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(Extracts of a speech given by Rev. Fr. Sydney Knight, Dean, The Cathedral of Christ, the Living Saviour, Colombo 7, at a forum organized by the Centre for Performing Arts).

It was when I was sent by my Bishop, for training at Bishop's College, Calcutta that I first met Mother Teresa, the Sisters and the brothers, because by that time, she had started to work with the men also. While in Calcutta, we discovered that Mother Teresa in and through her Sisters and Brothers worked in a few chosen distinct areas.

1. Work with the urchins at the two big railway stations, Howrah and Sealdah.

2. Work with the lepers in Calcutta.

3. Work with those who, thinking that Calcutta being a very big Indian city travelled from the other parts of India seeking work and thereby ending up in the slums of Calcutta making illicit liquor.

4. Work at the Kalighat home for the dying. This work is very unique. In that, the Sisters and Brothers of Charity picking up the dying from the streets of Calcutta give them a home to spend perhaps their last few hours on Earth. It is strange, but true, that this work is done in the vicinity of the temple in Calcutta dedicated to the Hindu Goddess. Kali who is the Goddess in the Hindu pantheon of death and destruction. Here in the context of death and destruction, Mother Teresa's Sisters and Brothers share with the dying found on the streets of Calcutta, God's love for humanity.

After having been trained for ordination in Calcutta and known personally, the Mother, the Sisters and the Brothers and their work, my understanding of the Mother and her understanding of world peace will be spelt out in this paper.

Mother Teresa in having spent her life serving the poorest of the poor chose deliberately to work for world peace, by caring for the poor. What did she really convey in and through her work? She in her own way, attempted to tell the world, that poverty is perhaps one of the major causes for the lack of peace in the world.

A critical study of all the major conflicts in the world, would perhaps show that they are traceable to the expression of poverty in its multifaceted dimension. Looking at Mother Teresa and world peace, it is perhaps obvious, that we in Sri Lanka, ought to focus on the conflicts in our country.

Let me begin with the Southern conflict, which emerged in the early 1970s and also in the late 1980s. How do we understand this conflict? I am sure that every person understands this Southern problem from his or her own context. Let me share in this paper, my own understanding.

A critical study of the Southern problem will reveal that it was in certain areas of our country and only certain people in the South, who revolted.

Persons from certain areas, in the deep South and the Kandyan peasantry. They were also educated by which I mean persons who had obtained an university education and were either underemployed or unemployed. Also all of them being products of Free Education and had learnt in the Sinhala medium and didn't know English. They were poor in some ways. Therefore, they belong to the poverty sector. Moreover, they saw their university contemporaries, who were doing well because they knew English, and despite not having a good university degree. Also they saw their so-called leaders making use of them, to win elections and forgetting about them, once they got to the positions of power. Therefore, these Southern youth attracted by a certain kind of Communism, because of their poverty, chose to revolt. This then is the story of the Southern insurrection.

A similar revolt has taken place in the North. This however, is much more complex. The poverty ascribed to the North is different.

Historically, this can be described as the Northerner being a minority in the country, but for very good reasons, had more than his or her share of the Economic Cake. When the British left and the Ceylonese took over, those in power being mindful of this began the process of what is being now called discrimination. This process has seen a few peaks. They being 1956, the aftermath of 1971 and perhaps, the 1972 constitution and certainly the period after 1977.

What successive governments have done is to legally, through the langauge policy, through what is known as standardisation and certainly through the land policy, which began with the colonisation schemes etc. All these created a new class of poverty in the North.

Both the Southern and the Northern conflict, have caused the absence of peace. Mother Teresa in addressing the problem of poverty in her own way, attempted to eradicate it in some ways, the causes for the lack of peace. However, her life was in some ways limited, but she has become a role model in her own way. What then is the secret of her life?

What the world has seen and heard of Mother Teresa is generally speaking her life of activities, but those of us who knew her in Calcutta will bear testimony to the fact, that the secret of her life was certainly her hidden life in her God. Before she and the Sisters and Brothers went out to the Streets of Calcutta and in between and thereafter were the times of prayer in the chapel. Their lives certainly began with the Mass.

On my many visits to Calcutta, after I left the seminary, which was close to Mother's House, I had to often wait for her in the chapel till she finished her office.

It was her inner life, that ultimately sustained and nurtured her work for world peace in her own way. She used to often tell me, love God and do your work. I used to be reminded of St. John and his concern for God's love.

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