c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A microcosm of the world _ its powerful, its impoverished, and just plain people in between _ mingled Friday (Sept. 12) in Calcutta to say their final Godspeed to Mother Teresa, the tiny nun whose ministry confronted, comforted, and challenged their lives.

As her funeral rites were about to begin, her legacy was already being addressed: How soon would”Mother”_ as virtually everyone called her _ be made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church? And how will her charity work, which succeeded in part on the force of her singular personality and intuitive media savvy, fare in the future?

The question of fast-track sainthood has been raised publicly by at least two high-ranking Vatican officials: Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state who will lead the celebration of the funeral Mass for Mother Teresa on Saturday, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and one of Pope John Paul II’s closest confidants.”It is hoped that the beatification process may take place … in a short time,”Sodano said as he left Rome for Calcutta. Beatification is the first step in the often time-consuming and cumbersome process toward sainthood.”The pope loved this heroine of modern times a great deal,”he said.”They were on the same wavelength.” Indeed, Mother Teresa’s funeral _ a blending of state pomp and church ritual that climaxed a virtually unprecedented week of adoration for a contemporary religious figure _ dramatically points to the contradictions of a world where the creeds of charity and justice exist in uneasy tension.

Tens of thousands of mourners _ if not hundreds of thousands _ filed past her body as it lay in state in St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church in a wealthy district of Calcutta. The lepers, orphans and disabled chosen to participate in her funeral procession testify to the fierce and unrelenting witness Mother Teresa gave for granting these poorest of the poor the dignity and respect they deserve, she said, as creatures of God.

Her influence was underscored in the decision by the government of a predominantly Hindu democracy to bend protocol and order a state funeral for a nun from a minority Christian community who held no elected office.

It was visually present in the honor guard of soldiers Thursday that joined the vigil by Missionaries of Charity nuns, who have kept watch over the body of Mother Teresa since her death last Friday (Sept. 5) at 87. Her embalmed body _ dressed in the simple $1 white sari edged with blue that became a symbol of her order and its ministry to the dying, the destitute and the despised _ was draped with the saffron, white and green flag of India. Her glass-covered casket rested below a gold crucifix bearing the image of the suffering, dying Jesus.

Indian officials reached back to the death of Mahatma Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1948, the year Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, for an example of giving a non-elected person the formal recognition reserved for heads of state.

In another link between Gandhi, India’s”apostle of peace”who became the inspiration for a worldwide movement of non-violence, and India’s”saint of the gutters,”the government chose the same horse-drawn military gun carriage that bore Gandhi’s body to carry Mother Teresa’s body from St. Thomas’ to the funeral Mass at a 12,000-seat stadium, and on to the private burial at Mother House, her order’s headquarters.

But unlike the work of Gandhi, Mother Teresa’s work was not _ and is not _ about challenging the systems that create injustice. She simply ministered to its victims.

For example, on Wednesday _ the anniversary of Mother Teresa’s call 51 years ago to live among the poor _ nuns at a Missionaries of Charity shelter in Bombay reported finding an emaciated woman on their doorstep.”We feel it is Mother’s way of saying there is so much more to be done,”said Sister Christie Paul.

Critics contend that because the work of Mother Teresa represents no threat to the rich and powerful _ and the systems over which they rule _ it is relatively easy for them to gather in Calcutta for her funeral. Official delegations from more than two dozen countries, including that of French president Jacques Chirac and a U.S. group headed by first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, will be there.

Yet after 50 years of work, the slums of Calcutta _ and Los Angeles, London, and Lisbon _ still stand.”Mother Teresa may not have done anything for poverty alleviation in this country,”Dhrirubbhai Sheth, an Indian political analyst, said shortly after her death.”But her contribution toward arousing sensitivity to the problem and creating a sense of guilt, which every rich should have for the poor, is immense.” It’s not, however, that Mother Teresa was above politics. She engaged in a different kind of politics.

At the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, she confronted President Clinton over his stand on abortion. And last year, she signed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing doctor-assisted suicide in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

During Lebanon’s bloody civil war in the 1980s, she won a temporary cease-fire, allowing her to evacuate a group of mentally handicapped children from the war-torn nation.

In politics, as in ministry, her focus was on the vulnerable individual.

Her creed _”to be poor and to love Him (God) in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor”_ may live on in the work of her Missionaries of Charity, but an unfillable vacuum has been created by her absence from the world stage.

MJP END ANDERSON