How many people can say they were friends with an actual saint? Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle is one of them. She carried on a ten-year friendship with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, maybe the holiest woman of the last hundred years.
O’Boyle and Teresa first met after Mass in a U.S. Missionaries of Charity chapel. The two women hit it off immediately. Over the following years they exchanged several letters and met in person many more times. In her book, Mother Teresa and Me: Ten Years of Friendship (Our Sunday Visitor, paperback, 191 pages), O’Boyle shares their interactions and the lessons she’s learned. The book reveals a grounded, relatable, human Mother Teresa, a view that some hagiographies neglect.
I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to write a book like this without bragging or name-dropping. I know if I had the same experiences I’d be screaming in the streets, “MOTHER TERESA SENT ME A LETTER!”. The temptations were probably worse for O’Boyle, who was also close to the renowned theologian Fr. James Hardon and had brush-ins with Pope John Paul II. But O’Boyle tells her stories with humility and charm. She does more sharing than bragging and puts the spotlight more on Mother Teresa than herself.
If you want to discover new insights about Mother Teresa or are simply curious how a suburban mother-of-five became friends with a modern saint, check out Mother Teresa and Me.