Photojournalist to speak on year with Mother Teresa

Linda Schaefer

BATH - Nationally known photojournalist and author Linda Schaefer will speak of her year with Mother Theresa of Calcutta Tuesday at 7 p.m. at St. Mary's Church in Bath. The presentation is the last of a sixsession Lenten Spiritual Enrichment Series titled "Stewardship - A Way of Life."

A photographer by trade, but an artist by intuition, Linda Schaefer's work has appeared in the New York Times, Catholic Digest, Time and Newsweek, GQ, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Parade Magazine, and international magazines such as Paris' Match and Germany's Stern.

Her career and work with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, led Schaefer to become the last professional photojournalist granted complete access to Mother Teresa, the Missionaries of Charity, the international team of volunteers, and the thousands of poor

and sick served in her facilities throughout India.

Schaefer began her career as a journalist for CNN in 1985, but found she couldn't loose her first love, still photography. Her passion for documentary work, along with the fact that she had lived in Brazil during her childhood, led her explore and photograph the Amazon.

After traveling to Brazil, and hitchhiking with another female journalist on the back of sugarcane trucks, she found herself in the southeastern basin of the Amazon. While staying at a Catholic mission, she documented the indigenous tribe known as the Xevante.

Schaefer received grants that allowed her to document "The Face of America" during the presidential campaign of 1988. Her work was exhibited at both the Democrat and Republican conventions that year and CNN featured her documentary.

She traveled to India with

her husband and, following his death in 1992, experienced a flowering of her spiritual life. In 1993 she traveled with a Christian medical relief team to Romania. After photographing events in the wake of the end of the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, she turned her attention to Croatia and war-torn Bosnia. Back in the United States in June of 1995, she had her first contact with Mother Teresa, who was visiting Atlanta.

Their ensuing relationship led to Schaefer's book "Come and See," a unique combination of a journal written by Schaefer with some 160 full color photographs taken as she lived and worked with the Missionaries of Charities and the international team of volunteers in various facilities run by Mother Teresa throughout India.

The book also was created around the dictates of Mother

Teresa, who said she wanted people who picked up the book to see "her world" -- the environment in which she lived and shared her love. She wanted viewers to actually "see, smell and hear" the real world in which she lived and worked.

Schaefer's presentation is open the public. A free will offering will be received and copies of the book "Come and See" will be available for purchase.

Lenten Stations of the Cross (5:00 p.m.), Mass (5:30 p.m.) and a "Mexican Fiesta Dinner" (6:00 p.m.) music and prayer (6:45 p.m.) will precede the 7 p.m. presentation. The programs conclude by 8:30 p.m.

Saint Mary's Roman Catholic Church is located at 32 East Morris Street in Bath. For more information or to make dinner reservations call 776-3327.