The State - News from March 21, 1988

Former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., home after three weeks tending the sick at Mother Teresa’s clinic for the terminally ill in Calcutta, is talking of applying those lessons to politics. In the April issue of Life magazine, Brown writes of a six-year odyssey that took him to several continents and included an extended stay at a Zen Buddhist retreat in Japan. “In Calcutta I never escaped human suffering,” said the 48-year-old Democrat, who bathed and hand-fed the dying. “The most distressing thought of all was that much of this would be preventable or curable if nations could be mobilized to combat human suffering rather than to engage in national rivalries.” Brown, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 and 1980, hinted at a return to politics, saying he has watched the current campaign wondering, “How could I ever take the spirit of Mother Teresa and apply it to the ordinary world of business and politics?”