Henry Sebastian D'Souza
Born in Igatpuri, D'Souza was ordained priest in 1948. He became Bishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar in 1974 and was named coadjutor Archbishop of Calcutta in 1985. D'Souza retired in 2002 as Archbishop of Calcutta and started the Life Ascending- a monthly newsletter for the elderly. He died at the age of 90 in 2016 at Vianney Home, Kolkata. He was the Archbishop of Calcutta (Kolkata) when Saint Mother Teresa was in her later years and upon her death in the year 1997, helped initiate and support her sainthood.
Mother Teresa
Universities in India and the West granted her honorary degrees. Other civilian awards included the Balzan Prize for promoting humanity, peace and brotherhood among peoples (1978) and the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975). In April 1976 Teresa visited the University of Scranton in northeastern Pennsylvania, where she received the La Storta Medal for Human Service from university president William J. Byron. She challenged an audience of 4,500 to "know poor people in your own home and local neighbourhood", feeding others or simply spreading joy and love, and continued: "The poor will help us grow in sanctity, for they are Christ in the guise of distress". In August 1987 Teresa received an honorary doctor of social science degree, in recognition of her service and her ministry to help the destitute and sick, from the university. She spoke to over 4,000 students and members of the Diocese of Scranton about her service to the "poorest of the poor", telling them to "do small things with great love".
In 1979, Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace". She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet for laureates, asking that its $192,000 cost be given to the poor in India and saying that earthly rewards were important only if they helped her to help the world's needy. When Teresa received the prize she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered, "Go home and love your family." Building on this theme in her Nobel lecture, she said: "Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society—that poverty is so hurtable and so much, and I find that very difficult." Teresa singled out abortion as "the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child—what is left for me to kill you and you kill me—there is nothing between."