Carrying On Mother Teresa’s Work

They said a few extra prayers, and sometimes asked about her condition, but they didn’t stop working.

Mother Teresa’s followers in Los Angeles kept serving lunch to the poor in their rickety, two-story Victorian house Sunday, as if the best way to show their love and support for the ailing nun was to keep on with the work she began.

Her condition was the talk of the kitchen Sunday at the Missionaries of Charity’s Pico-Union house, home to several men and boys the order has taken in.

But the members of the Brothers of the Missionaries of Charity--as the men’s religious order begun by Mother Teresa are formally known--said they were reconciled to the prospect of their founder’s death. “We are in some way prepared for it,” said Brother Peter Joseph, the regional superior for the Los Angeles foundation. “We have to be realistic. She is a woman of 86 years. She worked hard, she traveled a lot. She can be burned up like anyone else.”

Doctors monitoring her condition declared her slightly improved although still in critical condition early today. She was alert and chatting, “comparatively better at the moment than what she was yesterday,” said Dr. Devi Shetty, chief heart surgeon at Calcutta’s B.M. Birla Heart Research Center.

She had suffered a setback Sunday in her recovery from surgery to clear two coronary blockages that came to light after she suffered a mild heart attack.

Doctors said prospects for the 86-year-old Roman Catholic nun and international symbol of selfless service to the poor are complicated by long-standing lung and renal problems.

The 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner suffered a mild heart attack Nov. 22 and has been hospitalized since. It is her fourth hospitalization this year--the second for heart problems. Two others were for injuries from falls.

In her third such procedure since 1991, doctors performed an angioplasty Friday to remove blockages from two arteries. The procedure went so well that doctors thought they would be able to begin drug treatment Sunday for an irregular heartbeat--and Mother Teresa, who was fitted with a pacemaker in 1989, thought she would be able to go home.

“You’re done,” she told doctors Saturday after the angioplasty, and gestured at the tubes and cables connecting her to medication drips, oxygen and monitors. “Pull all these out. I look like a Christmas tree.”

At her Missionaries of Charity headquarters in Calcutta, the West Bengal state minister led Catholic nuns and Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists in prayers for the recovery of the native Albanian now known as “The Saint of the Gutters.”

Her California followers were updated on her condition at Sunday morning Mass. The brothers live slightly outside the information age, and have no direct contact with Calcutta.

“Normally,” Joseph said, “our source of news is KFWB.”

In San Francisco, professed nuns and novices--nuns in training--at the local foundation of the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity added an extra hour of afternoon prayer on Mother Teresa’s behalf before they began a scheduled spiritual retreat of prayer and meditation.

“We’re praying for her health and whatever God wants,” said Sister Rose in a telephone interview. “She’s very special to us.”

At the Missionaries of Charity’s Pico-Union house, volunteers Priscilla Sullivan and Lynn Rodriguez swapped information with Brother Bob Thies as they prepared food.

“We’re used to hearing of Mother’s health and heart problems,” Thies said.

“Hopefully she’ll pull through again,” said Sullivan, a Woodland Hills resident who works at the Pico-Union house once a month. “She always seems to.”

The people who gathered in the house’s dining room for lunch under sepia photos of Mother Teresa prayed for her return to health as they ate the fruits of her followers’ labor.

Arnulfo Maravilla has prayed for Mother Teresa since her heart attack two weeks ago. “She is a woman who asks God to help the people,” said the Maravilla, 34, who counts himself as one of those people she has helped. Maravilla, who uses a wheelchair, was injured in a car accident 10 years ago and has lived at the Pico-Union home for three years.

“What’s important is here,” Maravilla said. “A place to stay, something to eat, help with getting medicine.”

Scooping up cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream, 14-year-old Mario Gil said he has been praying for Mother Teresa since her heard of her condition at morning Mass. “She’s a good lady,” he said, “and I hope she can keep helping people.”

Across the table, Miguel Ruiz, 14, recalled glimpsing her years ago during one of her many visits to the Los Angeles chapter. “It was like a miracle,” he said.

Mother Teresa was featured prominently in the thrice-daily prayers said by the brothers on Sunday. But her followers said her condition has not disrupted their work--certainly not as much as her illness in August, which forced a ranking official of the brotherhood to cancel his planned Los Angeles visit so he could be at Mother Teresa’s bedside.

“Of course she is in our prayers,” Joseph said. “But we will not paralyze our work for the poor. We carry on her work.”