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Small Woman with a Big Heart
By Elly Kaas
In June of 1982, I had the privilege of personally welcoming and accompanying Mother Teresa while she was in Toronto for the Youth Corps Event at Varsity Stadium. My role was to meet Mother Teresa at the airport, accompany her to and during the event at Varsity Stadium and bring her back to the airport.
Mother Teresa had been to two previous Youth Corps Events (in 1971 at Massey Hall with Jean Vanier, and in 1976 at Convocation Hall). She agreed to return to once again when Fr. Tom McKillop invited her to be the main speaker at an event on Jesus and Global Peace in 1982.
As part of the Youth Corps team organizing the event, it was agreed that I would take on this role because I was six months pregnant at the time. So while my colleagues were rushing around frantically dealing with all the last minute logistical details of a large public event, I was escorting Mother Teresa to and from the airport.
Although she was a very tiny person, it struck me that she was very intense. She was acutely aware of what was happening around her. She made an effort to understand the context of Toronto in the short time we had before arriving at the event. While she was our guest and thus had no need to worry about the logistics, once the event was over, she maintained control over her activities. I couldn’t help but think she probably would have made a very effective CEO.
By 1982, Mother Teresa was very well known and recognizable by the public. People immediately gathered around her wherever she was. She was clearly drawn to children and visibly challenged individuals. She had a supply of religious medallions which she would offer as gifts to the most vulnerable she spotted in the crowds. While she could have rested, she chose to interact with the people who wanted to get near to her. She also blessed my child in utero and gifted him with a religious medallion.
In the few hours I spent with Mother Teresa, it became apparent that she was an incredibly humble, quiet woman who, through great personal sacrifice, would tend to the dying needs of the most poor and abandoned individuals in the slums of Calcutta. But she was also a very strong and decisive leader who was able and willing to take charge as she saw fit.
