Jim is with us today, courtesy of mark and daphne murphy, as well as carol and joe young. Jim towey became a advisor and personal friend of Mother Teresa of calcutta. 12 years and did the First Reading at her mass canonization in st peters. He headed, the White House Office of faith based and Community Initiatives under w bush and, served as president of two catholic colleges. He was a u. S. Senate staffer, head of floridas 40,000 Employee Health and Human Services agency in, 1996 with Mother Teresas encouragement, he founded, the nonprofit Advocacy Organization aging with dignity and the five wishes, advanced directive, which has sold 40 million copies and is used in all 50 states, too. He met his wife, mary, and mother traces dc aids home. He continues to provide probono Legal Services for the missionaries of charity. Please give warm savannah welcome to jim towey jim towey. Welcome. Thank you, kathy for lovely introduction and so nice of you to be here today. I feel very much at home. I grew up in jacksonville, a little south from here and and so the Southern Hospitality was part of my life and i felt it since i got into this. Um, i want to thank the murphys too for sponsoring this morning and welcome coach Melinda Durham friends, coach and fsu and at georgia and zimbalist whos on the board at aging with dignity and his wife, terri look i know that the reason im here to speak is because of my longtime friendship and working relationship with modern day saint george bush. Im just its its just the same if youre listening now, this this book came about because of the kindness of god that i had the opportunity to meet Mother Teresa. And so im trying to repay debt. I was invited by Cardinal Dolan of new york city to come to a gathering of his media people, to do his radio show and his television. He sees from afar. And he goes to, how long are you going to milk this Mother Teresa thing . And i so i want to make clear that mary and i, we are indebted to mother and we are devoting the royalties to the missionaries of charity and to other charities with her lifes work. So were not a penny of that. Mary is not here with me today because. She didnt like that decision. Im kidding. Just. Yeah, shes great. Youll read her in the book starting on page 84, but i, i wrote this book, the occasion of Mother Teresas 25th anniversary of her death for a number of reasons i certainly wanted to record for my kids and grandkids and family members, friends for the missionaries of charity, the nuns, the religious order that Mother Teresa formed. I thought that was important. I knew when i met mother that she was saint, she just was different from id ever met. And so anytime i spoke with her, it was my regular habit to then write contemporaneous notes of what she said and. That was very helpful in writing this book. I, i also wanted to detail manner of her death. Its really beautiful. Its in chapter 14. Thats been published not only the run up to it, but the actual last 48 hours. Theres such sweetness to it, such beauty. And how she prepared herself and others for that inevitable. I. There was an important to me also to set the record straight on some of the critics that have come after in the years after her death those that trolled her on the internet and things that arent true. So theres a chapter 11 thats a defense of her and a definitive rebuttal hope. But really the most important reason i wrote the to me was to capture the woman, the remarkable woman that was the saint. Catholics have a way of taking saints and turning them into little plastic statues and ascribing all of ethereal qualities to them. And so focus on whether someone and in church or, you know, had the stigmata, so forth, some sensational things and. And in the process, it somehow leads us to think, well, theyre just supernatural, theyre different from the rest of us. Mother teresa became, a saint, not in spite of her humanness, but through it she a great woman, a great mother, tremendous. Mother. Mother loved life. She people. Its its its sad when you see people love god and dont love people, you know, to mother. It was the same she was enthralled by her sisters, those young women that joined her, they were her daughters. When i would her up to the church or to a convent where the would come out to greet her, theyd all stream out and mother would get out and grab their face like this and look in their eyes, just focus on them like they were the only in the world that mattered very. Maternal very much mother. She she liked to laugh. She liked to make her sisters laugh. She liked chocolate, you know. So there you have it. The surest path to sanctity is eating chocolate. Thats your take away. You know, she she wrote poetry. She loved to sing and her sisters sang together. She was very well read. Her formal education ended at age 18, but she she had a voracious appetite for reading. And so theres a collection of the books she read that filled shelves at back in taiwan at, the Mother Teresas center. She spoke five languages. She wasnt perfect. It does no good to remember her in a way that describes to her in a manner that says she was perfect. She wasnt had imperfections. She was famously stubborn. She was impatient. And those imperfections necessary for a woman who was going to need perseverance and conviction. And over god perfected those imperfect. And i watched her. And im going to talk about that a little bit, what kind of courage that required. But she she could get she got angry at me one time at an outdoor mass in mexico at the sign of peace moment in the mass, all these kids started rushing toward her. And i was to her left and i was going to protect her from these kids coming up. And so i jump up and tell the kids no, no, no, no point, no point. And mother, just stop let them come. And she just kind of looked glared at me, you know, i didnt turn into a pillar of salt. Thats the good news. But but would speak about the fact that she had someone with anger and she would go and apologize later. For those of you who are catholics and, you know, at confession is she availed