Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?

According to Stephen Schwartz, Alpion is 'a pioneer in the academic study of the phenomenon of celebrity', and ‘the most authoritative English-language author on Blessed Teresa of Kolkata'.[2]

Alpion's first study on Mother Teresa ‘Media, ethnicity and patriotism: The Balkans ‘unholy war’ for the appropriation of Mother Teresa’,[3] was published in the Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans (now Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies), in 2004. This was followed by the article ‘Media and celebrity culture: subjectivist, structuralist and post-structuralist approaches to Mother Teresa’s celebrity status’,[4] which was published in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies in 2006. Alpion's most recent study on Mother Teresa 'The Emergence of Mother Teresa as a Religious Visionary and the Initial Resistance to Her Charism/a: A Sociological and Public Theology Perspective’,[5] was published in the International Journal of Public Theology in 2014. Alpion's new monograph on Mother Teresa's early years in Skopje will be published in 2016.

In June 2014, Alpion began a campaign in support of the canonization of Mother Teresa. 'One of the reasons why Mother Teresa’s cause for canonization has stalled', Alpion told Matters India in September 2014, 'is due to the revelations about her deep distress in experiencing the ‘dark night of the soul’; this often forced her to doubt both God’s existence and the nature of her decision to serve the poorest of the poor.' [6] The camping, which has crossed 1,700 signatures and is supported by church authorities, celebrities, film stars, priests, nuns and laity from 45 countries, has attracted the attention of the media in several countries. [7]

In Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?, Gëzim Alpion explores the significance of Mother Teresa to the mass media, to celebrity culture, to the Church and to various political and national groups. Drawing on new research on Mother Teresa's early years, Alpion charts the rise to fame of this pioneering religious personality, investigating the celebrity discourse in which an exemplary nun was turned into a media and humanitarian icon. The book provides an in-depth cultural and critical analysis of Mother Teresa, and the way she and others created, promoted and censored her public image, in the context of the sociology of fame, media, religion and nationality.

One section explores the ways different vested interests have sought to appropriate the nun after her death, and also examines Mother Teresa's own attitude to her childhood and to the Balkan conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s.[8] Referring to Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?, Stephen Schwartz holds that 'in its depth, breadth, and seriousness', this monograph 'may stand for some time to come as the single most important biography of Mother Teresa in English’.[9] In his review of the book which appeared in the American Communication Journal, Marvin Williams contends that ‘Alpion’s examination of Mother Teresa’s celebrity is a case study of corporate identity management in today’s global media environment. His weaving of primary texts into the setting of this character piece creates a comprehensive cross-cultural examination that has the potential to become a new archetypal work of this mercurial personality.’ [10] In Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? and other academic publications on the Albanian-born nun, Alpion is critical of Christopher Hitchens' vitriol on her. Writing in the Hindustan Times in 2014, Alpion criticizes Hitchens and other detractors of Mother Teresa, such as Germaine Greer and Richard Dawkins for, what he calls, their 'superficial understanding' [11] of the sister.

• Alpion, Gëzim. 'Oh! not Calcutta' The Guardian, 6 September 2003.
• Arnot, Chris. 'Sinners and winners'. The Guardian, 1 November 2005.
• Lipsett, Anthea. 'Gëzim Alpion: Speaking for the refugee in us all'. Times Higher Education, 3 February 2006.
• Spink, Kathryn. 'Baffled by enigma of sancity'. The Tablet, 6 January 2007.
• Derbyshire, Stuart. 'Mother Teresa and the ‘me, me, me’ culture'. Spiked Magazine, 14 February 2007.
• Neuhaus, Richard John. 'T. S. Eliot, Mother Teresa, and the Children of Darkness'. First Things: The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life, New York, 23 February 2007.
• Liaugminas, Sheila. 'Trashing the icon of altruism'. MercatorNet, 27 February 2007.
• Byrne, Lavinia. 'Famous by her own design'. Church Times, London, 3 April 2007.
• Schwartz, Stephen 'Review of Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity?'. Illyria, New York, 19 September 2007.
• Alpion, Gëzim. 'Understanding Mother Teresa’s Vocation and Migration'. Migrant Woman magazine, London, 27 September 2014.