters, who have carried on the work since her death in 1997. On the day of my departure, the superior general, Sister Prema, held my hands and simply said, “Linda.” Once again, as on the occasions when I encountered Mother Teresa, I was at a loss for words. I felt as if Mother Teresa herself was holding my hands in her own.
Like so many others, I have known a saint in my lifetime who continues to inspire me to be a better version of myself. More than twenty years since her death, Mother Teresa — now recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church — remains an important and timeless figure. Mother Teresa walked with a heavy stoop, yet still she carried the burdens of so many. She continues to bring consolation and assistance in our darkest hours. She continues to be a mother who points us on our way to God. She teaches us the Gospel of Jesus. She teaches us, as she taught her sisters in the Missionaries of Charity, to develop an intimacy with Our Lady and respond to our unique calling, just as Mary once responded to the angel Gabriel when she consented to be the Mother of God. For all of us, Mother Teresa remains an iconic, motherly figure, inviting each of us to experience our own humanity through acts of joyful service. This tiny woman, who was and is so revered by the world, communicated one simple message: “Love until it hurts.”
• • •
This book contains photographs I took of Mother Teresa and her sisters over the course of many years. It also contains interviews I conducted with people who knew Mother Teresa personally and were privileged to share in her work in some way. Everyone who was drawn to Mother Teresa, and inevitably transformed by her touch, has a story to tell. Whatever our interaction with her looked like, all of us simply refer to her as “Mother.” I pray that through the stories and photographs in this book you will also encounter Mother Teresa in a deeply personal way, and that she will have a transforming impact on your life.
Archbishop John Donoghue was elated as he led Mother Teresa by the hand through packed crowds to Sacred Heart Church in downtown Atlanta.
Everyone who was drawn to Mother Teresa, and inevitably transformed by her touch, has a story to tell.
This book contains an extensive interview with Father James McCurry, currently serving as minister provincial of the Our Lady of the Angels Province of the Franciscan Friars Conventual. I met him on my flight from Rome the day after Mother Teresa’s beatification. Father McCurry told me that the foundation of his many talks to the Missionaries of Charity was devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary along with Mother Teresa. In addition, this book includes portions of my interview with Father Michael Van Der Peet, SCJ, to whom Mother Teresa confided the spiritual darkness she experienced — something most of those closest to her never knew. I also include an interview with Father Flavian Wilathgamuwa, a priest from Sri Lanka whom I met in a Los Angeles hospital not long before he died. Another priest, Monsignor John Esseff, had a long relationship with Mother Teresa. His position as a pontifical appointee to Lebanon led to his first meeting with Mother Teresa and his role as spiritual director to the contemplative branch of the Missionaries of Charity.
This book also includes the stories of two significant women whose lives would become intimately tied with Mother Teresa and the work of the Missionaries of Charity. Dr. Anita Figueredo was one of the first female surgical oncologists in the United States. She was working in San Diego, California, when she first met Mother Teresa in the 1960s. I had the opportunity to interview her on tape in 2005. Huldah Buntain is a Protestant missionary who accompanied her husband to India in the early 1950s to begin their service to the poor. The couple met Mother Teresa in the early days of their work and partnered with the Missionaries of Charity in assisting those who needed medical attention. The stories of these two women, living in different parts of the world, are much like the thousands of others who were linked to Mother Teresa through charitable work. As they would attest, the touch of Mother Teresa’s hand was enough to transform lives and alter their direction forever.
The touch of Mother Teresa’s hand was enough to transform lives and alter their direction forever.
I also had the rare opportunity to interview Sister Tarcisia, the eighteenth sister to join Mother Teresa’s order. These stories, along with several other brief interviews, make up the content of this book. Each of our unique stories is woven together with a single thread: We were all drawn into the orbit of “Mother.”
• • •
I have been on a personal quest for a mother figure since I was a child. Illness was very much a part of my life from an early age, as my mother suffered breast cancer in her mid-forties and then severe aftereffects. I was thirteen years old when my father came back from the hospital in Rome, Italy, and gave my siblings and me the news of our mother’s surgery. The devastation unfolded day by day, year by year, until newer illnesses led to blindness, a stroke, a coma, and her eventual passing at seventy-eight. My father also suffered two severe heart attacks and chronic congestive heart failure. I became largely responsible for raising myself. Fear of abandonment and anxiety over the ever-present threats of illness were a constant companion and shadow.
I found my greatest relief from the darkness of life through the lens of my camera. When I first discovered photography in the darkroom at the University of Michigan in 1975, the realization came instantly: This would become my medium and the art form through which I could best express myself. Following my intuition, I walked into the Star Bar, a seedy barfly gathering spot, and I took photographs of people who had chosen to live on the margins of society. It was in these faces that I found an authenticity that was hard to label — people whose lives had lost any sense of direction or those who had long been forgotten by life itself.
After graduating from Michigan in 1978, I moved to New York City, where I toured largely unknown corners of the city, seeking refuge from my feelings of isolation. When I photographed the homeless dwellers on the Bowery, I discovered the compassionate side of God. He surely loved these men as much as he loved those who traveled to work in fancy cars and lived in luxurious high-rises. I found the Holy Spirit alive in the most broken areas of the city. I befriended street gangs, homeless people, and an eccentric poet who lived in Coney Island with his monkey from the Amazon. This made sense to me. God was present in the poor. This is where the compassionate Christ resonates for me. I believe it is where we all can find him — in the depths of our personal spiritual poverty and in serving those most in need.
Author’s family sharing some last moments with her Norwegian grandparents aboard the Norwegian America Cruise Ocean Liner MS Oslofjord in the 1960s. From left to right: Karen, Liv, Magnhild and Gabriel Gausland, John, Linda, and Frank Schaefer.
Author with her siblings, Karen and John, in front of their home in São Paulo, Brazil, where their father worked as an executive for General Motors.
Author with her mother in the early 1970s.
Homeless men on the Bowery in New York City, c. 1978.
