From the S&S archives:
To Mother Teresa, nuclear treaty means 'greater love, greater peace'

FRANKFURT — Mother Teresa, the 77-year-old Roman Catholic nun who won the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work among India's poor and dying, Thursday praised the superpower nuclear pact signed this week as a means of bringing "greater love, greater peace."

"Oh, that is wonderful," she said, smiling broadly. "It will bring greater love, greater peace, I think. If they unite, I think peace will come, if they can remove their nuclears, the greatest weapon that people are so afraid of, that make people suffer so."

Mother Teresa spoke to The Stars and Stripes during a stopover at Frankfurt International Airport on a flight from New York to Bombay, India. She said she knew President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were meeting in Washington this week, but she had not heard about the U.S.-Soviet agreement to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

Mother Teresa, head of the Missionary Sisters of Charity, was in the United States this week visiting the religious order's "guest houses" for AIDS victims in the final stage of the fatal disease.

However, she said the most serious disease is not acquired immune deficiency syndrome, but "the feel ing of being unwanted, uncared for and deserted by everyone." That, she said, is the disease her houses treat.

"The people feel loved, wanted and cared for, and they die beautiful deaths," she said. "It is very important to die a peaceful death."

She said workers at the houses have seen a change in attitude toward victims of the fatal disease.

"Yes, people are opening their hearts to the AIDS victims in the United States," she said. "We have so many volunteers now working with us in our houses, night and day. There has been a great, great change. There is greater love and greater understanding, a greater sharing."

She said the disease of feeling unwanted and deserted is not only suffered by the physically sick, but by many people, including those separated from their families. She said U.S. servicemembers who will be away from their families this Christmas should "pray, and have a clean heart."

"Then they will see God in each other. And when they see God in each other, then it is all right. Then there is love, peace and joy. And this is something we all look forward to at Christmas, to unity, peace and love.

"I know some of them (servicemembers overseas) will not be with their families, but if they keep their hearts clean, there will be peace in their hearts. Works of love are works of peace."

Mother Teresa Bojaxhiu, born of Albanian parents in Skopie, Yugoslavia, on Aug. 27, 1910, became a nun in Ireland in 1928. She spent her early years as a nun in Calcutta and worked as a teacher there for 20 years.

In 1950, Mother Teresa founded the Missionary Sisters of Charity. The order adopted Mother Teresa's white sari, trimmed with a blue border, as its habit.

In an interview with The Stars and Stripes in September 1984, Mother Teresa skirted any discussion of nuclear weapons and the politics that surrounds them.

"Everything that has to do with politics, these things I never get mixed up in," she said. "How to bring people to love each other, that is much more important.

"When you come before God, you never look at anything else. You forget everything. I serve just one, one, one, one. You can be lost in numbers and do nothing. We must work to love one person at a time."