herself of that sacrament regularly and she had to say in it, you know, she didnt just go in and say, bless me. Well, i havent said actually. No, she she understood along that she was a work in prague. Yes. That she was a lowly in a sense. I was asked at the time of her death what my thoughts were a by a reporter and i said, well, it was said of Francis Assisi that he was the most christlike since christ. And i said, i think Mother Teresa, the most mary like person since mary, that she was virgin and mother to, a world that needed a mother her compassion, her love, tenderness. You, i think, to really appreciate my mother, you have to place her in a Historical Context because its because she left her home at age 18, said goodbye to her mother at a train station she never saw her mother again went off to the loreto. First by train, then by ship, and arrives in january 1929. A couple of years of formation, takes her vows and then is teaching at the loreto compound in a walled area for the some of the privileged kids, calcutta, and then some of the poor bengali kids that were at the school and she was for 15 years history and geography other and of course india then becomes. Involved in World War Two. In 1939, the viceroy declares war on indias behalf without consulting the indians. This led to much gandhi and others oppose this. Gandhi was arrested in 1942 because of his opposition. Well, a lot of the sisters left calcutta as the war started to come closer to india and mother was there on the until the british it so mother and one other sister stayed with three girls and they rented two spaces one where they had studies and eight and one where they slept. And this is how her mother was living during World War Two, after the british had requisitioned then course as the war ends in 1945 india had promised independence and began to roil the country, particularly in northern india, where mother lived because of the hindu muslim conflicts that had been evident throughout indias history but were particularly acute at this time. So for during that period, 1945 to 1946, the war ended, of course, in august of 45, those tensions started to spill over to what was called the great day of killing in august of 1946. Now, mother, at this point, she had nearly died in 1942 from exhaustion. She was teaching so much, doing this other work, keeping things together for the girls. And then no sooner does she recover from that. And then shes made principal. 1944 of the school. So shes running everything then war ends and now the violence begins the streets. And then theres the great dead killing in 1946. Thousands in the streets. Mother had to go outside the compound to try to go get food, dead bodies everywhere. Heres this woman who had come to teach in india in the middle of this postwar for independence, 1946 is a seminal year in her life because it was on september when she finally left, not even a month after the great day of to go on retreat to get a break. So she gets on a train. Shes on the train and realizes that god is calling her to leave the confines of the convent and go and work with the poorest, the poor in the streets to the thirst of christ for love souls. This is what she felt clearly communicated to her. 1947 comes and shes back from her retreat and shes now sharing with the priest the intimate details of visions that she had of jesus telling her what to do to go and come my light go into the dark holes and claim these poor souls, love them and give them all the people. And you can imagine in calcutta now, its transformed greatly it had once been indias capital, real jewel, but overrun a series of dreadful developments famine 1940 243, owing in part to the war requisitioning of boats that kept the rice from being circulated the country. So she leaves. She has to deal with that. And the influx died. Many came from the villages scavenging for food and. Then you have the partitioning of india, which led to such violence in the display basement of 16 Million People in that area. So now youve got the area just roiled with violence. She goes on retreat, shes on the train and now jesus is saying no, now youre works about begin. You know, youve had it easy up till now. So comes back its january 47. Shes trying to understand jesus wants her to do. She knew where she was supposed to do, but she didnt know how to do it. How get there. How does this single solitary do this so shes talking to a priest the nuns suspect, her of having an inappropriate relationship with the priest because theyre having all these private conversations. And so they banished to asansol about 150 miles away to another convent. So she goes through those six months of difficulty being misunderstood and judged, but bears it. And during that period of time, she recounted in her letters and these intimate discussion that jesus had with her about what it was that he was asking her to do, and thats recounted in the book. All of this is to say how remark a woman could then at that point that im going to go out just because gods called me to go into this into the streets to work. The bishop was terrified and he says, okay, you is this to take some time . And it did. And mother pestered her with him with a bunch of letters. And it led to finally his approval. She gets her approval from the nuns in ireland, the mother house, in the same month that gandhis assassinated, i found that mother never met, but i found it very interesting that there was a convergence at two points on the day of indias independence in august 15th, 1947, mother and gandhi were both in calcutta. And on the same week that mother got permission to leave to go into the streets, to go deal with all castes. India, the untouchables, zaharie john that the same week that she got permission, gandhi was assassinated it felt like almost a passing of the torch mother then has to get nurse training so that she could deal with the lepers and others that she would now be ministering to. And then december 21, 1948, with a muslim girl accompany her as she starts off in the slums. Think of the courage it took for this woman