Statue of Mother Theresa / Adobe Stock
An exhibition about the life of Saint Teresa of Calcutta presented in Rome has moved many young people to cultivate holiness.
Curated by the Missionaries of Charity, the exhibition is titled “Mother Teresa: Life, Spirituality and Message.” It began in 2010 and it is attracting new attention because of the many pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee, according to AsiaNews.
“For me, Mother Teresa is charity,” said Kasius Ackimana, a 19-year-old biomedical student originally from Zambia.
“In all the Missionaries of Charity chapels, next to the crucifix, there is the inscription ‘I thirst’,” he said. “These are the words Jesus spoke on the cross before dying. But they don’t mean He thirsted for water; according to Mother Teresa, He thirsted for souls. When the nuns see a poor person, that person is Jesus Christ, but incognito, you understand? It’s not a representation of Christ, but Christ Himself in another form.”
The saint, who was born to an Albanian family in what is now the Republic of North Macedonia, spent most of her life ministering to the poor and ill of Calcutta. Although many of the young people at the exhibition were already familiar with Mother Teresa’s story, their time there has left them in awe of her holiness.
“I already knew Mother Teresa; my father-in-law always talks about her,” Locquahn Tukerangi, a 29-year-old from New Zealand, told AsiaNews. “But delving into her story here in Rome is an incredible experience.”
He was particularly impressed by the way that she dealt with the decades of spiritual dryness that only came to light after her death and was covered extensively by the media in 2007, including in Time.
“I was struck by how much she had Jesus in her heart, despite her inner darkness,” Tukerangi told AsiaNews.
The exhibition was most recently at the Scuola Pontificia Pio IX until Aug. 5, according to promotional material from the Scuola. It has moved a number of times in its 15 years, including traveling to the US and being installed at the John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, DC, last year.
When approached by AsiaNews to comment on the exhibition, Sister Maria Dolores, one of the Missionaries of Charity, told the outlet, “We don’t give interviews. We let her, Mother Teresa, speak.”
>> Indian state’s decision to rename health clinics after Mother Teresa sparks political backlash <<
