Amherst, Mass. — A 7yearold girl who was adopted as a baby from one of Mother Teresa’s missions in India became tongue-tied upon meeting the Nobel Peace Prize winner Saturday, and missed her chance to thank her.
Julia Suchitra Christiansen Cowan, who left India when she was 15 months old, became overwhelmed by the lack of time as she handed Mother Teresa a bouquet of roses before 5,000 people at a football stadium.
“She looked very happy to see me, because of the smile on her face,” said Miss Cowan, of Northampton.
Mother Teresa, in the United States to visit American nuns in the Missionaries of Charity order she founded, commented on Abortion, telling the audience that God works through a baby to show his love for mankind.
“Today we know what terrible things are happening to little unborn children. How frightening to think little lives are killed by their own mothers,’ she said.
She also said there is great hunger in the United States.
“Maybe they are not dying of hunger like they are in India and Ethiopia, but there is terrible hunger for love,” she said.
The 74yearold nun, who cancelled a Connecticut appearance Wednesday due to exhaustion, spoke for more than a half hour under the hot run at the University of Massachusetts. She had been invited by the Blue Army, a local Roman Catholic spiritual group that believes in world peace through prayer.
Miss Cowan later said she was not worried that she did not have a chance to chat with the nun.
“There will always be a next time, sometime,” she said, holding the religious medal which Mother Teresa had blessed and given her.
The Rev. John F. Tuohey, a priest at the campus’ Catholic student center, worked during the summers of 1979 and 1984 at a hospital run by Mother Teresa’s order in Hyderabad, but never managed to meet the busy nun in India.
The priest, who sat with Mother Teresa and college and church officials Saturday, said the nun told him he must come back to India. He promised he would.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 28, 1985
