Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 5 September 1997), born
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (pronounced ), was a
Catholic nun of
Aromanian-
Albanian ethnicity and
Indian citizenship, who founded the
Missionaries of Charity in
Calcutta, India in 1950. For over 45 years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity's expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries. Following her death she was
beatified by
Pope John Paul II and given the title
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.
By the 1970s, she was internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary and book Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1980 for her humanitarian work. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity continued to expand, and at the time of her death it was operating 610 missions in 123 countries, including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counselling programs, orphanages, and schools.
She has been praised by many individuals, governments and organizations; however, she has also faced a diverse range of criticism. These include objections by various individuals and groups, including Christopher Hitchens, Michael Parenti, Aroup Chatterjee, Vishva Hindu Parishad, against the proselytizing focus of her work including a strong stance against contraception and abortion, a belief in the spiritual goodness of poverty and alleged baptisms of the dying. Medical journals also criticised the standard of medical care in her hospices and concerns were raised about the opaque nature in which donated money was spent. In 2010 on the 100th anniversary of her birth, she was honoured around the world, and her work praised by Indian President Pratibha Patil.
Early life
, in native
Skopje.]]
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (
gonxha meaning "rosebud" or "little flower" in Albanian) was born on 26 August 1910, in
Üsküb,
Ottoman Empire (now
Skopje, capital of the
Republic of Macedonia). Although she was born on 26 August, she considered 27 August, the day she was baptized, to be her "true birthday." She was the youngest of the children of a family from
Shkodër,
Albania, born to Nikollë and Drana Bojaxhiu. Her father, who was involved in Albanian politics, died in 1919 when she was eight years old. After her father's death, her mother raised her as a Roman Catholic. Her father Nikollë Bojaxhiu (his name means 'painter') was of
Aromanian origin possibly stemming from
Prizren,
Kosovo while her mother's origin was possibly from a village near
Gjakova,
Kosovo.
According to a biography by Joan Graff Clucas, in her early years Agnes was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and their service in Bengal, and by age 12 was convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life. Her final resolution was taken on August 15, 1928, while praying at the shrine of the Black Madonna of Letnice, where she often went on pilgrimage.
She left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She never again saw her mother or sister.
Agnes initially went to the Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland to learn English, the language the Sisters of Loreto used to teach school children in India.
She arrived in India in 1929, and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, near the Himalayan mountains, where she learnt Bengali and taught at the St. Teresa’s School, a schoolhouse close to her convent. She took her first religious vows as a nun on 24 May 1931. At that time she chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries, but because one nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes opted for the Spanish spelling Teresa.
She took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta. Teresa served there for almost twenty years and in 1944 was appointed headmistress.
Although Teresa enjoyed teaching at the school, she was increasingly disturbed by the poverty surrounding her in Calcutta.
The Bengal famine of 1943 brought misery and death to the city; and the outbreak of Hindu/Muslim violence in August 1946 plunged the city into despair and horror.
Missionaries of Charity
On 10 September 1946, Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call" while traveling by train to the Loreto convent in
Darjeeling from
Calcutta for her annual retreat.
"I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."
She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, replacing her traditional Loreto habit with a simple white cotton sari decorated with a blue border. Mother Teresa adopted Indian citizenship, spent a few months in Patna to receive a basic medical training in the Holy Family Hospital and then ventured out into the slums. Initially she started a school in Motijhil (Calcutta); soon she started tending to the needs of the destitute and starving. In the beginning of 1949 she was joined in her effort by a group of young women and laid the foundations to create a new religious community helping the "poorest among the poor".
Her efforts quickly caught the attention of Indian officials, including the prime minister, who expressed his appreciation.
Teresa wrote in her diary that her first year was fraught with difficulties. She had no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies. Teresa experienced doubt, loneliness and the temptation to return to the comfort of convent life during these early months. She wrote in her diary:
Teresa received Vatican permission on 7 October 1950 to start the diocesan congregation that would become the Missionaries of Charity. Its mission was to care for, in her own words, "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."
It began as a small order with 13 members in Calcutta; today it has more than 4,000 nuns running orphanages, AIDS hospices and charity centers worldwide, and caring for refugees, the blind, disabled, aged, alcoholics, the poor and homeless, and victims of floods, epidemics, and famine.
