CubaPLUS Magazine

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, notable missionary who dedicated her life to helping the most dispossessed, to promote peace and solidarity throughout the world, she has in the Cuban capital a beautiful place of hers, where tourists and Havana residents come to honor and venerate her.

There is practically no human being who lives on planet Earth who does not know, at least by hearsay, this respectable nun who spared no time or effort to help the poorest. Among her works is the founding in 1950 of the order of the Missionaries of the Charity in Calcutta, through which she did a great work with the destitute and dying. Her real name was Ines Gonxha Bojaxhiu and she was born in Skopje, North Macedonia in 1910.

At the age of 18 she decided on her missionary vocation and moved to Dublin, Ireland, to join the congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto, where she carried out an important teaching job in India and later moved and became a citizen of that Asian country in 1950.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta visited the largest of the Antilles on two occasions, on the first she was only there for a short time, since she was in transit through the José Martí International Airport. On the second occasion, in 1986, she remained in the Cuban capital for several days, during which she participated in various activities organized in her honor by the ecclesiastical authorities of the country and, also, she held a meeting with the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, to whom she gave an image of Our Miraculous Lady, sculpted in ivory.

Her outstanding work as a missionary earned her one of the 13 women in the world who hold the Nobel Peace Prize and, in addition, she was canonized by Pope Francis in 2018. Located at the back of the Convent of Saint Francis of Assisi, in Old Havana, it is the Garden that pays tribute to this distinguished missionary, inaugurated in 1999, where there is a bronze sculpture made by the artist José Villa Soberon, dressed in her accustomed habit and sitting in a meditative pose.

Perhaps as another way to honor this venerable saint, the remains rest in the garden of Eusebio Leal, the great conservative of Old Havana, as well as other prominent figures of the world of art and culture on the island, including Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, the first historian of the city and his wife. The ceramist Marta Arjona, the painter Juan Vicente Rodríguez Bonachea, the photojournalist Liborio Noval and the poet Jesús Orta Ruiz, the Indio Naborí, among others are remembered here.

If you arrive in Havana, be sure to visit the Garden of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, as it is a place that invites to rest, spirituality and, at the same time, allows to pay tribute to that distinguished religious person.