Meeting Mother Teresa, finding peace in land of diversity

For Brazilian poet and artist Italo Rovere, the road to Calcutta began with a search for humanity.

In his early twenties, Rovere had heard about Mother Teresa and felt an immediate pull. “I was searching for human beings,” he recalled. “When I heard about Mother Teresa, it felt like she was the person I was looking for. I wanted to meet her.”

A spirit of renunciation ran in his family. The youngest of three brothers, Rovere followed a path similar to that of his elder sibling, who had left home to join the Focolare Movement, an international Roman Catholic lay organisation founded in 1943 by Chiara Lubich in Trento, Italy. Lubich, Rovere pointed out with a grin, “was a friend of Mother Teresa.”

His decision to leave home, however, met with fierce resistance. His father owned a transport company and hoped his son would pursue a more conventional future. His mother wanted him to travel somewhere in Europe or America. “But I was bent on coming to India,” Rovere said.

Calcutta calling

In May 1989, at the age of 22, he set off. “I took a bus from my town, Fortaleza, to Rio de Janeiro. Then I flew to Madrid. I had very little money, so I started walking.”

What followed was an extraordinary journey. He crossed Spain and France on foot before reaching Italy, where his brother was living. “He thought I was crazy,” Rovere laughed.

Concerned about his younger brother’s plans, the elder sibling insisted that Rovere write to Mother Teresa before proceeding further. “My brother made me promise I would not leave until a reply came.”

Two months later, the response arrived. The Missionaries of Charity advised him to join the Missionary Brothers of Charity, an affiliated organisation in Sicily. Rovere complied, but his ambition remained unchanged. “I wanted to meet Mother Teresa.”

Determined to continue eastward, he hitch-hiked across Europe towards Türkiye, obtaining visas country by country along the route. But his journey stalled there.

“The Brazilian ambassador took one look at me — I had no shoes, no bag — and said I was crazy,” Rovere recalled. “I simply said ‘thank you’ and went back to my brother in Italy.”

For the next few months, he took up odd jobs to save money for an air ticket to India.

Finally, on March 1, 1990, he landed in Calcutta. The city overwhelmed him. “I was shocked to see so many people on the streets,” he said.

Yet it was also where his quest culminated. He met Mother Teresa for the first time and returned again later that year. “When I came back, she saw that I was ready,” he said. So he started to work at Premdan and Nirmal Hriday, the Missionaries of Charity home for sick and dying destitutes. Years later, when his own father fell ill, Rovere found himself drawing on the lessons he had learnt while caring for the terminally ill in Calcutta.

Mother Teresa died in September 1997, just a week before Rovere arrived on his third visit to the city.

“No one is perfect, but she did beautiful work. She was a good human being. She used to say a smile can save one soul. I wrote several poems on her,” he said, reminiscing of the nun, who has since been canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. He treasures a personal memento. “Mother Teresa also wrote beautiful poems. She gave me her card and wrote a poem on it.”

Do it yourself

If Mother Teresa shaped Rovere’s understanding of humanity, poetry became his way of expressing it.

His first handmade mini-book appeared in 1999, though his relationship with publishing had begun on a discouraging note. A travelogue based on his 1995 journey across Africa attracted little interest. “I travelled all over Brazil with the book, sharing my experience. But people didn’t want to know about Africa,” he said. “Fear of AIDS and Ebola was very high. Some people even ran away from me.”

The disappointment made him vow never to write another book.

Instead, he began creating illustrated editions of his poems. “I contacted several illustrators, but none responded. So I thought, let me paint myself,” he said. “My life was black and white. I wanted colours in my life.”

A turning point came in 2007 when he met Alice Strauch in Rio. “She invited me to her workshop. I consider her my book master.”

Under her guidance, Rovere learnt the craft of professional bookbinding, from selecting paper to assembling handmade volumes. He also began illustrating his work with watercolours. “I try to convey the vibrancy of colours in my books, giving more life to my poetry,” he explained. “What I want to talk about in my poems is the light of humanity.”

For the past decade, Rovere has returned to Calcutta every year.

“There is so much peace here,” he said. “I feel safer in India than in Brazil. The world needs the unity you have in your diversity.”

Soccer fever

He is equally fascinated by the city’s football culture. “Half of Calcutta is Brazil and the other half is Argentina,” he said, a twinkle in his eye.

But he is disillusioned by the direction the sport has taken in his homeland. “Football has become too commercial,” he said.

Nor is he impressed by Brazil’s modern superstar, Neymar. “This generation is lost in money. They come from the favela and become millionaires, and then they do not know what to do.”

Instead, Rovere remains devoted to an earlier era represented by players such as Oscar, Zico, Dunga, Socrates and Roberto Carlos.

Some football wounds, meanwhile, have never healed. He still struggles to accept Brazil’s defeat to France in the 1998 FIFA World Cup final.

As for Brazil’s prospects at the current World Cup, he is far from optimistic. “Neymar does not seem fit,” he said, shaking his head despondently.

Create your mini book

A step-by-step guide gathered from Italo Rovere’s workshop in CG Block

Ingredients needed

Liquid glue

Cardstock sheet

Standard printer paper sheets

Thin canvas bag

Ruler

Pair of scissors

Pen knife

For illustration

Crayon/ colour pencil/ water colour

FOR THE PAGES

stage-1

stage-2

stage-3

stage-4

FOR THE COVER