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Mother Teresa Mourned by Those She Touched in Area

They mourned Mother Teresa in Washington yesterday, a city where -- as in many cities throughout the world -- the religious order she founded was doing the work to which she was dedicated, helping the poor and the sick.

"I came to share your grief," said Cardinal James A. Hickey during Mass at the Gift of Peace Home. "I join my tears with yours," he told the mourners at the residence for the ill and the elderly operated in Northeast Washington by Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity Order.

And there was sadness and grief. The Rev. Michael T. Mannion, campus chaplain at Catholic University halted to compose himself during his reading from the Book of Matthew. Occasionally, a nun dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

But among the approximately 80 nuns and residents and volunteers -- here a man on crutches, there a woman in a wheelchair -- there were also chuckles and smiles at some of Hickey's reminiscences and descriptions of the unique woman who died yesterday in India at 87.

Such as when Hickey reminded them that "it wasn't that Mother Teresa decided after looking at a lot of computer printouts to go out into the streets." No, he said, "it was the Lord speaking to her heart."

Hickey first met Mother Teresa in Rome in 1970, when she and her work among the poor in Calcutta were just becoming known to the wider world. Mannion, then a seminarian, was her driver during Hickey's visit.

"Mother was not shy about asking for things," Hickey recalled yesterday, evoking more chuckles. When he heard she wanted houses in Washington to use as missions, he said, "I got in a car and drove up and down the road all over the city. We had to hurry."

And when Mother Teresa came, out went the mattresses and carpeting Hickey had provided. Too fancy, he said: She wanted the members of her order to live like the poor.

"We loved her because of what she did," said one Gift of Peace resident. "We love her because she started this house," said another.

Augustine Serrao, of Mount Rainier, brought his son Ron, 17, and a bouquet to the Mass. The elder Serrao came here from Bangladesh. During the service, his eyes welled with tears.

"She was a mother for everyone's children," he said afterward.

At the Gift of Hope convent in Baltimore, which serves as a hospice for men with AIDS, the nuns prayed yesterday as they mourned the founder of their order.

"We know now that we have someone praying for us in Heaven," said Bob Lacy, a volunteer at the hospice.

Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening was one of many political figures throughout the area who expressed sadness yesterday at Mother Teresa's death.

"She inspired us with her kindness, her selflessness and her boundless love for those less fortunate," Glendening said in a statement issued on behalf of his wife, Frances Anne, and himself.

Bishop William E. Lori, of the Washington archdiocese, first met Mother Teresa in 1974 while a seminarian. She "had no political agenda. She just didn't," he said. "The only thing she wanted from anyone in life was the wherewithal to serve the poor."

Cardinal William H. Keeler, head of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, will offer Mass celebrating Mother Teresa's memory tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Cathedral Street.

Throughout the afternoon yesterday, visitors to the Indian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue NW signed a book of condolence in the lobby.

"I am feeling I lost my own mother," said Hari Singh, an embassy security officer.

Five bouquets had been placed before a watercolor of Mother Teresa that was propped against a double-glass door outside the embassy.

To one of the bouquets was attached a note: "An angel came to show us the way. She epitomized not only what we could do, but what we should do. Mother Teresa was the conscience of the world."

Staff writers Allan Lengel, Paul W. Valentine and Martin Weil contributed to this report.