Mother Teresa's successor, postulator of cause recall her struggles

Published: 2007-10-09

LATROBE, Pa. (CNS) -- Blessed Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, did not curse the darkness that plagued her, but rather she embraced it, Sister Nirmala Joshi said Oct. 6 at St. Vincent College in Latrobe. "She chose to accept the darkness that the world chose for her," said Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor as superior general of the order of nuns. She spoke during an Oct. 5-7 conference at the college titled "Remembrances of Mother Teresa of Calcutta by Her Family and Friends." It was a three-day reunion of people who knew and loved her. The event commemorated the 10th anniversary of her death or, as Benedictine Archabbot Douglas R. Nowicki, college chancellor, said, "her entrance into heaven." She died in Calcutta, India, Sept. 5, 1997. In the discussion moderated by author and television host Colleen Carroll Campbell, Sister Nirmala and Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, a Missionaries of Charity priest who is the postulator of her sainthood cause, brought to light the meaning of Mother Teresa's surprising and well-publicized interior "darkness."

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