Kolkata: Professor Gëzim Alpion, a leading Sociology of religion British academic based at the University of Birmingham in England, gives a last minute opinion on the canonization of Mother Teresa, which will take place at the Vatican on September 4.
Prof Alpion, who is considered by critics ‘the most authoritative English-language author,’ will shortly travel to Rome to attend the canonization of the Albanian-born missionary.
“I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to attend the canonization,” says Alpion adding that he is grateful for the tickets to the events he received from George A. Frendo O.P., the Auxiliary Bishop of Tiranë-Durrës in Albania, who was one of the first supporters of the online campaign Alpion began for the canonization of Mother Teresa in June 2014.
Alpion will use the visit also to conduct a number of interviews with people who knew and worked with Mother Teresa.
Alpion started researching Mother Teresa in earnest in 2003.
With his ground-breaking research, taking a keen interest especially in the significance of nun’s formative years, the lifelong impact that the death of her father when she was a child had on her, the new vision she had for missionary work in post-independence India, her effective use of the media to promote her concept of ‘faith in action’, and the nature and length of her dark night of the soul, Professor Alpion is second to none for the inestimable contribution he is giving to turn Mother Teresa into a serious academic topic.
His most well-known study to-date is the acclaimed 2007 book ‘Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?’, initially published by Routledge in London, New Yok and New Delhi, followed by an Italian edition by Salerno Editrice in Rome a year later.
Alpion is quoted regularly by the world media on his areas of expertise but especially on Mother Teresa. He has been especially in great demand since the Vatican announced last December the nun’s forthcoming canonization.
Some of Alpion’s engagements since then include interviews with a number of US, Australian, Indian, Brazilian, and various Balkan newspapers and radio and television stations.
In the last few days he has been approached for comments, articles and interviews among others by ‘The Hindustan Times’ (New Delhi), ‘The Conversation’ (London), ‘Mercator Net’ (Sydney), ‘Donna Moderna’ (Milan) and The Voice of America’ (Washington DC). He will give a number of newspaper, television and radio interviews also during his stay in Rome.
Matters India asked Alpion to share what in his view, makes Mother Teresa different from other saints.
Without hesitation he replies: ‘Her dissidence.’
In Alpion’s opinion, Mother Teresa was first and foremost a dissident nun.
“We have not understood much about what Mother Teresa stood for unless we understand the reasons why she parted company with the Loreto Order which she joined in Dublin at the end of 1928; she was an active member of this order in India from the start of 1929 until she finally parted company with it in Calcutta on 16 August 1948,” insists Alpion.
To Alpion, we need to take seriously what Mother Teresa said about ‘the pain her departure from Loreto caused her.’
And yet, he says, by September 1946 she was adamant that she had to dissociate herself from the order so that she can set up her own congregation the Missionaries of Charity, something she managed to establish formally on September 10, 1950.
Again to Alpion, Mother Teresa’s departure from Loreto was “caused partly as a result of some stuck-up Irish nuns who failed to see the significance of her new vision on the new type of missionary work, in her view, was needed in India at that time.”
Alpion reiterated in his interview with ‘Matters India’ what he has stressed in a number of his earlier publications on Mother Teresa stating ‘Mother Teresa was unhappy being discriminated against constantly by some Loreto superiors on the grounds of her Albanian ethnicity.’
All the same, Alpion, adds, ‘we should not pay too much attention to this grievance per se.’
Mother Teresa was anything but petty. After all, although Mother Teresa was proud of her Albanian origin and mentioned it when she was asked directly by the media, she did not choose to become a nun in the first place to benefit her own country and nation. Like some early Roman Christian authors, she believed that Christianity is a unifying ‘race’ that surpasses all other ethnic and racial categories.’
“What Mother Teresa resented most about the discriminatory treatment she received at the hands of some poorly informed Irish superiors,” explains Alpion, “is that they had no idea that, far from being an ‘outsider,’ she hailed from one of the first nations in Europe to establish contact with and accept Christianity.”
Historically, Mother Teresa the Albanian nun was “a much earlier Christian than some of her Loreto superiors, including a number of her spiritual directors who were ill-prepared to understand properly the real fountain of her commitment to her vacation, what she wanted to do with it and equally important the real nature of her spiritual aridity.”
“Luckily for Mother Teresa and what she stood for,” Alpion concludes, “the Vatican did not take too long to realize the significance of her vision and the lasting service she would render to this institution and Christianity at large.”
This explains also why she struck an enduring friendship with another twentieth century Vatican ‘outsider’ and ‘dissident,’ the Polish born Saint Pope John Paul II.
Mother Teresa and Pope Joh Paul II were a formidable duo in their joint efforts to spread Christianity in the last quarter of the twentieth century. They shared, enriched and promoted each other’s mission ad gentes, which is central to their theological philosophy and application of Christian faith.’
“Mother Teresa remains one of the most important assets of the Vatican in modern history,” concludes Dr Alpion stating, “This explains why Pope Francis put her canonization at the top of the agenda of the activities of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy.”