d'mensions D'Youville college Journal august 2o11

She interviewed Mother Teresa both here and abroad. She returned to Calcutta several timesto help her deliver blankets to the poor. She recalled how important the blankets were to thosewho received them:I have seen how one blanket can ease the pain of wretched povertyin so many parts of the globe – a tattered blanketscantily covered the nakedness of a beggarin the slums of South Americaand I saw his likes in Asia, in the Orient,and everywhere I went in Africa.Scraps of filthy blankets bound up part of the ulcerous soreseating away the limb of the leper I fell over in the dusk in Calcutta.No matter how worn the blanket were, they were regarded as a special gift. She often saw anentire family huddled under one blanket. They were used as shelter stretched over poles toprotect from the weather.At a meeting at the University of Toronto where Mother Teresa addressed her remarks to a crowdof over 2,000, Rita had the unexpected joy of speaking with Mother Teresa. She remarked onher hands:...the gnarled work-worn hands that have lovingly cleansed leprous wounds,the hands that have comforted the dying and the destitutethat she picked up from the streets of Calcutta.And her luminous eyes appear to be lit from withinby a powerful source of strength and Christlike love.As the meeting dispersed, Mother Teresa was saying her good-byes and as Rita approached,Mother Teresa took her hands and said:My dear, you have the most beautiful giftnot to destroy men but to spread love and compassion in the world.She then took Rita’s notebook from her and wrote:Dear Rita, Love Jesus with undivided love through letting Him use you to spreadlove and compassion. God bless you.– M. Teresa, MC (Missionary of Charity)Rita was among the journalists who met privately with Pope Pius XII in Bombay where aEucharistic Congress was being held. She was very taken by his remarks when he said:No one has a nobler mission than a journalist in the world of today.My predecessors consecrated swords and shields of warriors.I chose rather to bestow blessings upon a Christian journalist’s pen.Her visits to the Vatican were many, but one papal moment struck her deeply. She describedJohn Paul II’s very human reaction on the day following his installation. His people, the peopleof Poland and especially the mountaineers from the Tatra Mountains where Karol Wojtylahad grown up, hiked and skied, spontaneously broke into a mountaineer folk song that asks,“Laddie, are you not grieving to leave your fair mountain?” The pope, knowing that he wouldnever again return there to live, broke down and wept.Rita also had the great joy to cover John Paul’s first visit to Poland as pope. She was swept upin the joy the people exhibited as their pope returned for a visit.Throughout her entire career, she thoroughly enjoyed her adventures in travel, meeting humblestrangers and the well known and counted herself among the lucky to be in the very niche thatsuited her properly. nalumni.dyouville.edu 23