Candles in the Wind: Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa

Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa. Image from Reuters

Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa died a few days apart. The former passing away in a fatal car crash during their romantic trip in Paris on August 31 1997, the latter dying in old age after cardiac arrest in Calcutta. Their passing brought millions around the world in deep sorrow since the two were considered as champions of the poor. In this article in Jerusalem Post, a tribute praises Diana, Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa for their service to many.

It has been a sad week for the poor, the sick, and the maimed of the world, who have lost two crusading champions — first, Princess Diana of Wales, and now Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The two women could scarcely be more different, yet it is for their unlikely similarities they were both loved and will both be missed.

Diana was young, tall, beautiful, rich, and worldly. Teresa was aged, tiny, plain, poor, and ascetic.

Yet in entirely different circumstances, both used almost the same words to enunciate their mission in life.

In her famous Panorama program interview with the BBC, Diana spoke of her need to reach out to those who felt unwanted, unloved and worthless because despite her supposedly fairytale life, she too had been in these depths.

Teresa ten years earlier had made a startlingly similar plea, during her Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, for help in her ministry to those born on life’s scrapheap — the poor, unloved, unwanted and deemed worthless.

Britain bade farewell to Diana, an adopted royal, in one of the greatest manifestations of spontaneous national mourning the world has witnessed this century.

In an entirely different setting, we can expect India to bid an equally sincere good bye to the adopted foreigner, Mother Teresa, in an unprecedented state funeral.

For those who seek meaning in the way the unlikely paths of Diana and Teresa crossed, first on the same mission to humanity, and again in death, there was another unlikely coincidence. When the young Teresa left Albania to become a nun in Dublin, she was convinced her religious vocation was to be a teacher to young upper-class women.

She was drawn instead to helping the world’s most wretched, and it was 65 years before she befriended, and admitted greatly admiring, a young upper class woman, Princess Diana.

Many mysteries remain about the world’s response to these two remarkable women. Diana seemed too childlike, compassionate and caring to be a royal fashion and glamour icon. Teresa seemed  too tough, clever, and wily in her handling of the media and world leaders to be a remote saint.

Somehow, with mysterious alchemy, they both seemed to have tapped a deep weariness with spiritually barren cynicism and materialism in our modern world.

In her low days, Diana considered herself worthless. Mother Teresa said all she had ever owned was two saris and a prayer book. From two different universes, they spoke with one voice. The poor, the sick and the lonely are today a little poorer. But maybe they have a little more hope. - The Jerusalem Post