In 1952 Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the city of Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. She renamed it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday). Those brought to the home received medical attention and were afforded the opportunity to die with dignity, according to the rituals of their faith; Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the Last Rites. "A beautiful death," she said, "is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted." The Missionaries of Charity also established several leprosy outreach clinics throughout Calcutta, providing medication, bandages and food.
As the Missionaries of Charity took in increasing numbers of lost children, Mother Teresa felt the need to create a home for them. In 1955 she opened the Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, the Children's Home of the Immaculate Heart, as a haven for orphans and homeless youth.
The order soon began to attract both recruits and charitable donations, and by the 1960s had opened hospices, orphanages and leper houses all over India. Mother Teresa then expanded the order throughout the globe. Its first house outside India opened in Venezuela in 1965 with five sisters. Others followed in Rome, Tanzania, and Austria in 1968; during the 1970s the order opened houses and foundations in dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States.
The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. In answer to the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests, and in 1984 founded with Fr. Joseph Langford the Missionaries of Charity Fathers to combine the vocational aims of the Missionaries of Charity with the resources of the ministerial priesthood. By 2007 the Missionaries of Charity numbered approximately 450 brothers and 5,000 nuns worldwide, operating 600 missions, schools and shelters in 120 countries.
Mother Teresa's philosophy and implementation have faced some criticism. Catholic newspaper editor David Scott wrote that Mother Teresa limited herself to keeping people alive rather than tackling poverty itself.
She has also been criticized for her view on suffering. She felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus. Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International , criticised the failure to give pain killers, writing that in her Homes for the Dying, one could “hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother Teresa's bizarre philosophy, it is ‘the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ’.”
The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in the Homes for the Dying has been criticised in the medical press. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal reported the reuse of hypodermic needles, poor living conditions, including the use of cold baths for all patients, and an approach to illness and suffering that precluded the use of many elements of modern medical care, such as systematic diagnosis. Dr. Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, described the medical care as "haphazard", as volunteers without medical knowledge had to take decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors. He observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment.
Colette Livermore, a former Missionary of Charity, describes her reasons for leaving the order in her book Hope Endures: Leaving Mother Teresa, Losing Faith, and Searching for Meaning. Livermore found what she called Mother Teresa's "theology of suffering" to be flawed, despite being a good and courageous person. Though Mother Teresa instructed her followers on the importance of spreading the Gospel through actions rather than theological lessons, Livermore could not reconcile this with some of the practices of the organization. Examples she gives include unnecessarily refusing to help the needy when they approached the nuns at the wrong time according to the prescribed schedule, discouraging nuns from seeking medical training to deal with the illnesses they encountered (with the justification that God empowers the weak and ignorant), and imposition of "unjust" punishments, such as being transferred away from friends. Livermore says that the Missionaries of Charity "infantilized" its nuns by prohibiting the reading of secular books and newspapers, and emphasizing obedience over independent thinking and problem-solving.
International charity
In 1982, at the height of the
Siege of Beirut, Mother Teresa rescued 37 children trapped in a front line hospital by brokering a temporary cease-fire between the Israeli army and Palestinian guerrillas. Accompanied by
Red Cross workers, she traveled through the war zone to the devastated hospital to evacuate the young patients.
When Eastern Europe experienced increased openness in the late 1980s, she expanded her efforts to Communist countries that had previously rejected the Missionaries of Charity, embarking on dozens of projects. She was undeterred by criticism about her firm stand against abortion and divorce stating, "No matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own work."
Mother Teresa traveled to assist and minister to the hungry in Ethiopia, radiation victims at Chernobyl, and earthquake victims in Armenia. In 1991, Mother Teresa returned for the first time to her homeland and opened a Missionaries of Charity Brothers home in Tirana, Albania.
By 1996, she was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries. Over the years, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centers around the world. The first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx, New York; by 1984 the order operated 19 establishments throughout the country.
The spending of the charity money received has been criticized by some. Christopher Hitchens and the German magazine Stern have said Mother Teresa did not focus donated money on alleviating poverty or improving the conditions of her hospices, but on opening new convents and increasing missionary work.
