Sister Nirmala, who succeeded Mother Teresa passes away, funeral today

Kolkata: Sister Nirmala, who succeeded Mother Teresa as the head of Missionaries of Charity founded by the Nobel laureate, died here in the wee hours on Tuesday. She was 81.

After morning mass at St John’s Church, Sister Nirmala’s body would be taken to Mother House on Wednesday at around 10 am. Her body would be kept there till 5 pm to allow people to have a last glimpse. Then her body would be taken to the century-old graveyard of St John’s Church for the last rites.

A Missionaries of Charity official said Sister Nirmala was unwell for the past few months and her health condition had deteriorated since May. “She was having heart-related ailments since months and her condition deteriorated since May,” Archbishop of Calcutta Father Thomas D’Souza said. According to him, Sister Nirmala not only continued the legacy of Mother Teresa but she even took it forward.

However, she had herself never aspired to occupy the exalted position of the Mother. When in 1997 she was elected superior general by senior nuns, Sister Nirmala said that it was “a big responsibility. If I look at it from myself, I am afraid. But looking at God and depending on prayer, I think I will be able to continue God’s work.”

And she did by serving the poorest of the poor with a benign smile on her lips. She was born in 1934 in a Hindu Brahmin family in Ranchi. It was while studying in Patna Women’s College that she turned towards Christianity.

However, it was her meeting with Mother Teresa in Kolkata which was then Calcutta in 1958 which completely changed her life. “She (Mother Teresa) was like a second mother from the beginning. I opened my heart to her, with all the uncertainties of a young woman,” she had said.