`Mother' Is Now In God's Hands -- Calcutta's Famed Nun Is Buried In Mission She Began For Poor

CALCUTTA, India - India paid final tribute to Mother Teresa yesterday with a state funeral and laid the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nun to rest inside the headquarters of the Catholic mission she founded in this city's slums a half-century ago.

Dignitaries from nearly 50 nations, including first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, placed wreaths beside Mother Teresa's open casket during a funeral ceremony that was multilingual and multireligious, reflecting the diversity of her adopted homeland and the breadth of her Missionaries of Charity order's work to relieve the suffering of the world's poorest people.

The funeral service, conducted before 13,000 mourners at Netaji Indoor Stadium, lasted three hours. Her order's choir sang hymns in English and Indian languages. Prayers were offered in Hindi, India's national language, and Bengali, the regional language of Calcutta that Mother Teresa spoke fluently.

A military escort of 15 vehicles carried her body on a gun carriage in a procession from St. Thomas to the stadium and then to a private burial in the Missionaries of Charity headquarters, where nuns and priests watched her body as it was lowered into a concrete tomb.

In six hours of ceremonies that began with a military escort from a quiet convent church and ended with a Gurkha rifle salute over her tomb, the nun was honored with both pomp and sorrow by her city, her adopted country and the world.

The final burial ceremony was closed to the public and the press. Only the rifle salute signaled to the crowd that her body had been lowered into its grave in the mission's former dining room.

Reporters peering through windows could see many nuns weeping, heads bowed in prayer. Slabs of white marble and a rectangular cement box about 3 feet high were seen inside by reporters before the funeral. A fresh coat of paint freshened the walls and brown linoleum covered the concrete floor.

The gun carriage that bore her body was the same as that used to carry modern India's founding father, Mohandas Gandhi, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, to their cremations.

White flowers were shaped into a cross in front of the military truck that towed the gun carriage and were also draped on the barrel of the field artillery piece.

In the back of the open truck, white-robed priests and nuns in the white-and-blue saris of Mother Teresa's order faced uniformed soldiers.

Along the procession route, some onlookers tossed flowers toward the funeral cortege, while others waved goodbye.

When her body reached the burial site, some mourners pressed their palms together in front of their chests, a Hindu gesture of respect. Smaller turnout than expected

The crowds that assembled to see her cortege pass were far smaller than expected - in the tens of thousands rather than the expected million - and far more decorous than usual in India.

After the ceremonies, for which India had declared a day of national mourning, the normally crowded and vibrant streets of this city of 11 million were quiet and almost deserted.

Periodic downpours probably kept many people off the streets. But there was also a certain air of detachment about yesterday's events.

The poor, the handicapped and the troubled - the people Mother Teresa spent her life helping - were, by and large, barred from taking part, at the insistence of the Indian military, largely for security reasons. Calcutta is an unpredictable city inexperienced in this kind of spectacle, and there were many foreign dignitaries, though not as many as expected, to protect.

When, on a few occasions, bystanders broke through barricades and surged toward the gun carriage and its military escort, sometimes throwing flowers, they were pushed back by troops and police officers.

This unlikely spit-and-polish finale to a life of asceticism, prayer and selfless service in the slums has put Indian officials somewhat on the defensive.

India broke tradition by according a state funeral to the Albanian-born Mother Teresa, who became a naturalized citizen of India in 1950. The honor of state rites has normally been reserved for prime ministers and presidents although an exception was also made for Gandhi.

After years of failing health, Mother Teresa died Sept. 5 at her order's headquarters, known as Mother House, from heart failure. She was 87.

Some that Mother Teresa helped were present at the funeral itself, a three-hour ceremony that was partly a Roman Catholic Mass and partly a memorial service addressed by leaders of more than half a dozen other faiths and attended by representatives of dozens of foreign governments. A woman rescued from prison, an orphan, a young handicapped man and a leper took part in the Mass led by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state.

Some Indians appeared ready to go beyond the civil honor yesterday and bestow her with a kind of popular sainthood. Formal declaration of sainthood by the Catholic Church, however, requires a careful review process that usually may not begin until five years after death.

"She gave up everything for the poor. There is a need for another saint like her," said Amar Sarkar, a janitor.

Adi Bapuji Rabadi, who spoke at the funeral as a representative of India's Zoroastrians, called her "saint-like," and asked, "Can there be a better example of such an ideal human being than our beloved Mother?"

The Catholic Church already recognizes a number of Saints Teresa or Therese. Mother Teresa, born to Albanian parents as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, took her religious name from one of them, St. Therese of Lisieux, popularly known as the Little Flower, a French nun who prayed for missionaries and is to be declared a doctor of the church this year, the 100th anniversary of her death. Mother Teresa's work had already made her known informally as "the Saint of the Gutters."

Cardinal Sodano and Sister Nirmala, her successor as superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, referred to her during the funeral as "Mother Teresa of Calcutta," a saintly sounding designation.

Sodano defended Mother Teresa - whom he had described before leaving Rome as a candidate for swift beatification, the final preliminary step on the road toward sainthood - against criticism that she and her order made little effort in their charitable work to eliminate the fundamental causes of poverty.

"The beggar, the leper, the victim of AIDS do not need discussions and theories. They need love," Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, said. "The hungry cannot wait for the rest of the world to come up with the perfect answer."

Zoroastrian leader Rabadi was among representatives of six religions other than Catholicism who participated in a multifaith eulogies. They were added to the ceremony because Mother Teresa served poor people of every faith in building an international mission that boasts 4,500 nuns and religious brothers working at almost 600 homes in more than 100 countries.

After Sodano's Catholic Mass, a Hindu recited a Sanskrit scripture from an ancient text, a Muslim prayed in Arabic and a Buddhist in a saffron robe chanted. Also represented were Protestants and Sikhs.

"Pure she was. Purity she preached," said Bhabjot Singh, a Sikh. "Lovely she was, for love she preached. Humble she was, so humility she preached. Divine she was, so divinity she preached. Apostle of peace and (the) downtrodden she was, incarnation of charity and service of humanity she preached." Dignitaries in attendance

Dignitaries including the Duchess of Kent, the president of Ghana and former Philippine president Corazon Aquino, as well as Mrs. Clinton, placed wreaths besides Mother Teresa's coffin during the funeral. Bernadette Chirac stood in for her husband, French President Jacques Chirac.

The presidents of Albania, and Ghana were present, along with prime ministers, ambassadors and special representatives - often wives - of political leaders.

Three queens were in attendance: Fabiola of Belgium, Noor of Jordan and Sofia of Spain. The Duchess of Kent represented Queen Elizabeth II.

Information from The New York Times and Associated Press is included in this report.