to do this. And now shes going to ask some of her old school girls she taught. Do you want to join me . And one by one, they did so. By 1950, there were of them in one room space in where there was a mother had a quote there. She said, im to want woody gives not what i prefer, kind of a assessment i think of of her life. You know, i one of the jobs i did for her as her lawyer was keep people from raising money in her name. She prohibited fundraising. She said, preferred the insecurity divine providence. You know beautiful dependance on god for, everything i know youre probably wondering why she had a lawyer president. Bush, when he would introduce me, say to his mother, lawyer, what kind of a world do we live in . When even she had to have had to have a lawyer, you know. But mother like to sue. Im kidding. Im just like kidding. I helped her with immigration. Other things it in the book theres a chapter on some of the very cases, by the way of, what i ran into these women join now theres six women living in this cramped space on the third floor, 26 women and one bathroom. Yeah, first miracle. So they move in 1949 to the motherhouse. They are to this day. So you look at the development of that. You look through her life and you see, how was it possible . How is it possible that this woman could have had. Attracted 3800 women to follow her into the worst places in the world by the time of her death, she was in 100, 120 countries and some of the worst slums in the world. She had 700 homes. You know, she an order of hundreds of men that to join brothers and dozens of priests and her missionaries of charity fathers. How did i end up meeting. Well i tell the story in the first few chapters, but i will simply say it was gods mercy and kindness at that time in my life i was a very disaffected catholic. I wasnt living my faith. Pascal described sin is licking the earth. And i had licked the and so i knew the taste of sin and i was very comfortable in my own hypocrisy and the beauty about being a hypocrite is that you can spot it everywhere. So i was judging everybody and, and, but i was watching this woman from afar. And i thought now shes practicing the faith. Shes shes living the gospel not but she is. And i wanted to meet her and the senator. I work for Mark Hatfield of oregon, newer and so he was sending me overseas a trip. And i thought, well, why dont i go by india . On the way back . The problem was i didnt want to be around poor people. Very hard to do. I no interest. And so i thought, all right, heres what im going to do. Im going to go into calcutta for one day. And then on the way home, hawaii for five days. And thats how i talked myself into doing it and, thats what i did. And i met mother, little, tiny. She came out. It was the week she turned 75 and just bristling with energy. She was everything. I wasnt intentional in love with god. This was a woman love with god so dramatic. See her. The tenderness of that relationship, though. Chapter 11 talks about the darkness that she experienced. Im sorry. Chapter 12 that she went through a period of darkness, but she never lost her faith. She had the conviction the core conviction of gods love, the poor. And she saw jesus, she said, in his distressing the size of the poor i was introduced to this in her home for the dying because mother that and it was such a brief meeting she said, have you been in my home for the. I said, no. And she said, well, go there and ask for sister luke, i had the rest of the to kill. Why not . So i said, sure, and she said, and say hi to my sisters in washington. So i go to the home for the dying and i walk in and my embassy driver out there, im a starch shirt and pressed slacks and just stepping over people that are laying by the entrance and just in states id never seen in my of poverty and misery. And i walked in. It was clean. There was peace. It was beautiful. And i asked for luke and she says, well, hi and i said, well, i was with Mother Teresa. This and that was great to drop her name. And i was with Mother Teresa and, and i said and she told me to come here and sister luke said. Great. Heres some cotton, heres some solution and go and clean that guy that has scabies in bed 46. And im like, oh, bed 46, you know, im like, im here for the tour. You know, it was last thing i wanted. So and thats why i feel comfortable to you today. And my friends, cspan, because it was the mercy of god. There wasnt one time he bit of me that wanted to go back to that man but i realized years as the years went by that when i touched that man that jesus, his distressing disguise touched me back. I want to stress a couple of things about mothers life that i think are are important. One was how she aged mother saw as a blessing, not a curse she saw it as a momentum in her life where she was drawing closer to god that she was home to god when mary was pregnant with our our third child, we living in tallahassee and mother was coming to washington. So we wanted to have her bless the baby. So we leave the two little ones behind and we fly up to washington for the day. Mother comes out. Mary, youre pregnant. What you do . And mary says, well, due august eight, but i think ill be early and mother says, no youll have that baby on my birthday and i mother i hope not because your birthday is august 26th and if shes 18 days late my life be a living heck so long story short. The night of august 25th, mary into labor. Were like, oh my gosh, the angels at work are going to have a little girl. Were going to name her teresa midnight strikes 120 in the morning and and now comes our baby. And the doctor says, congratulate and you have a little boy. And my wife goes, are sure . And he said, yeah, heres how we tell this is how we how they train us and. So but while mary was still in the hospital we got Sandy Mcmurtrie mothers very close friend got a call from sister priscilla and suggesting that sandy and i try to get back there because mother was dying and she was in the hospital and so with marys blessing i went to calcutta with sandy when we arrived at the airport the sister met us s