Mother Teresa gets special ‘exhibition train’

(August 27, 2010) Prayers and events were held across India on Thursday to mark the 100th birth anniversary of Mother Teresa. A mass was held at the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the Catholic order she founded in India's eastern city of Kolkata 60 years ago. Prayers were also held at most of the branch-houses across Indian cities and abroad, a senior nun at the congregation said. The Indian federal railway minister and Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity congregation launched a train with a photo exhibition on Mother Teresa. Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee and Sister Maria Prema opened the “train exhibition” for public viewing at Sealdah railway station in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal state. Sister Prema said she was “grateful” to Banerjee for starting the exhibition train. The congregation founded by Mother Teresa in 1950, has always enjoyed the support of the Indian railways, she added. The train with three air-conditioned coaches exhibit Mother Teresa’s life, work and message through photographs and short write-ups provided by the Missionaries of Charity. The train will travel to 10 major railways stations in the next two weeks, halting for two days at each station, and then move to other parts of the country in the next six months. Banerjee said people in West Bengal were proud that Mother Teresa belonged to their state and the Railways organized the exhibition train as a tribute to the nun. Dinesh Trivedi, the federal Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare said that “all of us require the healing touch of Mother Teresa” who he described as God’s “messenger.” Mother Teresa came to Kolkata in 1929, at the age of 19, to become a Loreto nun. She later left that congregation and started her own Missionaries of Charity congregation to work for the “poorest of the poor” in the slums of the city. She based her work largely in Kolkata and was buried there in 1997 after she died at the age of 87.