NEW YORK— Tie tireless nun’ who dispenses hope and talks of salvation in the slums of Calcutta, India, has turned her mercy toward AIDS suffers half a world away, bringing joy and consternation to her local church colleague’s.

Mother Theresa while in New ‘York for a cataract operation, has opened a residence for AIDS patients, helped win medical furloughs for three inmates with AIDS ‘and refocused attention on the plight of the disease’s victims,

Exhibiting energy that belies her 75 years and wearing sunglasses to protect her eye, the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke with the governor, the mayor and reporters and put off her planned departure several times,

“Each day came and passed in which she saw something else that. needed to be done,” said the Rev Peter Finn, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York. “Mother Theresa has grabbed the bridle and she’s pulling the cart.” ‘one move engendered some criticism; he plea to Mayor Edward I. Koch last week asked for help in obtaining a farm where AIDS sufferers could live and work, much like the leprosy colonies her order ministers to elsewhere.

A native of Yugoslavia, Mother ‘Theresa is founder of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic order of nuns who tend the poor and the sick. She is based in Calcutta

Four members of the order are staffing the New York Archdiocese run, 14bed home for AIDS patients that she helped open Christmas Eve, Finn said Mother Theresa became involved last spring when Cardinal John J. O’Conner asked if her order’s nuns would help with the home in Greenwich Village.

The day before the residence opened, Mother Theresa toured the state prison at Ossining at the urging of Sister Antonia Maguire, a nun who works with inmates, and appealed through Koch to Gov. Mario Cuomo to release the three prisoners with AIDS.

The inmates, whose names were on the list the archdiocese had submitted to the state several weeks before, were furloughed to an archdiocese sponsored AIDS ward at St. Claire’s Hospital in Manhattan on Christmas Eve.

“She made the governor move on the thing about the prisoners,” said Cassidy, “It was just siting there. She came in and she was able to move them.”

Noted a Cuomo spokesman, Matt Monahan; “Nobel laureates have a way of getting things done, Another group has not been entirely pleased with Mother Theresa’s efforts, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the city’s largest AIDS social service and education group, has gotten no response to several offers to help train counselors, said spokeswoman Lori Behrman,

“The reason for that, we’re not sure,” she said, adding that her group was worried that the church’s opposition to homosexuality could compromise “full and sensitive care” for AIDS patients.

Behrman said her group welcomed the addition of beds for AIDS patients, but she also questioned Mother Theresa’s farm proposal, saying it suggested that AIDS patients should be segregated from society.

“Mother Theresa and her crazy farm are driving me crazy,” Monsignor James Cassidy, the director of archdiocese AIDS programs, said Friday. Unlike leprosy patients, many people with AIDS are too sick to work on a farm, he said.

“She’d been talking about it and none of us wanted to take her on,” Cassidy said. “She doesn’t understand that the AIDS patients are sick people. She’s not versed in this. She thinks she’s in India.

Mother Theresa declined to be interviewed.

‘No treatment is known for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which breaks down the body’s ability to fight diseases; half of the known victims have died. It has been found primarily in male homosexuals, hemophiliacs who have gotten infected blood products and intravenous drug abusers who share needles.

Cassidy endorsed another aspect of Mother Theresa’s plea, the release of state prison inmates with AIDS to care facilities, and said of the attention she has focused on the overall issue: “She’s help, really.”

Article extracted from this publication >> January 10, 1986