Mother Teresa's disciples await big day

By Subir Bhaumik BBC correspondent in Calcutta

With just days to go before Mother Teresa's beatification, the sisters and brothers of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity are in high spirits.

Nuns pray in Calcutta as they count down to 19 October

Indeed, for the 4,000 volunteers running the hundreds of centres worldwide of the Missionaries of Charity, which Mother Teresa founded in Calcutta in 1949, 19 October will be a great day.

Sister Marjorie, head of Calcutta's Sishu Bhavan orphanage, which the organisation runs barely a few hundred metres from where Mother Teresa lived, worked and died, echoes the feeling of the many Catholic workers in India.

"Men and women have already acknowledged her great work among the poor," she says. "Now God himself will put the stamp of greatness on Mother Teresa."

At the Home of the Dying, run by the missionaries in the city's Kalighat area, Sister Georgina is preparing for the greatest day of her missionary life.

"Mother Teresa showed us the way and taught us to serve the poorest of the poor, the crippled and the infirm, the ailing and the dying.

"When she is beatified, the world will recognise what we have done for them. As God's servants, we will carry on our work for His children," Sister Georgina says.

Revered

The organisation remains strong despite the death of its founder.

Sister Christie, in charge of administering the headquarters of the organisation, says: "The flow of young volunteers continues to be impressive."

Thousands of orphans have received care at the Sishu Bhavan

Scores of dedicated young men and women continue to volunteer. Some stay on to work for life.

Brother Luke, of the Holy Cross Mission in north-east India, hopes the beatification will be telecast live in Calcutta.

"We are not there, but we want to see the ceremony at all costs."

In Calcutta, Mother Teresa has always been revered for her work.

As one drives into the city, a billboard reads: "Welcome to the city of joy, the city of Tagore, the city of Ray, the city of Teresa."

Rabindranath Tagore was Bengal's greatest poet and, like Mother Teresa, a Nobel Laureate. Satyajit Ray remains Bengal's greatest film-maker.

I am happy she will be beatified because her miracle cured me Monika Besra

But there remain aspects of Mother Teresa's work, and that of her organisation, that continue to court controversy.

She strongly opposed abortion despite India's huge population, upsetting the authorities who run family planning programmes.

And hardcore Hindu radicals denounced the missionaries for "engineering conversions".

Even the Sishu Bhavan orphanage has not escaped censure.

Detractors say the Missionaries of Charity makes a lot of money from adoptions.

The organisation says it only accepts voluntary donations made by couples.

Some of these couples defend the missionaries, saying allegations of huge donations are baseless.

"Some may be donating more money but I donated only 2,000 rupees ($44) for my child. That is what I could comfortably afford," says Anjali Sengupta, a railway employee who adopted a three-year-old girl from Sishu Bhavan a year ago.

Legacy 'insult'

Then there is the question of the miracle a beatification candidate must perform before the ceremony can be held.

The candidate must then have a second miracle ratified before sainthood can be conferred.

Numbers are growing: Sisters from the order at a convention

Although the Vatican has accepted Mother Teresa's first miracle, many in India remain sceptical.

The miracle involved a 30-year-old tribal woman, Monika Besra, who claimed she was cured of her stomach tumour four years ago when she tied on a Mother Teresa medallion.

"On 5 September 1999, I prayed with many others at a Missionaries of Charity centre. I was in great pain because the tumour was not going away.

"The sisters tied a Mother Teresa medallion to my stomach. In the morning, the tumour was gone," Ms Besra told the BBC before she left for the Vatican.

But the doctors who treated Monika for more than two years say she was cured by modern medicine - not by a miracle.

And Prabir Ghosh, secretary of the Calcutta-based Indian Rationalists Association, openly questions the miracle.

"Mother Teresa was a great soul and I think it is an insult to her legacy to make her sainthood dependent on bogus miracles. It should be linked to her great work among the poor," says Mr Ghosh.

Dr Biswas (l) and Dr Mustafi (r) who treated Monika Besra

He says Mother Teresa herself went to the best hospitals - and the best doctors - in the city when she fell ill.

Most agree with him that Mother Teresa does not need miracles to be declared a saint.

"Her work among the poor is all that matters to us," says Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a doctor.

She says she is a practising Hindu and prays regularly, and for her, Mother Teresa represents "the march of God on Earth".