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Mother Teresa, Successor Look to Future

Mother Teresa leaned her slight frame on the low balcony's ledge, folded her wrinkled hands and looked down on the courtyard below. Then she spoke.

Her words came slowly, in a whisper too soft for the journalists gathered one floor below to hear, an inaudible testament to how much the health of the Catholic missionary to the poor has weakened. She had just arisen after a rest following morning prayers.

But the news conference today, a day after the Missionaries of Charity selected a successor to the Nobel Peace Prize winner, reaffirmed that the ailing Mother Teresa, 86, remains the central figure of the worldwide order she founded in Calcutta's slums nearly a half-century ago. The order's sisters circulated a tribute that began, "Mother will always be our mother."

Standing on one side of Mother Teresa was a smiling Sister Nirmala, a Hindu convert elected Thursday to be the order's new superior general. On her other side was Sister Frederick, a senior nun who repeated Mother Teresa's statements for journalists who had gained rare admission to the inner courtyard of the Missionaries of Charity headquarters. More than 80 other sisters watched from balconies and windows, applauding several times.

Mother Teresa sounded satisfied with the global expansion of the order, proudly noting more than once that its sisters and brothers now operate 568 homes for the poor in 120 countries. She also showed that like her faith, her wit has not wavered despite the life-threatening troubles, including with her heart, that caused her to step down as the order's elected leader.

"We have support all over the world," she noted. "Pray for us that we may continue the Lord's work."

Mother Teresa said she was "very happy" and described her health as "much better." Asked whether she would retire, she replied ambiguously: "Yeah. I have plenty of work to do."

Asked how often Sister Nirmala would consult her for advice, Mother Teresa replied, "She knows," prompting other sisters to chuckle.

Sister Nirmala, at 62 a generation younger than Mother Teresa, was asked several times how she would manage to lead the order without her predecessor's charisma and international profile.

"I'm not going to be Mother Teresa. I'm Sister Nirmala, in whom the spirit and charisma of the society will live," she said.

Sister Nirmala said she was moved to convert from Hinduism at age 17 when she was a college student in India's eastern state of Bihar, where she was born to parents of Nepali descent. She joined the Missionaries of Charity seven years later in 1958.

Her selection gave a South Asian face to an order whose nuns wear Indian saris, but the Albanian-born Mother Teresa said Sister Nirmala's ancestry would not matter in the missionaries' work. "It will make no difference. We are one order of nuns," she said.

Mother Teresa gave no specific information about her future plans. When the question was posed once in terms of where would she go from here, Mother Teresa quipped, "China." The Communist nation is one country where the order currently does not operate.