Mother Teresa

When Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa (1910-1997) in October 2003, Magnum photographer Raghu Rai had already paid homage to the extraordinary sister and her exemplary destiny. Know for his numerous reportages on India, especially on Bhopal, Rai met Mother Teresa in the early 1970s. Fascinated by someone who, from the age of twelve, was fully aware of her "mission," he continued to photograph her until her death in 1997.

In 1928, when she was only eighteen, she left Macedonia to join the Sisters of Loreto, a community of nuns in Ireland with missions in India. After a few month' training in Dublin, she was sent to India, where on May 24, 1931, she took her initial vows as a nun, choosing the name Teresa in honor of Saint Theresa of Lisieux. From 1931 to 1948, Mother Teresa taught in Kolkata (Calcutta), but the suffering and poverty she glimpsed outside the convent made such a deep impression on her that in 1948 she received permission from her superiors to leave the convent school and devote herself to working in the slums of Kolkata. In October 1950, seh started her own order, Thhe Missionaries of Charity, whose primary thask was to love and care for those persons nobody else was prepared to look after. Less than two years after her death, Pope John Paul II permitted the opening of her Cause of Canonization. On December 20, 2002, a decree approved Mother Teresa's heroic virtues and the miracle attributed to her intercession.

The relationship of trust that Raghu Rai and Mother Teresa gradually built up is very apparent in the photographer's work. He observed her daily life and that of her community, successfully conveying its prayerful intensity and strength of Kolkata, where the everpresent poverty and distress illustrated the need for Mother Teresa's work. With nearly a hundred black-and-white photographs, punctuated by anecdotal texts that recall their encounters, Rai has captured the strength of Mother Teresa's commitment and her daily fight against poverty.