Sister Nirmala, successor to Mother Teresa, dies at 81

Sister Nirmala Joshi, who succeeded Mother Teresa as head of her Missionaries of Charity in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, died on Tuesday at the age of 81.

Joshi had been suffering from a heart condition and her health had been deteriorating recently, confining her to a Missionaries of Charity home, Archbishop of Kolkata Thomas D’Souza and media reports said.

“She had been suffering from a heart disease for quite some time, but she never lost her smile and was always cheerful,” D’Souza told AFP.

“She passed away peacefully, surrounded by sisters praying for her.”

“Sister Nirmala carried forward Mother Teresa’s legacy of compassion, gentleness, service to the poorest of the poor and holiness of life,” D’Souza said.

Mother Teresa received the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her charity work and is considered a candidate for Catholic sainthood.

“Even after she (Sister Nirmala) ceased to be head of Missionaries of Charity, she served the people with the same zeal as she did before,” D’Souza said.

Six months before Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, Sister Nirmala took over as head of the order of nuns that the Nobel Peace Prize winner founded in Kolkata 65 years ago.

As head of the order for 12 years, Nirmala kept up Mother Teresa’s work of helping the poor and sick in Kolkata’s slums, before stepping down in 2009 because of ill health.

That year, she also received India’s second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in honour of her service to the nation.

“I never try to fill her shoes,” Sister Nirmala said in an interview in 1998. “I have to wear my own small shoes. I don’t have to be Mother Teresa, just Sister Nirmala, and being Sister Nirmala isn’t so difficult. If I had to be Mother Teresa, I would have collapsed.”

Sister Nirmala joined the order in 1958 after converting to Catholicism. She helped open the order’s first home outside India, in Venezuela, and helped open and run a house in the South Bronx for contemplative nuns who tended to the spiritual rather than the material needs of the poor.

Sister Mary Prema was elected to succeed Sister Nirmala during a general chapter held in Calcutta in April 2009.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi led tributes to Sister Nirmala, who was born a Hindu but embraced Roman Catholicism later in life.

“Sister Nirmala’s life was devoted to service, caring for the poor and underprivileged… May her soul rest in peace,” he tweeted.

West Bengal’s highest elected official, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, said in a Twitter message that “Kolkata and the world will miss her.”

The Vatican newspaper, l’Osservatore Romano, paid homage to Nirmala in a long obituary, noting that she was elected superior of the order even though she had an incurable form of malaria that gave her constant fevers.

– Nampa-AFP-AP

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