Additionally, the sources of some donations accepted have been criticized. Mother Teresa accepted donations from the autocratic and corrupt Duvalier family in Haiti and openly praised them. She also accepted 1.4 million dollars from Charles Keating, involved in the fraud and corruption scheme known as the Keating Five scandal and supported him before and after his arrest. The Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles, Paul Turley, wrote to Mother Teresa asking her to return the donated money to the people Keating had stolen from, one of whom was "a poor carpenter". The donated money was not accounted for, and Turley did not receive a reply.
Declining health and death
Mother Teresa suffered a
heart attack in Rome in 1983, while visiting
Pope John Paul II. After a second attack in 1989, she received an
artificial pacemaker. In 1991, after a battle with
pneumonia while in Mexico, she suffered further heart problems. She offered to resign her position as head of the Missionaries of Charity. But the nuns of the order, in a
secret ballot, voted for her to stay. Mother Teresa agreed to continue her work as head of the order.
In April 1996, Mother Teresa fell and broke her collar bone. In August she suffered from malaria and failure of the left heart ventricle. She had heart surgery but it was clear that her health was declining. She was treated at a California hospital, too, and this has led to some criticism. The Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry Sebastian D'Souza, said he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on Mother Teresa with her permission when she was first hospitalized with cardiac problems because he thought she may be under attack by the devil.
On 13 March 1997, she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity. She died on 5 September 1997.
At the time of her death, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters, and an associated brotherhood of 300 members, operating 610 missions in 123 countries. These included hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counseling programs, personal helpers, orphanages, and schools. The Missionaries of Charity were also aided by Co-Workers, who numbered over 1 million by the 1990s.
Mother Teresa lay in repose in St Thomas, Kolkata for one week prior to her funeral, in September 1997. She was granted a state funeral by the Indian Government in gratitude for her services to the poor of all religions in India.
Recognition and reception
In India
Mother Teresa had first been recognised by the Indian government more than a third of a century earlier when she was awarded the
Padma Shri in 1962 and the
Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1969.. She continued to receive major Indian rewards in successive decades including, in 1972, in 1980, India's highest civilian award, the
Bharat Ratna.
Indian views on Mother Teresa were not uniformly favourable. Her critic Aroup Chatterjee, who was born and raised in Calcutta but lived in London, reports that "she was not a significant entity in Calcutta in her lifetime". Chatterjee blames Mother Teresa for promoting a negative image of his home city.
More recently, the Indian daily The Telegraph mentioned that "Rome has been asked to investigate if she did anything to alleviate the condition of the poor or just took care of the sick and dying and needed them to further a sentimentally moral cause."
On 28 Aug 2010, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of her birth, the Government of India issued a special 5 Rupee coin, being the sum she first arrived in India with. President Pratibha Patil said of Mother Teresa, "Clad in a white sari with a blue border, she and the sisters of Missionaries of Charity became a symbol of hope to many - the aged, the destitute, the unemployed, the diseased, the terminally ill, and those abandoned by their families." By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa had become an international celebrity. Her fame can be in large part attributed to the 1969 documentary Something Beautiful for God, which was filmed by Malcolm Muggeridge and his 1971 book of the same title. Muggeridge was undergoing a spiritual journey of his own at the time. Others in the crew thought it was due to a new type of ultra-sensitive Kodak film. Muggeridge later converted to Catholicism.
Around this time, the Catholic world began to honor Mother Teresa publicly. In 1971, Paul VI awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize, commending her for her work with the poor, display of Christian charity and efforts for peace. She later received the Pacem in Terris Award (1976). Since her death, Mother Teresa has progressed rapidly along the steps towards sainthood, currently having reached the stage of having been beatified.
Mother Teresa was honoured by both governments and civilian organizations. She was appointed an honorary Companion of the Order of Australia in 1982, "for service to the community of Australia and humanity at large". The United Kingdom and the United States each repeatedly granted awards, culminating in the Order of Merit in 1983, and honorary citizenship of the United States received on 16 November 1996. Mother Teresa's Albanian homeland granted her the Golden Honour of the Nation in 1994. and the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975).
