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The headline reads: "I met Mother Teresa ..."

The headline reads: "I met Mother Teresa ..."
A reporter's encounter with a Saint

By Mary Ann Mueller
VOL Special Correspondent
www.virtueonline.org
September 6, 2016

The headline reads: "I met Mother Teresa. A few days later, I went blind."

All I could think of was: "Oh, dear. Another journalist's encounter with Mother Teresa ... this is not good." Intrigued ... I read on.

Ruth Gledhill, a contributing editor for Christian Today, a London-based Christian news magazine, was recounting her encounter with Mother Teresa while covering the now Saint's 1992 visit to the Catholic Church's National Conference of Priests of England and Wales. At the time, Ms. Gledhill was the religion correspondent for The Times of London.

Shortly after meeting Mother Teresa, Ms. Gledhill literally went physically blind. Apparently, some grit, which was actually a piece of glass, got lodged in her eye, and, as the eye became infected, it caused the other eye to also lose its sight.

Mother Teresa had nothing to do with her going blind. Meeting Mother was just a time reference point for Ms. Gledhill and her short period of blindness.

Thankfully, medical care and eye surgery were able to correct Ms. Gledhill's eyesight.

I, too, have a Mother Teresa story. (I'm sure that several members of the working religious press do.) My Mother Teresa story dates back to the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans. I was the media director for the THIRST Pavilion, which was sponsored by the Greater New Orleans Federation of Churches (GNOFoC).

In October, 1984, Mother Teresa, the foundress of the Missionaries of Charity, came to New Orleans, and, while there, she spoke at the World's Fair and at a Prayer Breakfast. I was tasked, through the GNOFoC to interface with the Archdiocese of New Orleans and help the Archdiocese with secular media needs and the secular coverage of the events. The Archdiocese handled the ecclesial press and I was so surprised when I called to speak with Archbishop Philip Hannan, to find that he answered his own telephone.

I remember calling the various networks, wire services and major newspapers about helping them with their Mother Teresa story. They needed press passes to the World's Fair and the Prayer Breakfast, event schedules, stock photos, backgrounding on Mother and her religious order, and helpful information about the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition and the Greater New Orleans Federation of Churches. I also explained that Mother was a 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India.

"She's a living saint," I noted. "The Catholic Church will canonize her before they bury her."

One of the networks in New York -- ABC ... CBS ...NBC -- I don't remember which one, said that it wasn't interested in the story because it was a "religious story." So I ended up working with its Dallas affiliate.

Unfortunately, the people at GNOFoC did not understand media and how to effectively work with the press, and they were hassling TIME magazine when TIME contacted them about Mother's itinerary and securing event passes. By the time TIME got to me, TIME was livid!

I was home at the time TIME's call came through, and this male person was screaming at me from New York about how idiotic the GNOFoC was and how they did not respect the influence of TIME magazine. He almost didn't need a phone to be heard.

I quickly dropped my hand into my purse to find something to write with and found the business end of my X-ACTO. An X-ACTO knife is a specialized, pointed scalpel blade held in an X-ACTO holder that newspapers use in the cutting and pasting of galleys in making up their composing room dummies for the press. This was long before the days of computerized pagination.

For whatever reason, my X-ACTO was neither retracted nor sheathed, and I sliced my right ring, middle and index fingers down to the bone. The TIME's reporter is still yelling at me, and I am bleeding like a stuck pig.

Long story short, I met Mother Teresa with three fingers on my right hand swathed in enormous white bandages. I could hardly write to take notes when she was at the Prayer Breakfast.

Mother Teresa was a little slip of a thing. About my height -- 4'9" ... 57 inches ... 1.45 meters-- and slightly bent over due to age. She wore a dark blue sweater over her iconic bright blue-trimmed white sari habit to ward off the chill of the air conditioner, and she stood on a wooden Coke crate in order to be tall enough to reach the podium's microphone in order to be heard. She spoke English with a European accent.

I had never expected to meet such a distinguished person, much less a Saint-in-the-making. However, through the years, my journalistic career has afforded me the opportunity to meet and report on famous and infamous religious notables whom I would not have encountered otherwise, including Mother -- now -- Saint Teresa of Calcutta. That list also includes: Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Edmund Browning, Katharine Jefferts-Schori and Michael Curry; Vicky Gene Robinson and Barbara Harris; Billy Graham, Rick Warren ...

Ruth Gledhill received a Miraculous Medal to remind her of meeting the Catholic nun. I never needed such a remembrance. To this day, my three fingers are scarred and numb from my encounter with the X-ACTO knife as I was dealing with a livid TIME reporter who was assigned to cover Mother Teresa in New Orleans. The scars have faded, but the numbness remains, as do the fond memories.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline

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