Ines Angeli MURZAKU. Mother Teresa: Saint of the Peripheries. New York/Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 2021. Pp. xi+330. $29.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8091-5377-0; $20.07 e-book ISBN 978-1-58768-750-1. Reviewed by John T. FORD, Logansport, IN 46947.

  This book is both fascinating and frustrating. The fascination is basically due to the incredible life of Mother Teresa. Who could have anticipated that Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, born on 26 August 1910 in Skopje—which was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now the capital of North Macedonia—would establish an international missionary community (1950), receive the Nobel Peace Prize (1979), and be canonized a saint (2016)?

After a short prologue on “The Theology of Periphery,” the four chapters of this book’s first part, “Personal Peripheries,” treat Mother Teresa’s childhood, missionary vocation, assignment to the missions in India and her many years of “spiritual darkness.” The three chapters of the second part, “Mystical Peripheries,” compare the spirituality of Mother Teresa with that of three saints: Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, and Pope John Paul II. The single chapter in the third part, “Contemporary Peripheries” parallels the spiritual outlook of Mother Teresa and Pope Francis.

First of all, there is no doubt that Mother Teresa can appropriately be characterized as “Saint of the Peripheries”: the land of her birth was overwhelmingly Moslem; the land where she ministered was overwhelmingly Hindu and the people to whom she devoted her ministry were “the poorest of the poor”: Mother Teresa repeatedly experienced many peripheries. Unfortunately, however, expressions such as “the peripherals of the periphery” and “the periphery of the peripherals” are annoyingly over-used; for example, in a single paragraph of half-a-dozen lines, “periphery” appears seven times (p. 19).

Equally frustrating are a number of problematic assertions; for example, Jesus “was born in Bethlehem, around five miles from Nazareth and 120 miles away from Jerusalem” (p. 5); in fact, Bethlehem is 5 miles from Jerusalem and the direct distance from Nazareth to Jerusalem is about 90 miles. Similarly surprising is the statement that “Galilee was where he [Jesus] was born” (p. 8); Bethlehem is not in Galilee. Another puzzling statement is that Saint Francis of Assisi “never changed the name his biological father had given him” (p. 141): it would have been helpful to have explained that Francis, whose mother was from Provence, was named Giovanni, but called “Francesco” by his father. An additional problematic example: while leprosy is certainly not as “contagious” (p. 152) as the corona virus, leprosy is communicable and the Missionaries of Charity are at some risk, perhaps minimal, in their ministry to lepers. A final example: the assertion that Cardinal Wojtyla’s attendance at the Melbourne Eucharistic Congress in 1973 was his “first exposure to the free world” (p. 221) ignores the fact that he studied in Rome (1946-1948), participated in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and visited Canada and the United States in 1968.

A further annoyance is the author’s preference for commentary about—rather than direct citation of—Mother Teresa. For example, the fourth chapter which discusses her “spiritual darkness” has considerable material on the “dark night of the soul” as discussed in works on mystical theology and as exemplified by saints like Paul of the Cross; yet there is surprisingly minimal quotation of Mother Teresa about her own experience. Similarly, the three chapters on the “mystical peripheries” of Mother Teresa and Saints Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio and John Paul II, and the chapter on the “contemporary peripheries” of Mother Teresa and Pope Francis provide considerable information and highlight striking similarities; yet these parallels are sometimes exaggerated, for example, postulating that Pope Francis and Mother Teresa have an “identical theology” (p. 277).          

Nonetheless, in spite of frustrating annoyances and factual inaccuracies, this book provides readers with some fascinating insights into the life of Mother Teresa, particularly her Albanian background and her missionary spirituality. The absence of an index makes it difficult to cross-reference; also it would have been helpful if there were maps of the Balkans, India and Bangladesh—places unfamiliar to many American readers. The impressive multi-lingual bibliography in the end-notes (pp. 291-330) indicates the author’s familiarity not only with the life of Mother Teresa and other saints but also a broad acquaintance with the field of spiritual theology. In sum, while there is considerable value in this book, there are also annoying frustrations: biographers sometimes get carried away by their enthusiasm for their subject and fail to be attentive to historical details.