Nuns from the Missionaries of Charity, watch telecast of canonisation of Mother Teresa from Rome. (AFP)
Having stayed away from TV sets all their life, hundreds of nuns of the Missionaries of Charity today made an exception when they were glued to screens beaming Mother Teresa's canonisation ceremony live.
At the Mother House, headquarters of the congregation and home of the Saint, three large TV screens were brought from outside so that nuns from different homes and churches can gather at one place and watch the sainthood ceremony.
"We do not have TV or mobile phones here. Only when we have to screen some documentary for visitors then some screen is put up," one of the nuns at the Mother House told PTI.
Two of the TV screens which beamed CTV (Vatican Television Centre) were open to visitors on the ground floor of the three-storeyed building while another one was kept upstairs where the nuns were glued on.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation put up a fourth screen at a pandal outside the quarters for general public and media. The nuns said this was one of those rare occasions when they watched TV.
"We remain focused on the service of the poor and staying away from such pleasures of life is an integral part of the congregation. But this is an exceptional case. We all very overjoyed. She is our mother and so we have to watch this," they said.
To this day, none of them own or use a mobile phone. "We don't need phones and TV. We have landline phone and that is enough," another nun who was cleaning the rainwater inside the quarters said.