MOTHER By Mark Tully (FormAsia, $240) THIS is the story of Agnes Bojaxhiu, born in 1910 in Albania. Agnes who? Well, Agnes who is nowadays known as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Nobel Prize and all that; a woman who has made an enormous impact on the world at large, far beyond the decaying, sprawling, grossly over-populated city of Calcutta, where she established her own Catholic Order after serving her long, long time as a nun of the Loreto Order.
Her own order, still within the Roman Catholic Church was called the Missionaries of Charity. This, I think, is the weakest part of the book. There is a sort of description of how this nun beat the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Vatican, but I could have done with more details. Tangling with the Pope is no light matter. But Mother Teresa arranged it. A very determined Albanian lady.
This is really a picture book, with the text, apart from the introduction, on the margins of the page which makes for difficult reading. Is it a coffee table book? The format makes it look like that: mainly photographs with captions running down the side.
But here I have to declare an interest. Mark Tully, the author, has been a friend for many years and we have sat and conversed together on many evenings with many religious people. Not, let me hastily add, with Mother Teresa.
By coincidence Mr Tully was born in Calcutta where Mother Teresa began her mission and educated in Darjeeling where she was sent during her novitiate.
Mother Teresa has never deviated from her Roman Catholic stance against abortion, but - non-Catholics might say deviously - is totally in favour of family planning. In other words keep your eye on the calendar.