Mother Teresa; to the world the epitome of humility and saintliness. She was honored by popes, presidents and with a Nobel peace prize. But a recently published book of her personal letters reveals a troubled soul. As early as 1953 she wrote, "... there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead."

She continually referred to her "darkness" and to Jesus as "the Absent One" when discussing her spiritual condition with her confessors. She wrote in 1979, "The silence and the emptiness is so great — that I look and do not see, — listen and do not hear." This a common thread in her private communications until her death in 1997.

Since the publication of this book of her private struggle, the world has wondered how such a "saint" could feel such spiritual darkness. Some have praised her for her "humanitarian" work as if that should have given her light for her soul.

She claimed that one Roman Catholic counselor brought her some relief with the idea that she was simply sharing in the suffering of Jesus on the cross when He felt abandoned and cried, "My God, My God. Why hast thou forsaken me." The Vatican teaches that our suffering can add to the "treasury of merit" established by Jesus and contributed to by those who suffer in the world. This teaching is based on a misinterpretation of Colossians 1:24.

David C. Cloud of Way of Life Ministries followed the career of Mother Teresa for many years. He has said all along that she "...was a faithful daughter of Rome, that her Jesus was the wafer of the Catholic Mass, that her protector was Mary, and that her gospel was universalism."

Several times in her speeches she would state the importance of having a priest to turn the wafer into the body, blood and divinity of Jesus.

At one point, when asked if she attempted to "convert" the homeless that she ministered too, said, "Of course I convert. I convert you to be a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you`ve found God, it`s up to you to decide how to worship him." She obviously had bought into the idea that all religions ultimately lead to God.

Mother Teresa is a sad example of how religions based on ritual leave the people with a darkness of soul. She was intimately acquainted with the major religions of the east: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and probably even some of Islam. Yet she did not find in them any light for her "darkness." Their rituals were as spiritually hollow as those of her Roman Catholicism.

Yet her fame contributed to the bondage that kept her from seeing the true Light of the world, the Jesus of the Bible, not her wafer "Jesus." Many years ago a sincere and faithful servant of the pope struggled for half a lifetime with the contradictions between his "church" and his Bible. Finally he determined to reject the traditions of Rome and stand on the Bible alone.

That man was Charles Chiniquy. The book he wrote entitled 50 Years in the "Church" of Rome, describes his struggles in detail. Although written in the middle of the 19th century, it is still a useful description of the bondage holding the billion people who are members of the "church that never changes."

This book is available from Chick Publications along with several others designed to help the soul winner see that lost Roman Catholics need to be introduced to the real Jesus. We must not be deceived by those who say that there are born-again Catholics. If they have not come out from under the pope, they still, like Mother Teresa, worship a wafer "Jesus" and trust in the Virgin Mary goddess to get them into heaven.