It still is about the poor

Ten years after the death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, her mission to care for the poor is flourishing in the hands of her fellow sisters, who, helped by more volunteers than ever, are committed to carrying their charismatic founder's compassionate vision into the future

Mother Teresa: IN", reads a wooden board on the wall outside Mother House, the grey-washed concrete headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta. The "OUT" - once used to advise visitors that one of the most famous women in history was temporarily unavailable - has been blocked out for the past 10 years, since Mother Teresa, who died at the age of 87 on 5 September 1997, was buried here.

The impression this creates is that the headquarters of the order that Mother Teresa started in 1950 has become a shrine, or a museum to her memory. This deepens as you go inside. At her flower-strewn marble tombstone, visitors pray and take photographs. Glass cases display the effects of her life, from the stool she sat on and the battered sandals she wore, to a syringe used for "Our Mother's blood test". The cell in which she died, preserved as it was in her lifetime, is visible beyond a grille; in the chapel upstairs, a hauntingly lifelike statue of the tiny, wrinkled woman sits in what was her favourite spot. In the public spaces, at least, there are more images of Mother Teresa than there are of Jesus and Mary.

There are also, at any time of the day, more sisters than there are tourists or pilgrims here, praying beside Mother Teresa's statue in the chapel, washing vast pots in the kitchen and quietly observing visitors. One sister goes up to a woman in a tatty blue sari who is sitting by a statue of Mother Teresa, and gives her medicine for her leg. Another approaches an elderly woman so covered in huge boils that no normal skin is visible, and offers her a glass of water.

It is striking that the sisters dressed in the familiar blue-bordered white sari of the order are outnumbered by novices, dressed in pure white. In Mother House today, there are 100 novices to around 70 sisters. Two years ago, a new block had to be built to accommodate them. A decade ago, there were predictions that Mother Teresa's death would diminish the Missionaries of Charity in many dreadful ways: that vocations and donations would dry up as would the stream of volunteers that had flowed into Kolkata from all over the world since 1979 when Mother Teresa won a Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the "poorest of the poor".

So far, none of those things appears to have happened. Sr Christie, a Japanese sister who has been in Kolkata since 1992, says that vocations are strong, donations are up - although the order will not give figures - and "there are more volunteers than ever". Of the 757 houses that the Missionaries of Charity now run around the world, 166 have opened since Mother Teresa died.

The prophecies of change and decay had often focused on Mother Teresa's successor, Sr Nirmala Joshi. Appointed superior general of the order six months before its founder died, Sr Nirmala seemed to begin the job with some serious disadvantages. Reserved, shy, with no interest in public life, she stepped into one of the most high-profile jobs in the Catholic Church without being known by anyone. Sr Nirmala, who was born to Hindu Brahmin parents, has refused to push herself forward, even refusing to take the usual title of "mother".

"I prefer to be called Sister because we are all sisters," she says, as she pads barefoot into an office in Mother House. When she sits, her shoulders barely reach above the table. Sr Nirmala, a sparrow of a woman, is almost as small as her predecessor. This smiley, quiet nun, who is said to measure journey distances by the number of rosaries she can pray en route, echoes the paradox attributed to St Francis of Assisi nearly eight centuries ago to explain the continued growth of the Missionaries of Charity: in giving we receive; in dying we are born to eternal life.

"People come here, and they find that in the very little acts they do, God is revealed to them," she says. "Ours is a very simple, humble world."

Her fellow sisters say, however, that Sr Nirmala can be a formidable leader. She has politely but publicly slapped down efforts to set up Mother Teresa memorial funds outside the order and puts a strong emphasis on continuing the tradition started by her predecessor. In doing so, she has disappointed some Indians - especially in Kolkata, an intellectually lively city that is the base of a Communist state government - who argue that the order's focus on poverty has damaged Kolkata's image, and those critics who believe the order should tackle the structural injustices of poverty (precisely how it should do this is never made clear).

Among ordinary inhabitants of the city, Mother Teresa remains a big hit. Garish statues of the nun, with her hands joined in what might be the traditional Indian greeting, or prayer, stand in garlanded Perspex boxes at traffic lights. On the walls of a bank, her portrait sits alongside that of Subhash Bose, who tired of Gandhi's peaceful ways and started an armed uprising against the British. A taxi driver pauses from beeping his horn and swearing violently at rickshaw drivers to declare her "a goddess".

Of the foreigners who come to Kolkata to volunteer in the four homes run by the order, most cite Mother Teresa as their inspiration. Sometimes this is surprising. Chihiro, an 18-year-old Japanese student, is not a Christian but she came across Mother Teresa's work on the internet. She is spending her summer holiday scrubbing clothes in Daya Dan, the order's home for disabled children.

"Lots of the volunteers aren't Christian," says the trendy teenager. "But you read about Mother Teresa's work and you want to come."

It is a measure of Mother Teresa's abiding charisma that she attracts non-Christian volunteers - who are always set to manual work as well as the more satisfying job of sitting with the poor - along with vocations and cash, 10 years after her death.

But how long will this continue? As the iconic images of Mother Teresa grow old, it will be hard for the order to generate anything like the publicity given to its charismatic dynamo of a founder. It does not even want to.

After a British reporter secretly filmed children tied to their beds in a home run by the sisters in 2005, the sisters have made it harder for journalists and TV crews to gain access to the work of the Missionaries of Charity. One long-time volunteer, however, who does not want to be named, has greater faith. He says that he thinks of Mother Teresa as having shone a light on a phenomenon that will have an enduring appeal for the world. "It isn't about her and it never really was; it's about the poor," he says.

In the Home for the Dying in Kalighat, one of the first homes Mother Teresa established, dozens of skinny men lie in rows in metal cots. Some are former beggars, many of whom were injured in traffic accidents. Others have been wrecked by a lifetime of pulling manual rickshaws; Kolkata is the only city in the world still to have "human horses". Many have TB; some are dying of Aids. India's economic revolution has passed them by.

Next door, in the dormitory for women, Shepali, a tiny old woman who cannot remember her age, is chatting animatedly to 26-year-old Alexia Condillo, a Spanish volunteer. She bows her head and touches her heart at the mention of Mother Teresa. Then she recites a list of the names of other sisters - it is so long and perfectly remembered that women in the beds around her giggle - and pauses between each name to touch her heart again.