INTRODUCTION
Modern popular culture promotes celebrity: people who are well known
for being well known. Stirring up controversy or scandal and then talking
or writing about it enhances celebrity status. Yet, the cult of celebrity does
not and cannot adequately explain the hold that a tiny nun from Albania
had, and retains, on the conscience of the world.
For a woman who neither sought nor expected recognition, Mother
Teresa has exercised an enormous influence around the world. Her mis-
sionary work on behalf of the poorest of the poor in India was larger than
life, giving rise to questions about how her own experiences prepared her
to carry it out and to accomplish all that she did. By all accounts, Mother
Teresa was intelligent but passive and self-effacing. She had been an ade-
quate but undistinguished teacher, a commonplace woman, and an ordi-
nary nun, prone to knocking over candles during religious services. Yet,
Mother Teresa had one attribute that set her apart in a world often for-
getful of God: a deep, abiding faith.
Yet, even Mother Teresa, it seems, could not escape the cult of
celebrity, though she tried always to use it to the advantage of the poor
whom she served. Until the last decade of her life, Mother Teresa enjoyed
universal acclaim as a living saint. Although she appeared indifferent to
the attention, she was aware of it and, for example, allowed the media to
publish poignant photographs of her working among the poor and the
dying to illustrate their plight. Her interview with British journalist Mal-
colm Muggeridge in 1968 exposed her world to the rest of the world. The
public reaction to her work was more than she ever imagined. Donations
poured in. But for all the publicity the interview with Muggeridge gar-