Chandernagore: The lone Anglo-Indian parish priest of the quaint old French colonial town on the banks of the Hooghly River in Chandernagore recalls his 40 year association with Mother Teresa while she was alive.
Inspired by Mother Teresa, his charity organization Bhalobasa (Love) now almost 25 years, provides scholarship for poor children.
Dean of Howrah-Hooghly deanery of the archdiocese of Calcutta Fr Orson Wells is parish priest of Sacred Heart Church Chandernagore.
“For those of us who grew up with Mother, worked with her, laughed with her and today pray to her there is tremendous joy which cannot be described,” says 64-year-old priest who considered Mother Teresa a saint much before she gets the Church approved title of “Saint Teresa of Calcutta” on September 4.
Fr Wells who has installed Mother’s statues in churches where he was at Bamandanga in North 24 Parganas, in Kolkata at Moulali and Park Circus. In Hooghly district Fr Wells installed Mother’s statue in Changernagore church.
Fr. Wells has lined up several programs including a replica of the Mother Teresa exhibition in Mother House Kolkata, Free medical camp for people of Chadernagroe by doctors of Chandernagore who even offered for free ECG testing last Sunday, Mother Teresa drawing competition for 12 schools of the town including 10 government and two private schools.
On September 1, Fr Wells has scheduled an All Faith Prayer Meeting.
The 17th Century baroque style church is illuminated and Fr Wells has arranged giant screen for LED projection of the live telecast of canonization ceremony from the Vatican.
On Sunday September 5, feast day of St Teresa of Calcutta will be celebrated with a solemn procession in the colonial city’s main thoroughfares, with two bands in attendance to play devotionals.
Fr Wells is hopeful, “to install a statue of Mother Teresa on Grand Trunk Road used by pilgrims who walk to the historic Marian shrine in the neighboring town of Bandel.”
The year 1958-1959 is “when I first encountered the ‘Sari Sister’ at Suburban Park in Howrah,” Fr Wells recalls how Catholic parents warned children to have nothing to do with that strange nun.
“In 1959 we were pleasantly surprised to see her come home to take us to church since our parents were not very practicing Catholics. The surprise turned to good fortune as Mother invariably treated us goodies from her bag.”
In the boarding school at Don Bosco Liluah we were busy making medicine packets for Mother’s dispensaries and once a month along with Salesian Fr Crawley we would go to Home for the Dying at Kalighat to work and hand over medicine packets.
Narrating his call to priesthood Fr Wells says, “Though I was working as a teacher and helped a few boys in my class, I felt that as a priest I could reach out to more youth and so became a priest where I worked in very close proximity with our dear Mother.”
“I remember,” says Fr Wells, “going to Bata Shoes head office to arrange for jobs for Boys Town Gangarampur (South 24 Parganas) orphans and to many other places together with Mother.”
Fr Wells says with moistened eyes, “Can’t forget Mother joking a lot and when in Rome made fun of my hair all plastered down with coconut oil as can been seen in the picture.”
As a priest in Kolkata I would take the youth every week to work in Prem Dan TB patient rehabilitation centre to the scorn of many clergy friends who noted this over the years and said, “these boys should go for the Beatification in Rome and so I got eight tickets up and down with a two week stay in Italy.
This time, for Canonization too, I got eight tickets and took some time and convince my friends that I wanted to do something in the this city of Chandernagore and stayed back to organize the Mother Teresa celebration.