Calcutta 1980
By John O'Shea

The mass in a small church hidden amid Calcutta's slums began at 4.30am, but I felt obliged to make it there on time.

Promised a lift with the Missionaries of Charity to a leper colony in Tanager, some three hours outside the city, I felt that joining them in prayer as the day began was the least I could do.

The mass over, I hung around the yard outside, waiting for my lift and wondering what an Irish sports journalist could discuss with an Indian nun for three hours in a car. I needn't have worried. My companion for the journey was Mother Theresa, and I spent the rest of the day in awe, watching this small woman who had enough love for everyone she met.

That day was over 20 years ago now, but it has had a lasting effect on me. It was my first trip to Calcutta, and surrounded by what seemed to be an unending tide of misery, I began to despair.

In the nightmare of Calcutta's slums, it seemed as if the only release was death. Sickened by the sight of so much poverty, I approached Mother Theresa. "When you work in these conditions every day, surrounded by so much suffering," I said, "do you ever stop and wonder if you're making some kind of impact on this poverty?"

She turned to me and smiled, saying: "Every day of my life in Calcutta, I make it my business to lift a leper or a dying person or a child in desperate need and hug and kiss that person. I don't know whether that is the best thing to do for that person but I do know it's the right thing to do".

Years later, I still feel privileged at the opportunity I had that day. Amid the dirt and the dying in Calcutta's slums, in the depths of the most appalling poverty, I witnessed the power of love, and its ability to light up even the darkest places.