Canonization of Mother Teresa

Next Sunday Pope Francis will preside in Rome the Canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose life of absolute dedication has inspired thousands of people around the world. Her dedication to the poorest of the poor, the dying, the marginalized as well as her tireless work of evangelization were a living example of holiness and fidelity to the Gospel that her more than 5000 daughters, the missionaries of charity, and thousands of volunteers continue to keep alive today throughout the world.

In 2013 GRANDA was commissioned to produce a series of images of Saints for the cathedral in Sydney, Australia. We were asked to create a series of eight female Saints for the altar of Our Lady including several recent Saints, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), St. Mary MacKillop (first Australian saint) and the then Blessed Mother Teresa, among others.

Despite being small figures and being part of a large group, Granda's artisans took great care to ensure that each image reflected a personal, unique and special character. Thus, for the realization of the figure of Mother Teresa, Juan Carlos Martínez Moy, one of our artists, made several visits to the home of the Missionaries of Charity in Madrid, which welcomes abandoned people and AIDS patients. The idea was not only to capture the details of material things like the way the sisters wear the sari, their habit, but also to make an immersion in the sensitivity, character and feelings of the sisters and their vision of their Mother.

The result of this experience resulted in the modeling of a figure extremely faithful to the image we have of Mother Teresa, with all the imperfections and marks of age, humble but cheerful, with her eyes set high, in her "all in all". The clay model served as a reference for the carving of a block of walnut barely 80cm high, which was carefully polychromed to give light to the gaze and its characteristic white and blue color to the habit. The eight statues were installed in their niches in Sydney Cathedral in 2014.