Host: Dan Kennedy

Dan: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Dan Kennedy. 

On September 4th, the Catholic Church will canonize Mother Teresa, the Albanian religious sister who became known as the angel of the slums. So, this week on the podcast, in honor of her, we have two stories that are told by or about sisters. 

The first up is a favorite story of ours, which was told by Dr. George Lombardi in New York City here a few years back. And theme of the night was Too close to the Sun. 

[cheers and applause] 

Here's Dr. Lombardi. 

Lombardi: [00:00:36] It was a Saturday afternoon in September 1989. I was home alone unpacking boxes, when the phone rang and a woman that I did not know started to interrogate me, “Are you Dr. Lombardi? Are you Dr. George Lombardi? Are you an infectious disease specialist? Did you live, and work and do research in East Africa? Are you considered to be an expert in tropical infections? Would you consider yourself to be an expert in viral hemorrhagic fevers?” 

At this point, I paused and I gathered myself and I asked the obvious question, “Who are you?” [audience laughter] She introduced herself, and said she was the representative of a world figure and a Nobel laureate, someone who was suspected to have a viral hemorrhagic fever. And she was calling to ask if I would consult on the case. 

Now, I found this highly improbable. I was 32 years old. I had just opened my office. The phone never rang. I had no patients. [audience laughter] In fact, I remember staring at the phone, trying to will it to ring. [audience laughter] But she persisted, and she mentioned that she had gotten my name from a colleague of mine who had told her to call Dr. Lombardi. He knows a lot about very weird things. [audience laughter] She arranged a conference call. And in 10 minutes, I was transported through the telephone wires to a small hospital in Calcutta, India, where I found out for the first time that the patient was Mother Teresa. And on the line were her two main Indian doctors. 

We chatted and discussed the details of the case for about an hour. And though those details are now hazy to me, what came through the staticky wires was their deep, abiding concern for their patient. These guys were worried. I wished them well, as I got off the line, and I went back to unpack some boxes. She called an hour later. She said, “They were very impressed by what you had to say and they'd like you to go to Calcutta. I'm making the arrangements. I can get you out tomorrow afternoon on the Concorde for the first leg.” 

I said, “This is impossible,” as I had just discovered-- Just found my passport in one of these boxes, and I told her it had expired three months before. She said, “That's a minor detail. [audience laughter] Meet me in front of your building tomorrow morning, Sunday at 07:00 AM.” Well, as you can probably surmise, I'm somebody who pretty much does what he's told. [audience laughter] 

So, 7 o’clock the next morning, she comes careening down the block in a wood paneled station wagon with bad shock absorbers. I jump in. The next stop is the passport office at Rockefeller Center, where on a Sunday morning a State Department official came, let us in, took my picture and handed me, in 15 minutes, a brand-new passport. [audience laughter] 

The next stop was the Indian consulate, where again, on a Sunday morning, the entire staff came in full dress uniform to give me an honor guard procession, which I walked past as they ushered me in to the Consul General himself, who affixed the visa to my passport. He leaned in towards me and said, “We bestow our blessings on you. The eyes of the world are upon you.” [audience laughter]  

Now, I knew who Mother Teresa was, of course, but this was my first realization in finding out what she meant not just to the world, but to the Indian people. I get back in the car. “I'm getting into this. Where next?” [audience laughter] She says, “We're ahead of schedule. I'm going to drop you off. I'll be back at 11:00 AM. I'll meet you downstairs.” Sure enough, 11:00 AM, tired squealing, she pulls up with one addition. 

In the backseat of the station wagon are wedged five sisters of charity, five nuns, as if sitting on a perch. [audience chuckles]] They start handing me letters, and envelopes and small packages wrapped in burlap and tied with twine and handing me these things and saying, “If you see Sister Narita and Sister Rafael, please give her this from me.” I'm a courier. This is all before Homeland Security. [audience laughter] 

We barrel off to JFK. And when we get there, I ask, sotto voce, “Why are the nuns here? They could have just given you these things. I don't understand why they had to come to the airport.” And I was told, “Well, I didn't know how to tell you this, but you don't have a confirmed seat on the Concorde. You're flying standby.” So, my eyes widened. Well, the sisters are going to go up and down the line of ticketed passengers [audience laughter] and beg until someone gives up their seat. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

I stood off to the side as I watch this scene unfold just out of earshot, as these five nuns surround this first New York City businessman. [audience laughter] He's listening to them, he's looking over at me, he's looking back at them, he shakes his head, no, he's sorry, he can't help. They move on to the next one. And now, I can hear their voices, which obviously have been raised. And in about 15 seconds, he realizes that resistance is futile and he hands over his ticket. They come towards me and they hand me this ticket as an offering. They have small triumphal grins on each of their faces, the non-equivalent of a high five. [audience laughter] 

I wag my finger at them. I said, “You, sisters, are little devils. [audience laughter] I'm going to tell Mother Teresa what you just did.” They laughed and that broke the tension. Next stop Calcutta. 24 hours in flight. 100 degrees, 100% humidity. I get off the plane and I'm met by my own personal private security detail of nuns. [audience laughter] They whisk me through customs and deliver me directly to the hospital where the doctors are waiting for me. And they intone, “She's deteriorating.” 

