Birmingham: In an academic presentation, acclaimed Mother Teresa author attempted to show that Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu’s Skopje years paved the way for her saintliness.

Prof. Gezim Alpion, who has spent over two decades decoding the phenomenon of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, elaborated the claim in his latest book ‘Mother Teresa: The Saint and Her Nation‘ (Bloomsbury Academic 2020).

Alpion’s earlier books included ‘Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity (2007); Encounters with Civilizations: From Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa (2017).

The talk via Zoom was entitled: “From Skopje to Calcutta: Mother Teresa’s path to sainthood.”

In this talk delivered at the conclusion of Anglo Albanian Association’s General Body Meeting, 29 September 2020, Gëzim Alpion approached the life and legacy of Mother Teresa from three perspectives: national, ancestral and personal.

In the first part of the talk, Alpion explored Albanians’ belief system prior to the advent of monotheistic faiths, before focusing on their apostolic Christian tradition. Alpion’s main contention in this respect was that the foundations of European civilization are triadic, i.e. Illyrian, Greek and Roman.

The second part of the talk identified some of the reasons behind Albanians’ ‘internal migration’, traceable since the Roman invasion of Illyria.

Alpion argues that the migration of Mother Teresa’s ancestors across Albanian inhabited lands is a modern example of this perpetual phenomenon more recently witnessed in 1999 with the expulsion of around one million Albanians from Kosovo.

In the final part of the talk, Alpion explored the impact of bereavement – the death of her father from poisoning and loss of eight relatives from the Spanish Flu (1918-1920) – on Mother Teresa’s calling, choice of India as a destination, and mission.

Alpion concluded that, throughout the seven decades of her missionary life, Mother Teresa’s faith – both in terms of her ‘dark night of the soul’ and rapport with people of various faiths in India and beyond – manifests facets of her nation’s spirituality.

Dr Gëzim Alpion is Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham,