Mother Theresa

***Mother Theresa*** (*Italian:* Madre Teresa) is an Italian animated film that was released in 2005 and distributed by Mondo TV. It contains the autobiographic life of the religious sister of the same name.

## Synopsis

The film concerns the life of a heroine of our times, a woman whose love for God inspired her to love Him, and every derelict that Providence brought to her door. This woman, whom we all know as Mother Theresa of Calcutta, was called Agnese Gonxha Bojaxiu. She was originally from Albania, born in the little town of Skopje. It was here that she was mysteriously called by the voice of God. In the years between the First and Second World War, she went as far as Calcutta and learned English, Hindi and Bengali, becoming the leading player in an incredible adventure.

She was both a Loreto nun as well as a teacher who chose to be called “Mother Theresa.” But in Calcutta, she was attracted by the multitude of derelicts that populated the city of fifteen million people, and she left the Sisters of Loreto community after deciding to spend the rest of her life serving the world’s forgotten souls. On the doorstep of the religious house where she went to live was a huge, shanty-town called “The Sea of Pearls.” It was the most frightful, stinking slum and filthiest bowery. There, Theresa began to serve Jesus to whom she had decided to dedicate her life, and who filled her heart with a simple, but unshakable love for the derelict.

There, in that shanty-town amidst tens of thousands of poverty stricken, misbegotten souls. Her love reached out to living skeletons, young women aged by the violent and brutal life of slavery they were forced to live, as well as the paralytic, the lepers, and a host of others. Above all, however, she battled strenuously to save the children. When she spoke about the hunger of her poor, the need of medicines for her sick, the right of her children to grow, she was so absolutely convincing that slowly, but surely, a great chain of solidarity formed around her figure.

She gradually gathered about her “little sisters”. This mother and teacher cultivated a huge family of generous women around herself, all devoted to serving the poor, just as she herself was. Their rule had three cornerstones: poverty, silence, and smile. She explained to her disciples that every poor person on the face of the Earth is Jesus and thus must be served because His pain “calls” the love of His brides. Mother Theresa’s service to the poor was so widely acknowledged and appreciated that she was given Indian citizenship in 1950.

The objectives she achieved with her sisters, amidst countless difficulties, were the milestones along the path of love she walked for her entire life ... After many precarious years, in 1952 she was able to open the House of First Love in Calcutta, the first of many more to come such as Jhansi, Agra, Asanol, Amravati, Bhagalpur, and Bombay. In 1960 she then went to the United States for the first time to speak about her poor. In 1964, during the Indian National Eucharistic Congress, Pope Paul VI, who was no stranger to the work of Mother Theresa, gave her his white Lincoln that had been auctioned off to raise funds for her work on his departure.

But when the Pope went to present his gift, Mother Theresa was absent. They searched for her with no luck at first, but later found her at the death bed of one by the name of Onil, who whispered to all those who would listen that he had lived on the streets like an animal all his life, but that he would now die feeling like an angel.

In 1979, Mother Theresa was awarded the Nobel Prize and she spoke to the illustrious figures who would listen to her about the defense of life, unborn children, the poor and the love of God. Day after day, and for her entire life, Mother Theresa was thus a witness to Jesus’ love for humanity. And if many found health for their bodies thanks to her, many more certainly discovered the road to God. She died at 8.57 pm, on September 5th, 1997, in the very same place where she had begun her heroic voyage in Calcutta, surrounded by both the children and the poor.