I go directly to her room. I'm meeting Mother Teresa for the first time. She's clearly very weak, and she beckons me towards her and I feel as if I'm about to get a blessing. And she says the following, “Thank you for coming. I will never leave Calcutta. Do not ever disagree-- Do not ever disagree with my Indian doctors. I need them. They run my hospitals and clinics, and I will not have them embarrassed.” And with that, she dismisses me with a wave of her hand. 

I go and wash my hands and I come back to examine her. As I go to pull her down gown to listen to her heart and lungs, the nuns that surround her lift the gown up. I pull the gown down, they pull the gown up. This kabuki dance goes on for several minutes [audience laughter] until from clear exhaustion, I just banish them from the room. After I perform my examination, I still don't know what's wrong with her. So, I do what an infectious disease doctor does. I do my cultures, and my gram stains, and my buffy coat smears and my Zhang preps. And we agree we'll meet the next morning at 09:00 AM. As I leave the hotel, I'm set upon 5,000 pilgrims who are holding a candle lit prayer vigil. I escape back to the hotel, where I pour myself a stiff drink and order room service for dinner and turn on the local news, hoping it will serve as a distraction. And there I am, [audience laughter] the lead story on the evening news that night and every night. Footage of Dr. Lombardi entering and leaving the hospital with the reporter saying, “Dr. Lombardi's come from the United States to attend to Mother Teresa, as she inches closer towards death.” The drumbeat of the Death watch had begun. 

She deteriorates over the next 48 hours. She's in septic shock. The rude unhinging of the mechanism of life as it was described 150 years ago as apt a description now. And on the third day, two propitious events collide. The first is the most beautiful sight I've ever seen. Small, tiny, translucent dew drops on the blood culture plate. This is important. This could be a bacterial infection. This is an important clue. And the second is the Pope's cardiologist flies in from Rome. He's an impressive man. Straight from central casting. A head of silver hair, a Brioni suit, Hermes tie, Gucci loafers. 

At our first meeting, when I tell the group of doctors excitedly that the cultures are turning positive, we may have answer here. And my concern, is that a pacemaker that was put in several months before could be the cause of the infection, he erupts vesuviusly. [audience laughter] Out of the question, he bellows, “This is a clear case of malaria.” Well, if they could diagnose malaria anywhere, it would be on the subcontinent of India, and this wasn't the case. 

She worsens over the next couple of days, and I'm having dreams where she's actually falling just beyond my outstretched hand. And I change my routine. Rather than fleeing the hospital at the end of the day through the side exit, I go out through the front and I walk through the pilgrims and I'm bolstered by their love and their devotion. On the fifth day, I make my most impassioned plea. I stand before the group and I tell them that this is septic shock. It has a bacterial cause and it's due to the pacemaker. This pacemaker must be removed. 

Dr. Brioni, as I've come to call him, stands at the lectern carrying his copy of The Merck Manual. It's a small book that many doctors carry. He has the Italian version, Merck Manuale. [audience laughter] And in a scene right out of Shakespeare, as he talks, he's pounding the lectern. “If you listen, boom, boom, boom, to this American upstart, boom, I will not be held responsible. Boom.” The sounds ricochet through the somber conference room like gunshots. And in that moment, in that instant, I looked into the eyes of the courtly, elegant Indian doctors, and they had lost respect for him. 

They asked us to wait outside as they considered their options. I sat there with my vinyl knapsack and my socks with sandals. [audience laughter] He sat next to me, elegantly attired, with two equally elegantly attired attachés from the Italian consulate. They called us back in and said, “We've decided to go with Dr. Lombardi.” He silently packed his bag, left the hospital, went directly to the airport and flew out of the country. I said, “Let's get that pacemaker out.” They looked at me, You want it out, you have to take it out.” I said, “I've never done that before.”

They gave me this wonderful, nonverbal Bengali head waddle, like-- [audience laughter] So, I went down to her room. I banished the nuns, I got a charge nurse and a basic tray, and I prepared the patient. The pacemaker box came out readily, but the wire that had been sitting in her right ventricles for several months, was tethered into place and it would not budge. I twisted and turned and did all kinds of little body English, and this thing was stuck. 

