Mother Teresa: a biography

AN ACTUAL MIRACLE?
What, on the surface, appeared to have been a run-of-the-mill inter-
view had a very profound effect on Malcolm Muggeridge. Later, he ad-
mitted that when he first saw Mother Teresa walk into the room, she
appeared unique and significant. He was also very excited about the pos-
sibility of working with her again and asked the BBC to send him to Cal-
cutta where he could film Mother Teresa in action.
In the spring of 1969, Muggeridge, accompanied by a cameraman and
producer, left for Calcutta. Although initially reluctant to agree to the re-
quest, Mother Teresa eventually relented and gave the film crew her full
cooperation. For the next five days, Muggeridge and his team followed
Mother Teresa as she went about her daily routine. But it was the filming
at Nirmal Hriday in which Muggeridge later claimed to have witnessed a
photographic miracle.
Initially, both Muggeridge and Kenneth Macmillan, the cameraman,
were reluctant to shoot inside the home because of the dimly lit interior.
As it was, Macmillan had only a small light with him, and to get adequate
light seemed an impossible task. However, he had recently purchased
some new Kodak film, which he had not tried yet. He decided to go ahead
and shoot footage inside Nirmal Hriday using the new film. When Mug-
geridge and his team returned to London, they began work on the docu-
mentary. Several weeks later, as they were reviewing rushes, or the
unedited film footage, they watched for the first time the sequence shot at
Nirmal Hriday. Macmillan recounted what happened next:
It was surprising. You could see every detail. And I said: “That’s
amazing, that’s extraordinary.” And I was going to say . . . three
cheers for Kodak. I didn’t get a chance to say that though be-
cause Malcolm, sitting in the front row, spun round and said:
“It’s divine light! It’s Mother Teresa. You’ll find that it’s divine
light old boy.”
1
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Macmillan also found himself besieged over the next several days by
newspaper reporters asking him about the miracle he had witnessed.
The completed documentary 
Something Beautiful for God
was shown for
the first time in December 1969. It was a resounding success. Later, Mug-
geridge, Macmillan, and Peter Chafer, the producer, credited Mother
Teresa for the film’s reception, citing her as an extremely charismatic pres-
ence. However, both Chafer and Macmillan were reluctant to attribute
the extraordinary lighting sequence at Nirmal Hriday to Divine Provi-
dence, even though when Macmillan used the film again in a low-light
situation he got poor results.
The documentary not only boosted Mother Teresa’s image worldwide,
it also had an impact on the Missionaries of Charity. As a result of the
film, there was a visible increase in the numbers of young women wishing
to join the order. In 1970, a year after the documentary aired, 139 new
candidates were received by the Missionaries of Charity. The new arrivals
came from all over: Pakistan, Ceylon, Nepal, Malaysia, Yugoslavia, Ger-
many, Malta, France, Mauritania, Ireland, Venezuela, Italy, and India.
The total of the entire congregation stood at 585, of which 332 were fully
professed nuns, 175 novices, and 78 postulants, a remarkable achieve-
ment for an order barely two decades old.
NOTE
1. Anne Sebba, 
Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image
(New York: Doubleday,
1997), p. 83.
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Chapter 9
BLESSINGS AND BLAME
Thanks to the amazing success of the documentary 
Something Beautiful for
God,
Mother Teresa no longer just belonged to Calcutta or to India. She
belonged to the world. Malcolm Muggeridge, the journalist who now
emerged as one of Mother Teresa’s most vocal and supportive champions,
went on to write a book published under the same title in 1971. Using the
transcript from the film as the basis of the text and incorporating many
black and white photographs, the book illustrated Mother Teresa’s work
and life. Muggeridge also included nine pages of Mother Teresa’s sayings,
stating that, since Mother Teresa would never write about herself or her
work, there should be a record of her own words.
The book enjoyed phenomenal success. It has rarely gone out of print,
and over 30 years, has sold more than 300,000 copies. It has been
reprinted 20 times and has been translated into 13 languages. Upon his
death in 1990, Muggeridge donated the royalties from the book to Mother
Teresa, the sum of which is about £60,000.
Between the film, the book, and Mother Teresa’s own globe-trotting,
both she and her order were very much in the public eye. Although that
visibility was beneficial, particularly as Mother Teresa was trying to raise
funds and awareness of the world’s poor, it also left her vulnerable to grow-
ing dissent, criticism, and accusations. Despite Muggeridge’s predictions
that Mother Teresa would one day be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, her
application for the coveted award was rejected three times.