USD to Cite Mother Teresa Before Her Visit to Tijuana

TIJUANA —  Church officials here are busy making last-minute preparations for a brief visit by Mother Teresa, who is expected to arrive this afternoon and will attend a Mass to be celebrated Wednesday by Bishop Emilio Berlie.

Officials from the Diocese of Tijuana are expecting a standing-room-only crowd at the Bullring by the Sea when Bishop Berlie celebrates Mass at 3 p.m. The diocese has given out thousands of free tickets to local residents so they can attend Wednesday’s Mass.

USD Ceremony Planned

Also today, an overflow crowd of about 5,500 is expected to attend a ceremony at the University of San Diego’s Torero Stadium, where Mother Teresa of Calcutta, 78, will receive an honorary degree for her work with the poor throughout the world. Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is expected to address the crowds in San Diego and Tijuana.

After the San Diego ceremony, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. and run for 90 minutes, Mother Teresa will be driven to Tijuana, where she will spend about 36 hours. She will stay in one of Tijuana’s poorest neighborhoods with members of her Missionaries of Charity order, who work with the poor, sick and homeless. Mother Teresa was last in San Diego in 1960.

Sister Selma, one of four nuns who minister to local residents, said they are eagerly awaiting “Mother’s visit.” A native of India, Sister Selma joined the order 13 years ago and worked with Mexico City’s poor for five years before arriving in Tijuana in February. Two other nuns are also from India and a third, Sister Gabriel, is from Pennsylvania.

“Mother says that we are only a drop in the ocean. . . . We can only help a little bit, but the little help we give is often a lot to the people who receive it,” said Sister Selma, who in addition to speaking Hindu and English, also speaks flawless Spanish. “In Tijuana, people are poor, but they get more help than the poor in Mexico City.”

Work With the ‘Trash People’

In Mexico City, the Missionaries of Charity work with the basureros (trash people), who live on the edge of the city’s garbage dumps and depend on the trash thrown by others to eat and survive. Sister Selma said U.S. groups bring food and clothing to the order’s house in Colonia Postal on a regular basis.

“We live on divine Providence,” Sister Selma said. “Jesus has been very good to us. What we get, we give to the poor.”

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Albania, which is now part of Yugoslavia. After joining the Sisters of Loreto in 1928, she worked in Ireland and then in India, where she founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. There are now more than 50 schools, orphanages and houses for the poor in more than 30 countries. She has received many awards for her work, including the Pope John XXIII Peace Prize in 1971 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985.

The order is building a shelter for the sick and homeless in Colonia Murua, but Sister Selma said she doesn’t know when it will be completed. Meanwhile, the nuns try to meet the spiritual needs of the people who live in Tijuana’s poor areas and to distribute food and clothing that the order collects from Americans.