Princess Diana Met Mother Teresa — The Warning She Gave Diana Was Never Forgotten
In June 1997, Princess Diana flew to the Bronx to see Mother Teresa.
They had 40 minutes alone.
Neither knew it would be the last time.
At one point, Mother Teresa took Diana’s hands and told her something that left Diana completely still.
Two months later, Diana was dead.
The rosary Mother Teresa gave her that afternoon was buried with her.
At first glance, they had nothing in common.
One was a princess, the most photographed woman on earth, living in palaces and wearing jewels.
The other was 82 years old, living in deliberate poverty, sleeping on a thin mattress, owning almost nothing.
And yet, both of them knew what it felt like to be looked at constantly without being seen.
To carry something private inside a life that was entirely public.
That was enough.
Diana had been aware of Mother Teresa for years before they met.
Something about her work spoke to Diana, the quiet presence in the places others preferred to ignore.
She wanted to understand it from the inside.
In early 1992, she arranged a visit to Kolkata.
She was 30 years old.
Her marriage was quietly falling apart.
She had been performing a version of herself for a decade.
She flew to India looking for something she couldn’t name.
February 1992, Diana flew to Kolkata.
Mother Theresa was not there.
She had fallen ill and was being cared for in Rome.
Diana was given a tour of the convent by the sisters.
She prayed with them.
She spent time with the sick and the dying, not formally, not at a managed distance, but closely and genuinely.
The nuns sang to her.
She wept.
Her former butler, Paul Burl, described what she told him when she returned, that she had experienced something she didn’t have words for, a spiritual awakening, a sense of something larger than herself.
A few weeks later, Diana flew to Rome.
The missionaries of Charity Convent in Rome was not a grand building.
It was a working house in a workingclass neighborhood, functional, spare, stripped of anything unnecessary.
Diana arrived in the afternoon.
Mother Teresa came to meet her at the door.
They stood for a moment looking at each other.
Diana was 30 years old, tall, elegant, in a pale suit.
Mother Theresa was 82, small, bent slightly forward, her face marked by decades of hard living.
She took Diana’s hands in hers.
She looked up at her.
I have wanted to meet you for a long time, Diana said.
Mother Teresa smiled.
I know, she said simply.
I have felt it too.
She held Diana’s hands for a moment longer, studying her face with a directness that most people would have found unsettling.
Diana did not look away.
Then Mother Teresa said, “Come, we will talk inside.
” The photographs taken outside show two women who appear to have nothing in common.
Diana tall and elegant, Mother Theresa small and bent in her white and blue sari.
And yet the photographs also show something else.
The way they looked at each other.
The quality of attention each brought to the others presence.
Mother Theresa led Diana to her private room.
She closed the door.
They sat across from each other in the small plain space.
Two chairs, a window, a crucifix on the wall, nothing else.
Mother Teresa looked at her for a moment.
So she said, “You were in Kolkata?” Yes, Diana said.
I spent time with the sisters, with the sick.
She was quiet for a moment.
I don’t know how you do it, she said.
I was there for a few hours and I, she stopped.
How do you sit with that much suffering every day and not break? Mother Teresa looked at her steadily.
Who says I don’t break? She said.
Diana looked at her.
You break? Mother Teresa said simply more than once.
And then you get up again and you find that getting up was possible and that is enough for that day.
Diana was quiet.
But doesn’t it take something from you? She asked to be so close to all that pain.
Mother Teresa thought for a moment.
It takes everything, she said.
And somehow it gives everything back.
That is the only way I know how to describe it.
She looked at Diana.
You do this too, she said.
Not in the same way, but you go into the rooms that other people don’t go into, the hospitals, the people no one wants to be near.
I have watched you for years, Mother Teresa said.
The way you sit with the sick, the way you touch them, she paused.
You know already what I am talking about.
That feeling when you leave, that something happened in that room that couldn’t have happened any other way.
Diana nodded slowly.
Yes, she said.
I know that feeling.
Then you already understand, Mother Teresa said, more than you think you do.
A silence.
Diana looked at the crucifix on the wall.
I sometimes wonder, she said quietly.
If what I do matters given everything else, given the context I come from.
Mother Teresa looked at her.
A dying man does not care what context you come from, she said.
He cares that you are there.
Diana looked at her for a long moment.
Then Mother Teresa reached across and took her hands.
“You are doing something real,” she said.
“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself.
” Diana didn’t speak for a moment.
Then she said, “Thank you.
I needed to hear that.
” Mother Teresa smiled faintly.
“I know,” she said.
“That is why you came.
” Mother Teresa stood slowly.
“Come,” she said quietly.
We will pray.
They went in together.
They removed their shoes before entering as was the custom of the missionaries of charity.
Diana’s polished black heels placed neatly beside Mother Teresa’s worn sandals on the chapel floor.
They stayed for a long time.
Diana was already at the door, ready to leave when Mother Teresa stopped her.
She turned to Diana with an expression Diana couldn’t quite read.
There is one more thing, she said.
Diana looked at her.
What is it? Mother Teresa was quiet for a moment.
She seemed to weigh something.
Then one of the sisters appeared in the corridor.
A small interruption.
Something that needed attention.
Mother Teresa looked up.
When she turned back to Diana, something had shifted in her face.
As if she had decided the truth could wait a little longer.
Not now, she said quietly.
Not yet.
Diana waited.
