This deep dive explores the life of Mother Teresa beyond both the flawless saint and the calculating villain. Born in Skopje in 1910, she lost her father at eight, left home at 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto, and never saw her mother or sister again after Albania’s communist regime barred her entry.

We follow her nearly 20 years teaching in Calcutta amid the Bengal famine and Direct Action Day, her call within the call in 1946, the founding of the Missionaries of Charity, and the Kalighat home for the dying. We also examine how she used her fame to secure a ceasefire in Beirut, the medical and philosophical critiques from Aroup Chatterjee and Christopher Hitchens, and her private letters revealing nearly 50 years of spiritual darkness.

• How early loss and exile shaped a life of sacrifice
• The fourth vow and a model of shared poverty rather than a modern NGO
• Rescuing 37 children in Beirut and entering communist countries after disasters
• Critiques over palliative care, money and her stance on contraception and abortion
• The long darkness and why theologians saw it as heroic virtue