They are our saints, the ones we expect to be canonized. Though they never directly worked together, each recognized in the other a simpatico soul. Early on, Mother Teresa made a solemn, Albanian vow (besos) never to refuse Jesus anything. Pope John Paul II’s motto for his service as a bishop and then as pope was a dedication to the Blessed Virgin: “totus tuus,” everything for you.

The entire world was their parish. They originally met in Rome, after he was already an archbishop and she had founded dozens of houses overseas for the Missionaries of Charity. Both were notable for their energy. The late pope’s secretary recalled that she visited him whenever she was in town. Mother Teresa’s sisters recalled her joyful countenance whenever she mentioned him.

Their early years were schools of grief and wartime privations. Mother Teresa’s father died when she was only 9, possibly the victim of a political poisoning in her Balkan hometown of Skopje. She was the youngest of the three siblings, and her mother struggled to raise them. She left for the Loreto novitiate at 18, and never saw her mother or sister again. After notable service as a Loreto sister in Calcutta, she experienced her “call within a call.” After convincing her superiors of the veracity of her call, the Missionaries of Charity began with one quiet, smiling nun, sitting in the dirt with the poorest of the poor. Soon, she attracted vocations among her Indian sisters. Today, the order counts over 5000 nuns and hundreds of houses worldwide.

Pope John Paul II lived the cross as well. He was seven years old when his mother died, 14 when his brother died and a college student when the Nazis took control of Poland. After his father’s death, he entered the clandestine seminary in 1942, was ordained in 1946 and earned his first doctorate in 1948. His years in Krakow and then in academic circles in Lublin brought him to the attention of many in the hierarchy. The communists assessed his literary and academic work as cultural mishmash, and suggested his name for bishop of Krakow. He was the youngest bishop to participate in the Second Vatican Council.

Both insisted on the infinite dignity of every human being. After Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, Pope John Paul II asked her to be his apostle of life to the nations. She humbly offered to try, demurring that it was a big job. Her big soul was up to the task; she succeeded in bringing the pro-life message to millions.
They were apostles of hope in a world too jaded to believe. What the pope had found in his compatriots in spite of war and brutal oppression, Mother Teresa found in the most “distressing disguise of Jesus within the poorest of the poor.” In each case, they firmly held to their deep faith in the face of the suffering of millions, without once seeming to downplay the reality of that human pain. Without fear, they inspired others to believe in the possibility of God’s redemption.

Billions of persons were touched in some way, world wide, by their ministries. Through television, airplane travel and modern media coverage, both were lightening rods of public acclaim. Their humility also distinguished them. Mother Teresa called herself, a “little pencil in the hand of God.” To his Polish flock in Krakow, the pope retained his nickname, “Wujek.” (Polish for uncle)

The recent book on Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, revealed her deep interior suffering and darkness behind her constant smiles.  “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the confident assurance of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Both the downfall of Eastern Bloc communism and the renewal of the Church after Vatican II are traced to John Paul the Great’s pontificate. Because they believed, we can have the courage to believe in what seems impossible, and to be lights of love in a dark world.