Mother Teresa
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa, died on September 5th, aged 87
HAD Mother Teresa not become an international celebrity, she might not have lived so long. Several times in her last years, against her will, she was admitted to exclusive and expensive hospitals for heart surgery. She herself saw no point in taking care to prolong her earthly existence; her only concession to frailty, ever, was to step aside last March to allow the leadership of her order of nuns to be assumed by someone else. Nor did she see any point in interventionist medicine: she would have been happy to die, as most of her patients did, on a thin pallet in a communal dormitory, having spent her last days on a diet of rice, water, weak medicine, and love.
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Mother Teresa”
Obituary September 13th 1997
From the September 13th 1997 edition
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