Chasing Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa was a hard person to catch up with. When I first flew to Calcutta to meet her, I discovered that she had left the day before to handle an emergency in Bangladesh. I jumped on a plane to Bangladesh, but she was just leaving for Nepal. So I flew to Nepal, now running on several days without sleep, only to find out that she had, once again, just left.

The year was 1979. My friend, Nathan Gray — who was an executive at Oxfam International in Boston and had met Mother Teresa when he went to India to help when an earthquake struck a few years before — had called me one day with a bizarre idea. Would Playboy Magazine, where I’d written several long interviews with famous folks, be interested in an interview with Mother Teresa, and, if so, would they pay for the trip for both of us? I called Playboy immediately, heart racing, and my editor agreed to send us. Mother Teresa’s staff of nuns — not exactly understanding what Playboy was — welcomed the idea, too.

In those pre-computer years, making a plane reservation meant that we had to sit in the airline’s office for many hours while the clerks had to phone and talk to human beings who then had to phone other human beings to make a simple reservation. Preparing to scurry around the Indian subcontinent on the hunt for Mother Teresa was a huge and complicated task.

So, while Nathan and I waited to hear where Mother Teresa had jetted to, I decided to fly to New Delhi to meet with The New York Times bureau chief, who had interviewed her several times over the past few years. He was a tough, experienced journalist, so I was shocked to hear him say that being in her presence so profoundly moved him that he was considering giving up his job, his Judaism, moving his family to Calcutta and going to work for her.

After three weeks of chasing Mother Teresa through India, we all finally connected in Calcutta, her home base and one of the poorest cities in the world. It was also one of the most crowded, with hordes of citizens on every street, making walking anywhere difficult. I wondered why Mother Teresa chose this desperate city for her home base.

I soon got my answer when her people took us to the Home for the Destitute and Dying, a dilapidated building overcrowded with ill and aged people that was run and funded by the nuns in her worldwide group, the Missionaries of Charity. Seeing that Home, overwhelmed by the poverty and despair, I understood that Mother Teresa was completely dedicated to helping where no one else would, to caring for the neediest among us. Calcutta was the perfect place for her to follow her life’s path.

The next day, I finally met Mother Teresa at her office. The space also served as a home and school for abandoned children. When she walked into the reception room, in her blue and white sari, surrounded by her small staff of nuns, I was surprised by how tiny she was, how frail she looked. She sat next to me at the table and stared into my eyes before saying anything. Her English was good, her sentences short and pointed. She was warm but distant. Oddly, I wanted to touch her, hold her hand, but she sweetly rebuffed any physical contact. I didn’t comprehend what exactly I was feeling, as these emotions were not simple or understandable.

The interview went well; she didn’t object to the tape recorder, and she was focused. I ended with the trickiest question: In this overpopulated, poverty-ridden city, how did she explain her anti-abortion stance, her anti-contraception belief? Mother Teresa’s exact words stayed with me until today: “Bring all the unwanted children to me, I will take care of them.” She had nothing else to say on the subject. Children were left at her front door, many ill, deformed, all discarded by their families. She took them all in, gave them a home, educated them, loved them for years.

After three hours, she signaled the interview was over. I knew in my heart, mind and body, that Mother Teresa was a saint — whatever that is. I wasn’t sure, I’m still not, but I know I had never had that experience before or since.

I knew in my heart, mind and body, that Mother Teresa was a saint — whatever that is.

I am a Jewish woman; sainthood is not part of my vocabulary. And though in my life’s travels I’ve been with Buddhist gurus, Hindu healers and a fleet of soulful rabbis, this was different. Unique.

When I returned to my hotel, I was teary. I missed her, and — dare I say it — I loved her. Like the New York Times journalist, I thought for an hour about giving up my wonderful life in America to be with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. My friend Nathan explored adopting one of her orphans, an infant with only one arm. I convinced him that his wife and three kids might be shocked when they picked him up at the airport. He finally relented. So did I.

I never had enough time with her or got sufficient candid responses to my tough questions to write the Playboy Interview. But what I’ve been left with, after all these years, is the overpowering truth that I had been in the presence of a saint.

I was changed by my time with Mother Teresa and her people. I was inspired by her amazing, tireless work, which blended with my own growing reality of “tzedakah,” one’s life commitment to doing good works. I never forgot or minimized the experience. And I’ve never experienced anything like it again.

She died in 1997, eighteen years after I was with her. And in 2016, Mother Teresa was canonized.

Marcia Seligson is a theatrical producer in Los Angeles and New York and a sometimes journalist. She is currently writing her memoirs.