On October 19, Mother Teresa was beatified by the Pope at a ceremony in the Vatican. This was the half-way mark to full sainthood, for although Mother Teresa’s reputation for holiness was unchallenged (which caused Pope John Paul II to set aside for the first time in centuries the five year rule of waiting for the process of enquiry to begin), the rules of the Roman Catholic Church demand that one more ‘‘miracle’’ is accepted before Mother Teresa becomes Saint Teresa of Kolkata.

While respecting all religions and their traditions, I do believe that in the eyes of millions, irrespective of nationality or religion, Mother Teresa had been anointed a saint in her lifetime.

In 1995, I agreed to do a follow up on my biography of Mother Teresa, this time providing a text to Raghu Rai’s famed photographs. Also at the end of September 1995, I was to leave on a year’s sabbatical to England.

I had last met Mother Teresa in Kolkata the month before. A few days before my departure, with the intention of saying goodbye, I spoke to a Sister at their Delhi convent to find out where she was; with 559 houses in 115 countries (at that time) she could have been anywhere. I was delighted to learn that she was due in Delhi the very next day.

At 9 am, she rang. Characteristically, she came straight to the point. ‘‘Can you join me today at Seemapuri, where I would like you to see the new developments? They may need some follow-up.’’

She had sparked my interest in the field of leprosy rehabilitation as early as 1975, and I had written a report on the subject. Twenty years ago, I had helped her to obtain 10 acres of government land for her Mission to start a leprosy treatment and rehabilitation centre.

Prem Nagar, popularly known as Seemapuri after the name of the locality, had grown from a barren stretch into a cluster of neat brick dormitories, workshops and an operation block for simple reconstructive surgery. Rice and wheat grew on two sides. Everywhere there were fruit trees. For some of the 200 leprosy patients cured — but deformed — it proved a permanent refuge.

Her visit to Seemapuri over, Mother Teresa pressed on with her engagements. Before I left her, I made a request that I seldom made, for she was always so hard pressed for time or, in later years, tired and often unwell. Would she be able to visit our home, bless my family and say a prayer? I offered to fetch her from her last appointment. She seemed uncertain and I did not press her.

At about 8 pm, when the possibility of her calling had receded, the doorbell rang. It was Mother Teresa, accompanied by two Sisters of her Order. She looked frail, her back now bent with age. But for someone who had recently turned 85 and who, that morning, had customarily risen before dawn, taken an early morning two-hour flight from Kolkata, and had since packed in a full day without rest, she seemed remarkably buoyant.

‘‘Accha, I’m here,’’ she said with a smile and pressed my wife and daughters onto the sofa with her. As always she gently refused the offer of a cup of tea or even a glass of water. Knowing well that she and her Missionaries of Charity accepted no refreshments outside their convents, I did not insist.

Being her biographer, I used the occasion to put to her some of the stinging accusations that had then been made overseas, about her and her work. She was criticised for being far too closely identified with those on the political right-wing. She was assailed for having accepted money for her work from questionable sources.

Her answer was immediate and concise: ‘‘I have never asked anybody for money. I fully depend on divine providence. I have only to pray when we need money for our work. I take no salary, no government grant, no church assistance, nothing. If people offer me money, I am in conscience bound to take it in charity, so that through this act of a charity, he [the giver] feels peace of mind and heart.

‘‘How is this different from thousands of ordinary people who feed the poor every day? Everyone has the right to give. I would never refuse them. My intention is to give peace to people. We have no right to judge anybody. God alone has that right.’’

During the half-hour she sat with us we discussed the other charges that were levelled; that the condition of medical care in her Homes for the Dying was rudimentary, that the dying were administered the last rites according to the Catholic faith, that she provided care in order to convert Hindus and Muslims to Christianity.

I knew most of the answers; I had seen the work of Missionaries of Charity for over two decades, but she answered stoically with a tinge of sadness. If she was to put up a full-fledged hospital in Kolkata and her Sisters were tied down to looking after this, then who would care for those who fell by the wayside, and admit those whom even hospitals would or could not accept.

Besides, their special fourth vow committed them to serve only the poorest of the poor; in a hospital how could she refuse the others?

It was not her business to convert, she said, that was God’s business; her task was to care for the destitute and homeless, in each one of whom she saw her vision of Jesus Christ, for only that made their difficult work possible. Even in the Vatican, where surely there was no need for conversion, she had persuaded the Pope that destitution and hunger existed and had wheedled a soup kitchen and some dormitories to feed the hungry of Rome.

My wife Rupika now nudged me to let Mother Teresa leave on her long journey to the other side of the city, to her spartan convent, so that she could rest for a few hours before her return flight early the next morning.

Before she left, Mother Teresa gathered her companions and my family around her and said a small prayer. Her words, as she clambered into the van of the Missionaries of Charity were, ‘‘All you do, do for the glory of God and the good of the people.’’