I started to sweat. My glasses fogged over. There have been stories, if you pull hard enough, you can put a hole in the ventricle and she could bleed into her chest and die within a matter of minutes. So, in the most surreal moment, I said a prayer to Mother Teresa, for Mother Teresa. [audience laughter] And this catheter came loose. [audience cheers and applause] 

Thank you. I took it out, I cultured the tip and I proved that this pacemaker was the cause of her infection. She got better. Her fever broke. She woke up a couple of days later. She's sitting in a chair, eating. My work was done, but they wouldn't let me leave. I stayed another two weeks, as I was the only doctor who could start her IVs, who could thread these catheters into these tiny, fragile, elderly woman's veins. It's a skill I had picked up in the mid-1970s as a medical student at NYU Bellevue, where I learned to start IVs in the hardened veins of IV drug addicts. It's a skill I honestly thought I would never, ever need again. 

When it was my time to leave, they held a press conference and they publicly thanked me. And that's why I'm able to tell this story. I flew back to my life and to my two sons. She lived another eight years, and I saw her periodically. But the best part of this for me, is that I have an ongoing relationship with the sisters. They're a wonderful group of women. They truly do God's work, however you may want to define that. I take care of whatever their medical problems are. 

Several months ago, The Mother Superior came in. I had to fill out some paperwork, and she brought two young novitiates with her and she asked me, “Dr. Lombardi, can we go to the back? Can they see the pictures? I have some pictures on the wall that memorialize this trip. And they like to see the faces of the other sisters when they were so young.” And I said, “Of course.” We go to the back, and they're oohing and ahhing. And one young novitiate squeezed my arm, and she says, “Dr. Lombardi, you represent a link to our past.” And I said, “I'm deeply honored by that.” And the other sister says to me, “Dr. Lombardi, in the convent, we think of you as a rock star.” [audience laughter] 

[cheers and applause] 

Dan: [00:16:48] Dr. George Lombardi is a lifelong New Yorker and a graduate of City College of New York, as well as New York University School of Medicine. He credits his love of stories to his father, who raised his gift for lamentation to an art form. 

Next, a story from a special event that we developed with the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids. Hundreds of sisters in their community packed the wealthy theater. And Sister Mary Navarre told this story. 

[cheers and applause] 

Mary: [00:17:25] In my family, for generations, everybody went to a Catholic school. I was the first one to be a Catholic school dropout. [audience laughter] In the first grade, [audience laughter] on the first day, I was really excited about going to first grade, where my brothers had already been in school, my two older brothers. But oh, that first day was just a disaster. I came home, dragging my feet through the leaves, my head hanging low. I said to my mom, “It was just awful. I didn't know what they wanted. And that sister, that teacher, she doesn't know how to read. [audience chuckles] She wants us to make sounds at the letters like, E, eh, eh, eh. B, beh, beh, beh. I just wanted to read the book, because it looked like a really good book. So, I just read the book, and she really got mad.” [audience laughter] 

And my older brother said, “Geez, Mary, don't you know you got to learn how to play dumb?” [audience aww] My mom didn't say anything. She pulled me out of the Catholic school and put me in the public school, where I could read anything I wanted to after my think and do book was done. [audience laughter] So, while other little girls grew up to admire sister and want to wear her beautiful white habit, I didn't want anything to do with those strange women in the big clothes. [audience laughter] But I really like being Catholic. 

I went to my catechism class every Saturday morning to get ready for first communion. I loved learning the answers to really important questions, like, why did God make you? Do you know why God made you to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. You are awesome. [audience laughter] Plus, we got to learn secret signs, like the regular sign of the cross that you see on football fields and basketball courts. But there's a secret sign of the cross where you touch very surreptitiously your forehead, lips and your chest. That's a secret to you, signal other Christians that you are a Christian, and the Roman soldiers will not find out and throw you to the lions. You just never know when that's going to be needed. [audience laughter] 

Then there were really big words like transubstantiation, hypostatic union, omniscient. Oh, I loved it. And then, there was rituals like benediction, which was much more interesting than Mass, which was totally boring. Benediction, you had the gold robes and the incense and the beautiful candelabras and the chanting. And did I mention the incense? I think it was Helen Hayes said, “One-time, Catholic liturgy is good theater.” And she was right. It is. So, everything went along pretty well there. 

And then, in the late summer of 1952, I was about ready to go into fourth grade in the public school. My sister was ready to start first grade. We all got sick, but she didn't get better. But I remember standing in the doorway, peeking around the corner there and watching the doctor. They did make house calls in those days. Came and asked her to stand up and touch her chin to her chest. This was the test. They didn't have MRIs in those days. And she did not pass the test. She failed it. The stiffening effects had begun. The word was polio. She got it, and she got it hard and she got it bad. 

