In this new biography, students will follow Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu from her humble Albanian birth to worldwide celebrity as Mother Teresa. The nun who attended to the dying and diseased in Calcutta, India, and established her Missionaries of Charity around the world is revealed to have a singular determination from a young age. As a woman in the patriarchal Catholic system, she had to prove to the hierarchy, even the Vatican, that she was capable of handling each project she proposed. Her vision to live and work among the “poorest of the poor” led to the founding of a new order that tended to society’s outcasts.

This biography suggests that Mother Teresa transcended her ordinariness with a belief that she was called to her life’s work. When her work brought Mother Teresa unsought fame, she used it to further her causes. In a global age, celebrity worship allowed her to work the system, and she became an icon of service and selflessness—yet her human flaws remained behind the saintliness.