Catholic Saints • India • Missionaries of Charity • Grief and Service
Mother Teresa and Priyanka Gandhi: “Come and Work With Me” After Rajiv Gandhi's Death
In May 1991 a nineteen-year-old in Delhi lost her father to an assassin's bomb. A few days later, by her own telling, an elderly nun came to the house, sat beside her sickbed, and gave her an invitation.
Mother Teresa and Priyanka Gandhi at a Glance
- The Saint
- Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910 to 1997), founder of the Missionaries of Charity, canonized September 4, 2016
- The Witness
- Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, daughter of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, who has told the story publicly more than once
- The Occasion
- The family's mourning after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991
- What Was Said
- According to Priyanka: “Come and work with me”
- What Followed
- She says she later worked with the sisters in Delhi, teaching young children
- Where She Told It
- A 2020 social media post for Mother Teresa's 110th birthday, and a 2024 campaign speech in Wayanad
- Her Feast Day
- September 5
A Family in Mourning
Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India, was assassinated on May 21, 1991, while campaigning in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. He left behind his wife Sonia and their two children, Rahul and Priyanka. Priyanka was nineteen.
The years that followed were private ones for the family, and most of what the public knows about the weeks of mourning comes from what the family later chose to say. This article follows only what Priyanka Gandhi herself has said about Mother Teresa, and it keeps to her words.
Part II
The Visit
In her account, Mother Teresa came to see the family shortly after Rajiv Gandhi was killed. She had come to see Sonia Gandhi, and she asked to see Priyanka as well. Priyanka had a fever and was in bed.
She has said that Mother Teresa sat by her bed and held her hand, and in another telling that Mother Teresa put a hand on her head and gave her a rosary. These are two versions of the same visit given years apart. Neither is in conflict with the other, and both are given here as she told them.
The detail she repeats in both versions is the invitation. Mother Teresa asked her to come and work with the sisters.
Part III
Working With the Sisters
Priyanka has said that she took up the invitation. In her 2024 account she says that some five or six years after her marriage, she worked with the Missionaries of Charity in Delhi, teaching young children English and Hindi. In her 2020 post she said that she had worked with the sisters for many years and owed Mother Teresa a debt of gratitude.
Those two summaries do not use the same wording, and this article does not try to reconcile them into a single number of years. What is consistent is the shape of the story: a nun who spent her life in the streets of Calcutta asked a grieving teenager to try serving other people, and the teenager later did, in a quiet way, in a classroom.
Part IV
Where She Told the Story
The first public account in this article is from August 26, 2020, the 110th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth. Priyanka marked the day with a social media post, with two photographs of herself alongside Missionaries of Charity sisters. She wrote that shortly after her father was killed, Mother Teresa came to see them, and that she sat by her bed and said, “Come and work with me.”
The second account is from October 28, 2024, in Meenangadi in Wayanad, Kerala, where she spoke on the day she filed her nomination papers in a by-election. She told the story of an elderly woman named Thresia who had pressed a rosary into her hand for her mother, and she said it reminded her of the rosary Mother Teresa had given her when she was nineteen.
A fair reader will notice that the second telling happened at a political event, and that she was speaking to a constituency with a large Christian community. That context does not make the memory untrue, but it is worth knowing.
Part V
What We Can and Cannot Say
There is no independent record in the sources I reviewed of the visit itself, such as a dated press report of Mother Teresa calling at the Gandhi home. The story rests on Priyanka Gandhi's own accounts, which are consistent on the main points: the visit, the fever, the invitation. Where her two tellings differ in small details, this article says so.
This article takes no position on any politics. It is about a saint and one conversation.
Part VI
Timeline
- August 26, 1910Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the future Mother Teresa, is born in Skopje.
- January 12, 1972Priyanka Gandhi is born.
- May 21, 1991Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated at Sriperumbudur.
- Shortly afterBy Priyanka's account, Mother Teresa visits the family and invites her to work with the sisters.
- September 5, 1997Mother Teresa dies in Calcutta.
- September 4, 2016Mother Teresa is canonized.
- August 26, 2020Priyanka shares the story on Mother Teresa's 110th birthday.
- October 28, 2024She tells it again at a campaign event in Wayanad.
An Invitation at a Bedside
Mother Teresa did not offer a speech to a nineteen-year-old in mourning. She offered her something to do. If you carry her with you, the prayer card is a quiet reminder that grief can be turned toward other people.
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