Dr. Prabhjit Purewal-Blue skies smile on Mother Teresa

1. Dr. Prabhjit Purewal-Blue skies smile on Mother Teresa Rain was expected. When Prabhjit Purewal, a Stockton physician, touched down in Rome on Saturday, the plane skidded several times while braking on the slick runway. The next morning, rushing to join the gathering throng to celebrate Mother Teresa’s beatification, Purewal forgot his raincoat. He didn’t need it. The sky cleared, the storm disappeared and a tapestry of the smiling face of the tiny Albanian nun was drenched in sunlight. A minor miracle, Purewal joked, but appreciated by the estimated 300,000 assembled in St. Peter’s Square awaiting Pope John Paul II’s pronouncement. Purewal was invited to attend the ceremony in acknowledgment of the three years — 1980 to 1983 — that he spent working side-by-side with Mother Teresa in a leper colony in northern India. He was but 21 at the time, and she was already a formidable force at getting her way about getting things done. His intent was to save lives, hers to save souls, and sometimes they clashed. Still, Mother Teresa provided for the young, Delhi-born doctor all the lessons he would need in compassion for a lifetime. In 2000, he founded the St. Teresa Comprehensive Cancer Center in Stockton. As he mingled with hotel guests and people in the streets, Purewal discovered, however, he was one of thousands touched in just the same way. “I guess because I knew her, I was feeling proprietary,” Purewal said by telephone after Monday’s ceremonies concluded. “Everybody seemed to know her well. The gentleman next to me was an German industrialist. He had this note from her. Almost everybody there may have had a story to tell.” There were people there from all over the world, from Albania and Kosovo trying to claim her. Everybody wants to claim her as their own, he added. “She truly did belong to the whole world.”

2. Mother Teresa believed in taking care of people one person at a time, he said, though she and her Missionaries of Charity often sought to relieve the misery of whole villages at a time. MORE VIDEO: GOOD SAMARITAN JASON DENNY DROVE BY AN SUV STUCK IN THE DELTA OFF HIGHWAY 4 AND WAS ABLE TO SUCCESSFULLY TOW IT OUT. HE DID NOT KNOW THE DRIVER. The sisters currently working in her order were evident by their indigo-trimmed, white saris. They brought with them, from many of the order’s 20 locations throughout the world, people who were sick. Others, hoping for a miracle, came on their own. Purewal spoke with a Venezuelan man in his 50s who had a neurological affliction. The sick man said he prayed to Mother Teresa and hoped to benefit from a papal blessing. Though Purewal was given a seat on the dais, he requested to be moved to the front to take photographs. In so doing, he was impressed by the view of the pope flanked by Mother Teresa’s wrinkled face and Christ on the cross. This exemplified her life. She truly lived for Christ, he said. During the beatification ceremony, the pope’s frail health prevented him from completing his own homily. On Monday, his absence was noted during the thanksgiving Mass for Mother Teresa, which was officiated by one of the cardinals, His Eminence Jose Saraiva Martins. Purewal will conclude his Rome trip visiting with sisters who were with him in India, Sister Dorothy from Bengale and Sister Suzatta from Kerala. Sightseeing will be done on his own. “They are a very strict order. They do not eat outside of their compound. They sleep on the ground,” Purewal said. Their asceticism aside, Mother Teresa inspires humor. “I don’t think she’d spend too much time in heaven. She’d be bored,” Purewal said. “She’s probably in hell fixing things up. That’s where she’d probably find she could do more work.”