But Mother Teresa only took her hands one more time.
I will tell you, she said, “When we meet again.
” Diana carried that unfinished sentence for 5 years.
For the next 5 years, their paths did not cross again.
This was not indifference.
In the years between their Rome meeting and their final encounter in New York, both women spoke about each other with a warmth that suggested the 30 minutes in that private room had established something that did not require regular contact to remain real.
Mother Teresa spoke of Diana frequently to the sisters and visitors who came to the convent, always with affection.
She called her my daughter.
Diana, for her part, kept the connection quietly.
She spoke of the Rome meeting as transformative.
She continued her work with the sick and the dying, the AIDS patients, the leprosy sufferers, the people the formal charitable world preferred to acknowledge from a distance.
They wrote to each other.
The letters have never been made public, but they existed.
And in one of those letters, Diana asked, she asked what Mother Teresa had wanted to tell her at the door.
Mother Teresa’s reply has never been disclosed.
But when Diana finally flew to New York in June of 1997, when she went out of her way, changed her schedule, flew from Washington to the Bronx just to see an 86year-old woman in a wheelchair, those close to her said she seemed to be going with a purpose beyond the visit itself.
She was going to hear what had not been said.
Mother Theresa had been confined to a wheelchair for months.
She was 86 years old.
Her heart was failing.
The doctors who attended her were not optimistic about how much time remained.
She had been in and out of hospital.
The sisters around her managed her schedule with great care, limiting what she committed to, preserving her energy for what mattered most.
When word came that Diana was in New York and wanted to visit, Mother Teresa’s response was immediate.
She would see her.
She got out of the wheelchair.
The people around her described this as remarkable, not just medically given her condition, but as a statement of what this meeting meant to her.
She had not stood for a long visit in a long time.
For Diana, she stood.
They met inside the convent.
The room was small, plain, the same kind of room as Rome, functional, spare, a crucifix on the wall.
Mother Teresa sat across from Diana and looked at her with the same quality of attention she had brought 5 years earlier in Rome.
“You look better,” she said.
Diana smiled.
“I feel better,” she said.
For the first time in a long time, Mother Teresa studied her for a moment.
Then Diana said, “You said you would tell me.
” At the door in Rome, you said, “Not yet.
” Mother Teresa looked at her for a long moment.
I remember, she said.
Diana waited.
Mother Theresa was quiet.
Then she said, “Before I tell you, tell me about the work.
How is it going?” And Diana talked about the landmines campaign, about Angola, about the photographs that had changed people’s minds, about the hospitals she still visited, the patients she still sat with.
She talked the way she talked when she was talking about something real quickly, specifically without the careful language of public statements.
Mother Theresa listened.
When Diana finished, Mother Theresa nodded slowly.
“You are doing what you were meant to do,” she said.
“That is clear.
” A silence.
Then Diana said, “And the thing you wanted to tell me.
” Mother Theresa looked at her.
She was quiet for a moment, longer than felt comfortable.
in Rome,” she said finally.
“I wanted to tell you something I had seen, but you were so young then, and I wasn’t sure you were ready to hear it.
” Diana waited.
“You have a gift,” Mother Teresa said.
“Not the fame, not the title, something else.
The ability to walk into a room full of suffering and make every person in it feel that they are the only one you came for.
That is not something you learn.
That is something you are given.
” She looked at Diana steadily.
I have seen it in very few people in my life.
Diana was quiet.
Mother Teresa continued.
And that is also why I have been praying for you more than usual.
These past months, Mother Teresa was quiet.
And lately, she said softly.
I have not been able to stop.
Diana looked at her.
What does that mean? Mother Teresa held her gaze.
People with this kind of gift, she said quietly, are rarely left alone.
The world takes from them.
It takes and takes until there is very little left.
I have watched it happen, she paused.
I wanted you to know that I see what you carry and that I pray for you because of it.
Diana was very still.
Are you saying something is going to happen to me? Mother Teresa didn’t answer immediately.
Then she said, I am saying that you should not waste what you have.
the time, the work, the people around you who love you.
” She reached out and took Diana’s hands.
“Don’t take any of it for granted.
” Diana looked at her.
“You’re frightening me,” she said.
Mother Teresa smiled faintly.
“Good,” she said softly.
“Fear can make us pay attention.
” She reached into the folds of her sari and brought out a rosary.
“Take this,” she said.
Keep it with you, Diana took it.
They sat together for a few more minutes without speaking.
Then Diana stood.
Thank you, she said, for seeing me.
Mother Theresa looked up at her.
Go, she said quietly.
And know that you are loved.
Diana left.
She carried the rosary with her for the rest of her life.
She spoke about the visit once briefly to someone close to her.
she said.
She told me I had been given something and that it would cost me.
2 months later, on August 31st, 1997, Diana died in a car crash in Paris.
She was 36 years old.
Mother Teresa was told the news in Kolkata.
She said she would pray for Diana.
She said Diana had been like a daughter to her.
5 days later, on September 5th, Mother Teresa died.
They had known each other for 5 years, met in person twice, and yet the people close to Diana described Mother Teresa as one of the few people who had ever spoken to her without needing anything in return, someone who saw her clearly and made sure she knew it.
She was buried with a rosary in her hands.
Mother Teresa had given it to her in the Bronx that June afternoon, and in that small room, something had been said.
something Diana carried quietly until the end.
