My buddy Frank (leftmost) and others with Mother Teresa of Calcutta at the Missionaries of Charity Center, Tondo, Manila 1988 © Ben Razon
IT just started out as a whim on a nice sunny day in 1988, when I decided to visit my old friend Frank Cutamora who was then living near the Tayuman area in Manila's Tondo district. We worked together for a short while at this advertsing agency in Makati, he was a photographer and the darkroom guy at their in-house studio during the late 70s up to the time I joined them around 1982 when I shot nothing but cans of milk and baby formula for the agency's main client. We processed our own black and white film including color slides, and life was just a shoot, dip and dunk affair then at the studio and lab. I moved on, but Frank stayed at the agency until they moved out of Makati to another location, so we still kept in touch along the way. We met up in Tondo, and I wanted to take him out to lunch. I asked him if he knew where the convent of the missionaries of charity were, since I had lugged my camera along and thought it would be neat to try to take some pictures of the sisters as they were making the rounds in Tondo. I wasn't aware then of the strict 'no photography' rule of the convent, in that it was a directive from Mother Teresa and the Archdiocese of Manila that you would have to be granted written and expressed permission from either Mother Teresa herself or Cardinal Sin. But Frank led me to the front gate of the convent and we decided to ask and try our luck anyway. And were we in for a little surprise that Mother Teresa happened to be there at the time we knocked on the door. We kinda sneaked in with others who were also at the gate and were intending to hand over a contribution to the sisters that morning. And the nuns mistakenly thought we were the photographers they had brought along to record the 'passing the check' moment. I felt like a mischievous little son of a bitch who now was soon to be ushered into the presence of 'The MOTHER'. The nuns asked us to just wait for Mother Teresa to come out and advised me and Frank to refrain from photographing the new 'inductees' of the novitiate while they were in our presence. Fair enough I thought if it meant I could take pictures of the mother head honcho herself. And then she comes out, and it became one of those rare times of my existence when all attached encrusted shards of cynicism and preconceived notions of a globally-recognized figure melted as if on cue in the heat of the noonday sun, a small figure shrouded in her familiar white with blue trim garb -- and her curdled-up skin and hands clasped together as if in perpetual prayer, her blistered feet barefoot on the hot concrete, and she blesses us all in a soft, barely heard welcome. Her visitors gather around her and they stumble over their words to finish what they had come to present her with. She simply acknowledges the gesture and says her thank yous amid the aura she silently projects. I just stand there half-frozen and wait for my cue to snap the picture of her, Frank, and the check-givers. All this time Frank motions to me as he is just as mesmerized by how small she is, and how her constant hunched-over posture completes her profiled frame. Let's just say she was the farthest thing in comparison from anyone in the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) and the time of steroid abuse.
Everyone then quietly shuffles into position beside 'the Mother' and I point my camera at them and say, 'Smile'. The camera clicks a single picture, and I decide that's it and that's all. To even think of trying to see an otherwise different angle of the many images I had already seen of this woman was absolutely pointless. This was a person from another world, and it just so happened I ran into her that day. But this sole picture of everybody standing with Mother Teresa was the angle I was given. And whether the day comes that she is pronounced a saint by the Church she served by doing what she felt needed to be done for the poor -- matters little to me.
Sometimes, it's enough to just be the person behind the camera to snap the group picture. With Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
On a footnote, the other people were immensely grateful that me and frank happened to be there. One was a Nissan dealer in Manila, and the others were employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission. They all ordered copies of the picture, and they wanted to take me and my buddy frank out for lunch afterwards, and at KFC no less (still couldn't forget that detail). As disparate the backgrounds were of each individual who was there on that encounter, I just shake my head to this day and say, thanks 'Mother'.
Ben
and on the other hand while i was searching for links to the missionaries of charity, here's an opinion i saw on the philippine government's website on the topic of population control and 'the mother' written by
a 'nostomaniac' from canada. amazingly, no one has responded to the post one way or another.
'The Philippines is a country built on the sanctimonious teachings of the conservative Catholic Church—no birth control, no abortion, and no divorce. The Gods have made your land a vulnerable one—you have lost your voice and your power through your piousness. Although there is a continuous emergence of charitable organizations born out of the Catholic faith, there is still great potential for the debate surrounding its genuineness. The Missionaries of Charity Order, established by Mother Teresa in 1950, is only one example. If piety was for once not in your conscience, you could easily see the evil it has gently cloaked in its kindness. The Missionaries of Charity is simply another scheme for the Catholic Church to attain funds from unsuspecting believers. Their success lies in your ignorance. You are stup~d to believe that the twisted bodies and absent minds of forty-something children are testimonies of the greatness of your church. They would have never have had to endure endless years of suffering if only their mothers had the autonomy of preventing their births. The Missionaries of Charity is a promoter of suffering and poverty. Without those twisted bodies behind their bright blue iron gate, they would not get the sympathy they are so seemingly yearning for. When you see those children, as I once did, your sympathy evokes immediate feelings of compassion. It is your compassion that so easily blinds you from their hidden truths. It is so easy for your compassion to turn into ignorance. Everything about those children—the twisted limbs, wilted skin, and the emptiness in their eyes—is there for a reason. For if it were not for those children, the donations being received by the Missionaries of Charity Order would not run over nine digits long, perhaps even ten. I loath the nuns who live lives of such great lies shrouded under their prudery. If they were genuine in helping the impoverished and suffering, they would work to prevent it, not promote it. They are nothing but a disgrace to so-called Christian values.'
By: nostomaniac
registered: 6/16/2006
member
Canada
forum categories > Religion >
MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY • (2049 bytes)
Posted: 6/16/2006 • 12:48 GMT+8