In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitutes a threat to peace." She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to laureates, and asked that the $192,000 funds be given to the poor in India, stating that earthly rewards were important only if they helped her help the world's needy. When Mother Teresa received the prize, she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered "Go home and love your family." Building on this theme in her Nobel Lecture, she said: "Around the world, not only in the poor countries, but I found the poverty of the West so much more difficult to remove. When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread, I have satisfied. I have removed that hunger. But a person that is shut out, that feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person that has been thrown out from society—that poverty is so hurtable [sic] and so much, and I find that very difficult." She also singled out abortion as 'the greatest destroyer of peace in the world'.
Towards the end of her life, Mother Teresa attracted some negative attention in the Western media. The journalist Christopher Hitchens has been one of her most active critics. He was commissioned to co-write and narrate the documentary Hell's Angel about her for the British Channel 4 after Aroup Chatterjee encouraged the making of such a program, although Chatterjee was unhappy with the "sensationalist approach" of the final product. Hitchens expanded his criticism in a 1995 book, The Missionary Position.
Chatterjee writes that while she was alive Mother Teresa and her official biographers refused to collaborate with his own investigations and that she failed to defend herself against critical coverage in the Western press. He gives as examples a report in The Guardian in Britain whose "stringent (and quite detailed) attack on conditions in her orphanages ... [include] charges of gross neglect and physical and emotional abuse", and another documentary Mother Teresa: Time for Change? broadcast in several European countries. During her lifetime, Mother Teresa was named 18 times in the yearly Gallup's most admired man and woman poll as one of the ten women around the world that Americans admired most, finishing first several times in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1999, a poll of Americans ranked her first in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.
Spiritual life
Analyzing her deeds and achievements,
John Paul II asked: "Where did Mother Teresa find the strength and perseverance to place herself completely at the service of others? She found it in prayer and in the silent contemplation of Jesus Christ, his Holy Face, his Sacred Heart." Privately, Mother Teresa experienced doubts and struggles over her religious beliefs which lasted nearly fifty years until the end of her life, during which "she felt no presence of God whatsoever", "neither in her heart or in the eucharist" as put by her
postulator Rev.
Brian Kolodiejchuk. Mother Teresa expressed grave doubts about God's existence and pain over her lack of faith: }}
, Kosovo.]]
With reference to the above words, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, her postulator (the official responsible for gathering the evidence for her sanctification) indicated there was a risk that some might misinterpret her meaning, but her faith that God was working through her remained undiminished, and that while she pined for the lost sentiment of closeness with God, she did not question his existence. Many other saints had similar experiences of spiritual dryness, or what Catholics believe to be spiritual tests ("passive purifications"), such as Mother Teresa's namesake, St. Therese of Lisieux, who called it a "night of nothingness."
However, despite this request, the correspondences have been compiled in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday). Some critics of Mother Teresa, such as Christopher Hitchens, view her writings as evidence that her public image was created primarily for publicity despite her personal beliefs and actions. Hitchens writes, "So, which is the more striking: that the faithful should bravely confront the fact that one of their heroines all but lost her own faith, or that the Church should have gone on deploying, as an icon of favorable publicity, a confused old lady who it knew had for all practical purposes ceased to believe?" However, others such as Brian Kolodiejchuk, Come Be My Light's editor, draw comparisons to the 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross, who coined the term the "dark night of the soul" to describe a particular stage in the growth of some spiritual masters. In fact, the book is edited by the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, her postulator. Mother Teresa specified that "It is only by mental prayer and spiritual reading that we can cultivate the gift of prayer."
Although there was no direct connection between Mother Teresa's order and the Franciscan orders, she was known as a great admirer of St. Francis of Assisi. Accordingly, her influence and life show influences of Franciscan spirituality. The Sisters of Charity recite the peace prayer of St. Francis every morning during thanksgiving after Communion and many of the vows and emphasis of her ministry are similar. Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, who told The New York Times he had treated Besra, said that the cyst was not cancer at all but a cyst caused by tuberculosis. He insisted, "It was not a miracle.... She took medicines for nine months to one year." According to Besra’s husband, “My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle.”
