THE LETTERS EXPLAINS WHY MOTHER TERESA WAS CANONIZED
In 1910, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhi (played by Juliet Stevenson) was born in Skopje, then a part of the Ottoman Empire but now the capital of Macedonia. She relocated to Ireland at the age of 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto, seeking to become a missionary in a non-Catholic country. She was assigned to India in 1929 and taught at Santa Teresa Convent in Darjeeling. In 1931, she was relocated to Calcutta, where most of The Letters takes place. When she took her vows as a nun in 1937, she chose the name Teresa. Following India’s independence, she sees the consequence of violence between Hindus and Muslims outside her window in the convent—homelessness, poverty, and sickness. Venturing out of the convent to feed a poor family displeases the head nun (Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal), but Teresa soon insists that her mission was to help the poor, as she believes that God had spoken to and instructed her. She moves out of the convent to live in a shack along with the poor, continuing to teach English to local girls, and soon attracts many volunteers to run a hospice, comforting the terminally ill, and later occupies part of a house of a generous homeowner, Gomes (Deepak Dadhwal). Soon, the mayor of the city allows her to move into an abandoned Hindu monastery, but he also has to quiet objections from Hindus that she is of a different faith. When her assignment from the Vatican appears in jeopardy, she applies and is permitted in 1950 to form a new Catholic order—the Missionaries of Charity, which now is present in 133 countries. Despite her refusal to be interviewed, claiming that she is only an instrument of God, she later becomes famous, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 just before her death. The main plot, however, consists of the deliberation within the church on whether she should be considered a saint. Much of the crucial evidence comes from letters that she wrote to her spiritual adviser. In the film, Father Celeste van Exem (Max von Sydow), who observes her performing a miracle in 1998, summarizes their content. Directed by William Riead, The Letters reveals some of the politics of the Catholic Church and mostly whitewashes the memory of Mother Teresa, perhaps to answer her detractors. MH