The genius of Mother Teresa

Word is that Pope John Paul seriously considered skipping the stage of beatification for Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and declare her a saint on October 19. Only opposition to the plan from influential aides in the Roman curia persuaded the Holy Father to abandon that idea.

This advice was sound. Bending the rules for Mother Teresa again would have set a dangerous precedent, and might have blurred the distinction between beatification and canonisation.

However, the pope’s sentiments were equally logical. There is no doubt that Mother Teresa was a saint; her eventual canonisation is inevitable, and likely to happen sooner than later. Had the pope followed through on his idea, it would have been received with great enthusiasm by the faithful.

Indeed, for more than half of the Church’s existence, saints were created not through elaborate bureaucratic processes, but by public acclamation. If the faithful exposed to a person’s ministry thought he or she was a saint, then he or she was thus regarded. Even after the Church began instituting canonisation processes, for a while the time lapse between death and sainthood was brief, sometimes months, sometimes a couple of years; rarely longer.

Skipping Mother Teresa’s beatification to confirm what we already know that she was indeed a saint would have been in line with ancient tradition.

As it is, we will have to wait a little longer for St Teresa of Calcutta, and it is for the better that this should be so.

In the meantime, we would be well advised to study Mother Teresa’s life and ministry closely. While her multitude of good works and steadfast fidelity to the faith are well documented and synonymous with her name, the story of her ministry has the potential to inspire us in unexpected ways.

From an evangelising perspective, Mother Teresa’s marketing acumen merits recognition and study. Mother Teresa was a woman of superb courage and tenacity, but so are many other, less celebrated religious. In the nuts and bolts of her ministry, Mother Teresa was remarkable, but not unique. Likewise, her adages were not exceptionally penetrating, yet they continue to resonate. Physically, Mother Teresa was a most unlikely media figure. Her Albanian background, lack of glamour and prematurely aged looks should have made Mother Teresa a most unlikely media figure.

Yet, somehow the little nun became one of the most famous, most admired and, indeed, most loved personalities of the 20th century, one of the few public “living saints”.

Mother Teresa certainly had an intuitive gift for marketing (one needs not be put off by the vulgar connotation of the term: in his efforts to spread the Christian faith, St Paul himself was possibly the greatest marketing brain of all time). The distinctive headgear of her Missionaries of Charity, for example, made Mother Teresa and her nuns instantly recognisable, an element of what marketers call “branding”.

She was able to present her ministry in a way that caught the attention of the media and inspired the public.

We are grateful that God called her to serve the poor, instead of peddling washing powder or luxury cars.

Mother Teresa was as much an apostle of charity as she was an apostle of social communication.

One can only guess how many people turned to Christ through the witness of Mother Teresa, as the once curmudgeonly British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge so famously did after producing a documentary about the nun.

Our evangelisation efforts (inside the Church, and outside) rely on communication with the public. Mother Teresa’s life holds valuable lessons in how to accomplish this.