An opposing perspective of the claim is that Besra's medical records contain sonograms, prescriptions, and physicians' notes that could prove whether the cure was a miracle or not. Besra has claimed that Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity is holding them. The publication has received a "no comments" statement from Sister Betta. The officials at the Balurghat Hospital where Besra was seeking medical treatment have claimed that they are being pressured by the Catholic order to declare the cure a miracle.
Christopher Hitchens was the only witness called by the Vatican to give evidence against Mother Teresa's beatification and canonization process, because the Vatican had abolished the traditional "devil's advocate" role, which fulfilled a similar purpose. Hitchens has argued that "her intention was not to help people," and he alleged that she lied to donors about the use of their contributions. “It was by talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she wasn't working to alleviate poverty,” says Hitchens. “She was working to expand the number of Catholics. She said, ‘I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it for Christ. I do it for the church.’”
In the process of examining Teresa's suitability for beatification and canonization, the Roman Curia (the Vatican) pored over a great deal of documentation of published and unpublished criticism of her life and work. Vatican officials say Hitchens's allegations have been investigated by the agency charged with such matters, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and they found no obstacle to Mother Teresa's beatification. Because of the attacks she has received, some Catholic writers have called her a sign of contradiction. The beatification of Mother Teresa took place on 19 October 2003, thereby bestowing on her the title "Blessed."
A second miracle is required for her to proceed to canonization.
Legacy and depictions in popular culture
Commemoration
.]]
Mother Teresa inspired a variety of commemorations. She has been memorialized through museums, been named patroness of various churches, and had various structures and roads named after her, including
Albania's international airport. In 2009 the
Mother Teresa Memorial House was opened in her hometown
Skopje, in the
Republic of Macedonia.
Various tributes have been published in Indian newspapers and magazines authored by her biographer, Navin Chawla.
Indian Railways will introduce a new train, "Mother Express", named after Mother Teresa, on 26 August 2010 to mark her birth centenary.
Tamil Nadu State government organised centenary celebrations of Mother Teresa on 04 December 2010 in Chennai, headed by Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi.
Film and literature
Mother Teresa is the subject of the 1969
documentary film and 1972 book
Something Beautiful for God, a 1997 Art Film Festival award winning film starring
Geraldine Chaplin called
, a 2003 Italian miniseries titled
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, (which was re-released in 2007 and received a
CAMIE award,) and was portrayed by
Megan Fox in a satirical
film-within-a-film in the 2007 movie
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
See also
Christopher Hitchens' critiques of public figures#Mother Teresa
Commemorations of Mother Teresa
List of female Nobel laureates
Memorial House of Mother Teresa
Missionaries of Charity
Mother Teresa of Calcutta (film)
References
Further reading
Alpion, Gezim. Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?. London: Routledge Press, 2007. ISBN 0-415-39247-0
Benenate, Becky and Joseph Durepos (eds). Mother Teresa: No Greater Love (Fine Communications, 2000) ISBN 1-56731-401-5
Chatterjee, Aroup. Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict (Meteor Books, 2003). ISBN 81-88248-00-2, introduction and first three chapters of fourteen (without pictures). Critical examination of Agnes Bojaxhiu's life and work.
Chawla, Navin. Mother Teresa. Rockport, Mass: Element Books, 1996. ISBN 1-85230-911-3
Chawla, Navin. Mother Teresa: The Authorized Biography, Diane Pub Co. (March 1992), ISBN 978-0756755485.
Chawla, Navin. The miracle of faith, article in the Hindu dated 25 August 2007 " The miracle of faith''"
Chawla, Navin. Memories of Mother Teresa, article in the Hindu dated 26 August 2006 " Memories of Mother Teresa''"
Chawla, Navin. Touch the Poor... – article in India Today dated 15 September 1997 " Touch the Poor...''"
Chawla, Navin. The path to Sainthood, article in The Hindu dated Saturday, 4 October 2003 " The path to Sainthood ''"
Chawla, Navin. In the shadow of a saint, article in The Indian Express dated September, 05, 2007 " In the shadow of a saint ''"
Chawla, Navin. Mission Possible, article in India Today dated 21 April 2008 "Mission Possible''"
Chawla, Navin. Mother Teresa and the joy of giving, article in The Hindu dated 26 August 2008 Mother Teresa and the joy of giving''"
Clucas, Joan. Mother Teresa. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. ISBN 1-55546-855-1
Dwivedi, Brijal. Mother Teresa: Woman of the Century
Greene, Meg. Mother Teresa: A Biography, Greenwood Press, 2004. ISBN 0-313-32771-8
Hitchens, Christopher. The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. London: Verso, 1996. ISBN 1-85984-054-X
Le Joly, Edward. Mother Teresa of Calcutta. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983. ISBN 0-06-065217-9.