My brothers and I didn't know what that word meant, polio. I thought it had something to do with ponies at first, polo ponies, you know? But it didn't. It hung in the air like a bad dream. It meant we found out hospitals, and hot packs, and iron lungs, and distracted parents and a sister who would never walk again and a mother who wept as she put her shoes away for the last time. [sobs] It still makes me mad. Anyway, I was really mad at God. May I say pissed. [audience laughter] How could God do this to an innocent child? My sister was a pain in the butt, I'll grant you that. [audience laughter] She was three years younger than me, but she didn't deserve this. So, I withdrew and I read a lot. 

And then, I found out that the suffering of the innocent was not her exclusive prerogative. A lot of innocence had suffered. I grew kind of cynical. I learned a lot about other things, like our country lied and treated the African-Americans and the American-Indians terribly, and people betrayed people and the world was lousy. And so, when I was about 13 or 14 years old, I remember my mom was ironing and I said to her, “I don't believe in God. I don't believe if there's a God, that this God could be benevolent and omniscient. I just don't believe. And if there's a Jesus, it couldn't be. If Jesus is a human Jesus couldn't be God.” It's one of those kids always thinking about stuff. Anyway. 

My older brother, always helpful, said, “She's going to hell.” [audience laughter] My mother didn't say anything. She just kept ironing, and she didn't look up and she didn't respond. She just looked tired. [audience laughter] Now, I did continue to go to Mass on Sunday, because I was hedging my bets at the Public High School. 1961, I graduated. Didn't know what to do with my life, so I registered in the community college and took some classes. That was okay. And then, a phone call came. It was 1962. Sister Eileen called from St. John's in Essexville, a neighboring parish. They were desperate for teachers, and could I teach first grade? Whoa. Teach first grade in a Catholic school of unhappy memory? [audience laughter] I don't think so. 

She said, “We really need you, and we'll pay you.” Oh, I thought, “Pay me?” Well, that's a concept I hadn't considered before getting paid. Well, I said, “What the heck? Why not give it a try?” So, I did. I started teaching first grade in the Catholic school in Essexville, Michigan. And I loved it. I loved teaching, and I loved the children. Every day, I would go home totally exhausted and drained. But then, the next day when I woke up, I was really excited to go and do it again. It was a strange thing. I just loved it. I just loved those kids. There were 52 of them, by the way. A lot to love. [audience laughter] 

I would say that my cynicism and my sadness, it just rode out of town on the infectious enthusiasm of those children. And then, one day in the spring, Sister Eileen said, “We're going to Grand Rapids, to Marywood, to The Mother House. Would you like to come along?” And I said, “Oh, sure. I've never been to Grand Rapids. That sounds cool.” So, I went along. What I found at Marywood was a beautiful place and an enormous peace. I found and I heard this chanting of the office that just lifted my mind and my heart. And then, I also just became so aware of the deep and sincere love and affection that the sisters had for one another, that I felt just drawn to this place and these people. I felt like a moth that had been too long in the cold and dark, and had finally seen the light and warmth of a gentle flame. 

And so, when I went back home, that experience lingered in my mind. And then, one day, out of the blue, something came into my head. I wasn't a person whose brain slipped scripture passages into my head, but the message was this. It almost was as if God had sent me a sticky note or something that said, [audience laughter] what does it profit you to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of your own soul? I knew what I had to do and I knew what I wanted to do. And so, September 8th, 1963, I entered the Grand Rapids Dominicans, and I started taking classes at Aquinas College. This is just after Vatican II. And those classes opened my mind and my heart. I felt like a flower that was blooming and is just turning its face to the morning sun. Here was a place I did not have to play dumb. 

In the years that followed, and there have been 53 or so, I think if I counted right, I have also come to understand and to know that God is not indifferent to the suffering of the innocent, that God weeps with Jesus over Jerusalem and with every family in their sorrow. I have also come to know that in this God created world there is room for joy. Joy in the laughter of children, in the kindness of strangers, in the love of family and friends and the affection of sisters. And so, now, every single morning I wake up and I feel like I can just fly on the wings of dawn into one more amazing day. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause] 

Dan: [00:27:46] Sister Mary Navarre is currently the director of archives for the Dominican Sisters in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She loves her job, because she gets to collect, arrange, organize and preserve, as well as share stories about the sisters and their lives since 1877, when the first sisters arrived in America from Bavaria. 

That's it for this week. Thanks to all of you for listening. And from all of us here at The Moth, we hope you have a story-worthy week. 

Mooj: [00:28:14] Dan Kennedy is the author of the books, Loser Goes First, Rock On, An American Spirit. He's also a regular host and performer with The Moth.

Dan: [00:28:23] Podcast production by Mooj Zadie. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.