Schweizer Illustrierte

With Humility and Heart

Twelve years ago, a trip to India changed the life of Zurich native Jacqueline Fritschi‑Cornaz. Wanting to help street children, the actress set out to follow in Mother Teresa’s footsteps.

Text: Aurelia Robles
Photos: David Biedert

Gently, at her home in Oberrieden (ZH), 60‑year‑old Jacqueline Fritschi‑Cornaz shows the white saree – a prop she was allowed to keep. “Two costume men always had to help me tie it.” The meters‑long fabric is light, “but with the blouse and headpiece it became heavy – and very hot as well at 40 degrees Celsius and more.” Her character in the film wore this garment in real life. In the film Mother Teresa & Me Fritschi‑Cornaz portrays Saint Mother Teresa. “To depict such an icon in a film was an honor and at the same time a great challenge.”

She hadn’t specifically dreamt of such a role—but had always dreamt of acting. Growing up in Oberrieden with two sisters – “I was the middle child” – she first took the stage at age five with the children’s ballet, playing a little gray mouse. “The costume of cardboard and a potato sack was incredibly scratchy.” Singing soon followed. Jacqueline learned recorder, transverse flute, and guitar. To this day she takes ballet lessons twice a week. “Dancing gives me joy, presence, and a focus for my work and for life.”

A fateful journey

After training first as a teacher and then as a professional actress, Jacqueline Fritschi‑Cornaz moved fully into acting twenty years ago and developed a passion for producing her own work. “When I can shape everything according to my vision, I put even more of my heart into it,” she says. Travel is her counterbalance to the stage. “Even as a teenager I cleaned the school building and filled pralines so I could afford holidays in Italy.” So she had no idea, when she accompanied her husband on a business trip to Mumbai in 2010, that this fateful journey would last twelve years.

“I only wanted to visit the Bollywood studios in Mumbai.” But on the way there, she was confronted with the dire situation of street children. “In a film studio I then saw a photo of Mother Teresa. That’s when it became clear: either I ignore the fate of these children or I do something.” Her grandparents once ran a residential home for the elderly, and so Fritschi‑Cornaz decided to act immediately. On the spot she asked a producer whether he could imagine making a feature film about Mother Teresa. “For lack of investors he declined, but he did say that I resembled the young Mother Teresa.”

Back in Oberrieden, she couldn’t let go of the idea – nor could her husband, Richard Fritschi, to whom she has been married for 33 years. Together they developed a vision and founded the Zariya Foundation, seeking donors for a feature film whose proceeds would benefit needy children in India. Equipped with four million Swiss francs in donations and foundation funds, they found the perfect screenwriter and director in Kamal Musale, 62 – his father Indian and mother Swiss.

“Realizing this film was an inner compulsion. It should inspire more respect, tolerance, and compassion,” says Jacqueline Fritschi‑Cornaz. Together with Musale she researched the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s story for over three years. “We didn’t want to show her as an icon but as a human being, and we therefore traced the dedication and humility Mother Teresa needed to devote herself to the poorest,” says the protagonist.

A key question for her was what the passion of Jesus Christ means for a Catholic nun. She traveled to India several times, volunteered in a Missionaries of Charity home for the abandoned, severely disabled children in Kolkata, met companions and relatives of Mother Teresa in Skopje, and spent a week in a monastery in Muotathal.

In 2020, filming began in Mumbai, Kolkata, and London – despite Covid. “I never wanted to give up, but I didn’t know if I had the strength.” In such moments she could identify closely with her role. “Because Mother Teresa demonstrably had a period in which she lost her faith. And yet she never gave up.”

Carefully, Jacqueline Fritschi‑Cornaz folds the saree away again. On the day of the Indian festival of Diwali, Mother Teresa & Me premiered in Switzerland. The plan is to bring the film to American cinemas as well. Jacqueline Fritschi‑Cornaz laughs: “The child I was pregnant with for twelve years has finally learned to walk.”

Source: Schweizer Illustrierte, https://www.schweizer-illustrierte.ch