Muggeridge, Malcolm. Something Beautiful for God. ISBN 0-06-066043-0.
Muntaykkal, T.T.
Blessed Mother Teresa: Her Journey to Your Heart. ISBN 1-903650-61-5. ISBN 0-7648-1110-X. .
Scott, David. A Revolution of Love: The Meaning of Mother Teresa. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2005. ISBN 0829420312.
Sebba, Anne. Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image. New York: Doubleday, 1997. ISBN 0-385-48952-8.
Slavicek, Louise. Mother Teresa. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. ISBN 0791094332.
Spink, Kathryn. Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. ISBN 0062508253
Teresa, Mother et al., Mother Teresa: In My Own Words. Gramercy Books, 1997. ISBN 0-517-20169-0.
Teresa, Mother & Kolodiejchuk, Brian, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, New York: Doubleday, 2007. ISBN 0385520379.
Williams, Paul. Mother Teresa. Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002. ISBN 0-02-864278-3.
Wüllenweber, Walter. "Nehmen ist seliger denn geben. Mutter Teresa—wo sind ihre Millionen?" Stern (illustrated German weekly), 10 September 1998. English translation.
Navin Chawla. Mother Teresa: The Authorized Biography. Diane Pub Co. (March 1992). ISBN 978-0756755485. First published by Sinclair-Stevenson, U.K. (1992), since translated into 14 languages in India and abroad. Indian language editions include Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. The foreign language editions include French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Japanese, and Thai. In both Indian and foreign languages, there have been multiple editions. The bulk of royalty income goes to charity.
Eileen Egan and Kathleen Egan, OSB. Prayertimes with Mother Teresa: A New Adventure in Prayer, Doubleday, 1989. ISBN 978-0385-26231-6.
Brian Kolodiejchuk (ed.). Mother Teresa: Come be My Light, Doubleday, 2007, ISBN 978-0385-52037-9.
Raghu Rai and Navin Chawla. Faith and Compassion: The Life and Work of Mother Teresa. Element Books Ltd. (December 1996). ISBN 978-1852309121. Translated also into Dutch and Spanish.
External links
Mother Teresa of Calcutta Center, India – Official Site
Missionaries of Charity Brothers (Active Branch)
Mother Teresa and her patron saint, St. Therese of Lisieux
Mother Teresa Memorial Page
Nobel Laureate Biography (Nobel Foundation)
Complete Mother Teresa Quotations
Mother Teresa: Angel of Mercy (CNN)
The TIME 100: The Most Important People of the Century—Mother Teresa
Missionaries of Charity Fathers (MC Fathers / MC Priests) – Official Website: Biography of Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith (TIME.com)
Speech at National Prayer Breakfast, Washington, D.C. 3 February 1994
Crisis, 1 February 1998">Peggy Noonan, "Still, Small Voice," Crisis, 1 February 1998 (account of the National Prayer Breakfast speech)
Missionaries of Charity Active and Contemplative Sisters with U.S. contact information (CMSWR member page)
India to give Mother Teresa state funeral, CNN
"The Illusory vs The Real Mother Teresa", by Michael Hakeem, is a review of Christopher Hitchens' The Missionary Position. Published in Freethought Today, August 1996.
Christopher Hitchens' articles "Saint to the rich" in Salon.com, September 1997 and "Mommie Dearest" in Slate.com, 20 October 2003, both by Christopher Hitchens.
"
The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa" by Donal MacIntyre in the
New Statesman, 22 August 2005
"Mother Teresa: Where are her millions?", Stern 10 September 1998.
"Mother Teresa's House of Illusions" by Susan Shields
"Mother Teresa of Calcutta" Website of Sally Warner
"Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints" by Michael Parenti, CommonDreams.org, 22 October 2007
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