Mother Teresa's private letters reveal that her inner life was in turmoil and that she struggled for a long time with religious doubts.

Time magazine (23 August, 2007) reported that Mother Teresa's "letters, many of them preserved against her wishes, reveal that for the last 50 years of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever. Although perpetually cheery in public, the Teresa of the letters lived in a state of deep and abiding spiritual pain.

"In more than 40 communications, she bemoans the torture she is undergoing. She compares the experience to hell, and at one point says it has driven her to doubt the existence of heaven and even of God."

In her anguish, Mother Teresa drifted from one spiritual director to another. Perhaps she sensed that they had no more idea of God than she did! Time quotes several Catholic priests and theologians who have nothing to offer but platitudes and stock phrases to excuse Mother Teresa's religious doubts.

Seeking to preserve her public image, Mother Teresa ordered her private letters to be destroyed.

In one of them, she remarks to an adviser: "I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God - tender, personal love. If you were there, you would have said, 'What hypocrisy!'"

Time said that Mother Teresa was "actually aware of the discrepancy between her inner state and her public demeanour... Her smile, she wrote, was 'a mask'."

John Guillaumier

St Julian's