Priest owes his vocation to St. Teresa of Kolkata

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk describes moment he first considered joining Missionary of Charity fathers
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
The B.C. Catholic

Mother Teresa once walked up to a 21-year-old Winnipeg man and suggested he become a priest. He listened, and 23 years later became the main promoter of her cause for sainthood.

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, MC, said he owes his vocation to the Saint of Kolkata.

“It was a life-defining moment. It changed everything,” the postulator for Mother Teresa’s canonization told The B.C. Catholic on the phone from Lisbon, Portugal.

At 21, Kolodiejchuk was a young man who had just spent years in a Redemptorist seminary and in philosophy studies.

He wasn’t sure the Redemptorist life was for him and was still deciding what to do next when his parents took him to Rome to visit his sister, Sharbel, who had joined the Missionaries of Charity a year earlier, in 1976.

Celebrity

He went to Mass with his parents and the Missionaries of Charity. There, his family watched as Mother Teresa pinned crosses over the hearts of one priest and a few laymen who would become the first Missionary of Charity brothers.

After Mass, he walked up to Mother Teresa to thank her and say goodbye. She looked at him and suddenly said: “I want to pin a cross on you.”

“I was shocked! I didn’t say anything. I just went right out the door.”

The next day, after Mass in the convent of San Gregorio, he saw Mother Teresa again and mustered the courage to ask her what she meant. “She wanted me to stay in Rome right then and there,” and become a Missionary of Charity priest.

Kolodiejchuk had to return to Winnipeg for a scheduled operation, but returned to Rome in 1979 to grant Mother Teresa’s wish. She pinned a cross on his chest.

As one of the first Missionary of Charity priests, he gained the responsibility of driving Mother Teresa to and from the airport and meetings in Italy or the U.S., depending where he was living at the time.

“To other people, she was this famous figure,” said the priest, who knew her for 20 years. “In my experience, she was a simple, ordinary, motherly woman.”

Mother

Father Kolodiejchuk remembers the day he was driving her and another priest through San Diego to see a doctor.

They were running late and had missed lunch, so Father Kolodiejchuk pulled up to a Carl’s Jr, parked the car, and walked in to order burgers and fries.

The Mexican American who took his order noticed the Roman collar. When he asked about it, Father Kolodiejchuk explained that he was a Missionary of Charity priest. The man was thrilled.

“If he only knew that he was going to be preparing the burgers that Mother Teresa would eat, he would flip over!”

Without telling Carl’s Jr staff and causing a scene, the priest returned to the car with their meals. When Mother Teresa, who always sat in the passenger seat, had her fill, she leaned over and asked Father Kolodiejchuk if he’d like her French fries.

“It was like a typical mother, concerned for her son, would say.”

Saint

Two years after the motherly nun died, in 1999, the Missionaries of Charity chose Father Kolodiejchuk as the postulator for her cause for canonization. He had been taking a course on canonization.

He spent the next 17 years going through thousands of pages of witness testimonials gathered by a tribunal in Kolkata.

“You investigate the life, virtues, and reputation, and the intercessory power of the servant of God Mother Teresa,” he said. “You don’t have to prove the person was perfect,” but that “they lived an excellent or a heroic Christian life.”

His work involved asking the tribunal to call on specific witnesses, including people who would give negative opinions of Mother Teresa. By the end of the process, he had 17 volumes of 400-450 pages each of witness testimonies.

He took all the evidence into account and prepared a positio, a document named after Latin word meaning “position,” to answer the question: What position do you take?

“A typical positio is one or two volumes. Hers was five, and 5,000 pages in total.”

A group of nine theologians had to read all five volumes and put in writing whether they agreed with Father Kolodiejchuk’s opinion that she should be recognized as a saint.

Their vote was unanimous. Then the positio, along with 110 pages of the theologians’ opinions, went to a group of 15 cardinals and bishops. They also voted unanimously in favour.

Finally all the information was presented to Pope John Paul II, who authorized a decree that Mother Teresa had “heroic virtue.” Then they waited for miracles.

Father Kolodiejchuk watched the whole process unfold, up until her canonization at the Vatican Sept. 4 this year.

“Not many postulators see the beginning and the end.” Canonization causes usually start long after the person died and last for decades. He and the postulator for St. John Paul II’s causes saw through the “two fastest causes in recent history.”

He’s grateful Mother Teresa chose him so many years ago. “If it wasn’t for that day, I might have been a grandfather in Winnipeg.”

“Mother Teresa is a saint not just to be admired but to be imitated.”

She showed that “It’s not the things we do, but the love with which we do them that gives them value. Kolkata is everywhere.”