cover image Mother Teresa of Calcutta—A Personal Portrait: 50 Inspiring Stories Never Told Before

Mother Teresa of Calcutta—A Personal Portrait: 50 Inspiring Stories Never Told Before

Leo Maasburg, trans. from the German by Michael J. Miller. Ignatius, $22.95 (265p) ISBN 978-1-58617-555-9

With her “ammunition”—Miraculous Medals of the Blessed Virgin Mary she handed out—and determination to change the world one person at a time, Mother Teresa became an icon for charitable work in the latter part of the 20th century. Maasburg, an Austrian priest, came along for the ride as Mother Teresa’s confessor and translator. His 50 stories ramble across several continents and through the decades, when this woman truly seemed to perform one miracle after another to get what she wanted and to build the Sisters of Charity into a worldwide organization. The stories of her ministry in the Soviet Union during the 1988 earthquakes in Armenia will be new to readers of the history of this amazing nun. ”Mother Teresa was a missionary through and through who saw God’s omnipotence and love of Jesus at work in everything and everyone,” Maasburg writes. She stood down the popes of the church and even the Sandinista rebel leaders in Nicaragua as she built a religious family that consisted of five congregations and 592 houses. This is a book for readers who want an intimate portrait of a saint in the Catholic Church. (Nov.)