| |
 |
 |
| Welfare fund of the help and support to the socially-not protected layers of the population "Lions" |
|
|
Novy Zykovsky proezd, 3, office 58, Moscow, 125167, Russia |
|
 |
 |
|
|
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa Prayer
Princess Diana and Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa's contest
10 Theses of Mother Teresa
Who cares for virtue if beauty will save the world?
The modern icons are Princess Diana and Mother Teresa.
If we speak about the outstanding women that determined the character of the human kind in the last score of the past century, most people concerned, and even those who are not concerned, will name this remarkable duo of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. These two women even died almost at the same time, with a six days difference. One of them died tragically in a car crash, the other followed her peacefully, as if the news of the Princess' death was the last drop that overflowed her cup in this world and took her soul to the other, the better world.
Mother Teresa was a just person by conviction. Diana became a righteous person, and then was made a sinner, when she first agreed to marry Charles, the heir of the British throne, and then, when she was rejected by him.
For us Diana's death is a horrible and cruel coincidence. But if we think about it, we can come to a conclusion that this accident was bound to happen. If it were not in Paris, then it would be Rome, or Cairo, for example. The fact is that Diana was always on the run, always trying to escape from reality which followed her.
A daughter of the eighth Earl Spenser, in 1981, when she was nineteen, she married Prince Charles, and became the first, since 1659, heir's wife who had royal blood in her veins, but it wasn't a case of incestuous union, for Diana's family descended from Charles II and James II, who were not among the Prince's ancestors.
Diana's marriage lasted eleven years, after which it took her four years to make a final decision to divorce. The union of Diana and Charles seemed a bit like a rotten apple. Just one look at this couple, gorgeous Diana and plain Charles, and you could tell that this marriage was doomed. Logically thinking, it was Diana to make a first step and to leave Charles for some Hollywood superman. But it happened to be the other way: it was the Prince to commit adultery. The rest of the world only shrugged shoulders: what else does he want, when his wife is such a beauty!
But neither her beauty, nor the remarkable popularity could make Diana happy. She even did not have a chance to grieve alone, for she was always in the centre of public attention. The whole Diana' life was shot by thousands of cameras, every step she made gave food for talk. This alone was enough to make her a potential patient of a mental hospital.
Even after her divorce with Charles Diana didn't get the freedom she longed for. She was allowed to visit charity balls and to fight against the use of field mines, but she has no right for a private life of her own. There was so much publicity given to her love affair with Dodi Al-Fayed, that the couple could learn more about each other's feelings from tabloids than from a private talk.
In Mother Teresa's life there was no such a sharp conflict between the spiritual and the worldly life. Her contact with both worlds was more balance. After her death the Archbishop of Bombay, Ivan Dias, recollected that once she told him about her dream: "I stood in front of the gate to Heaven, and Saint Peter told me: "Go back! There are no poor people here who need your help!" And I went back to the Earth to go on with my work!" Still, Saint Peter opened the Heaven gate for Mother Teresa.
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in 1910, in Skopje, which then was in Serbia, in a family of Albanian peasants. At the age of twelve she was deeply religious, and at eighteen she became a nun at Loreto Abbey in Ireland.
A year later she went to India to teach geography in a convent school in Calcutta. The name of Teresa was chosen after a French Saint. In September, 1946, during her trop to Himalayas, Teresa received a message from the God, in which she was told to spend her life helping the poor. In two years Mother Teresa started the first school in Calcutta slums, and a year later she founded the order of the Missionaries of Charity.
Mother Teresa's charity was appreciated by both, the church and atheists. She was awarded the Vatican Prise and the Nobel Peace Prize. A few years before her death, the USA Ambassador in India, Frank Wisner, came to Calcutta to tell Mother Teresa that she was granted honorary citizenship of the United States. It was the fifth case in the US history when a person was given such an honour.
Many people thought that Mother Teresa's sainthood was only a question of time, and the Pope John Paul II was definitely willing that, he wanted to have such a nice saint in the time of his papacy. But it appeared to be not as simple as that, and the problem was a kind of information freedom which can be called, in other words, discrediting.
There were people who dared to say that the "the saint of slums" was a hard-hearted and mercenary person, that among her donors there were people with tarnished reputation, such as the former Haitian Dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) and a millionaire Robert Maxwell. According to them, the money transferred to Mother Teresa's accounts did not lie dormant, for interest was accrued.
As for Mother Teresa's love for people, according to the critics, it was not eternal. They say that the nun often said that the poor should resign to their fate, and also thought that the people with AIDS got the deserved punishment.
The mentioned accusations haven't got enough proofs yet, but the church court supervised by the Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry D'Souza, is studying the case. But the problem is not that Mother Teresa may never be canonized. You don't need to be a prophet to say that in just a few years her image will wane, and nobody will remember her. And the reason is that Mother Teresa doesn't live up to the standard of an icon of the end of the twentieth - the beginning of the twenty first century A.D.
And Diana does. However sinful she was in her worldly life, her beauty will save her even in the other world. People like to admire beautiful toys, and, of course, the will prefer to worship Diana's satin skin, not Teresa's wrinkles. It was already decided to make a memorial fountain in Princess Diana's honour in London St. James Park, with an alley lit by three hundred thousand lamps. In our world there is no use for virtue to fight with beauty.
A monument to Mother Teresa was set up in Calcutta
On March, 2001, a bronze monument to Mother Teresa, a world famous philanthropist, was set up in Calcutta, in the territory of the Missionaries of Charity, in front of the house where she lived. Her grave is now there. The monument was created by Jonathan Wilder, a British sculptor.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
| 125167, г. Москва, Новый Зыковский проезд, д.3, офис 58
Тел./Факс 8(495)150-5867 |
 |
|
|
|
