The white, blue-rimmed cotton sari made famous by Saint Teresa of Kolkata has been trademarked in a case the nun’s former lawyer has claimed as a first for a religious uniform anywhere in the world, the Guardian reports.
The design of the sari, which Teresa is said to have purchased from a Kolkata market the evening she was granted permission to start working in the city’s slums, is now the exclusive intellectual property of the Missionaries of Charity, the order the nun founded nearly 70 years ago.
A lawyer for the order, Biswajit Sarkar, said he had applied for the trademark in 2013 to combat the “misuse” of the saint’s reputation, often for commercial gain. The trademark was formally granted in early 2016 but only recently publicised.
He said he would now take “severe” legal action against unauthorised use of the design, even by charitable enterprises that the order’s nuns had been willing to tolerate.
“There are many organisations starting schools naming themselves after Mother Teresa, and wearing the uniform, where the Missionaries of Charity have no connection,” he said.
A cooperative bank had also been established in the nun’s name, he said, and in another instance, religious books were being published with the blue-striped trimming, giving the impression they were endorsed by the Kolkata-based order.
Saint Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to an Albanian family in 1910, and joined a Kolkata-based convent at age 21. Horrified by the poverty in Kolkata, she sought permission to leave the institution and work among the city’s poor.
In 1950, she established the Missionaries of Charity, which now runs 758 homes, hospices and shelters in 139 countries around the world. She died in 1997 and was canonised by Pope Francis in September last year.
Teresa’s emphasis on helping the “poorest of the poor” earned her global admiration and a slew of awards including the Nobel peace prize in 1979.
