Mother Teresa has a close link with Ireland

Dear Editor, I was fascinated to read ‘Mother Teresa’s dark night of the soul’ (IC 26/11/15). Of course, there is a close link with Ireland in that Blessed Mother Teresa came to the Loreto convent (now an Irish school) in Grange Road, Rathfarnham, as a novice in the late 1920s. As religious affairs correspondent of RTÉ, I interviewed Mother Teresa in Whitefriar Street church. Indeed, she was the only person I interviewed whom I ever asked for her autograph. She wrote “God bless you, M Teresa MC” on the back on one of my RTÉ cards, and I have it still.

Andrew O’Connell mentions Blessed Mother Teresa’s “work with the destitute and dying”. What he doesn’t mention is that this work was a direct result of many hours spent in silence before the Blessed Sacrament every day, starting before dawn in the very early hours of the morning.

When asked about sin in the world, Mother Teresa obviously mentioned abortion and divorce. But she also instructed her nuns to receive Communion in the traditional way, on the tongue, not on the hand. She wrote that Communion in the hand was “allowed, but not an order…[A]s MCs, we have chosen to receive Holy Communion on the tongue”. Her supporters do the same to this day.

Yours etc.,

Kieron Wood

Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.