Ermonela Jaho on Mother Teresa
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Since her death in 1997, it's been fashionable in some quarters to decry the work of Mother Teresa among India's poor.
Fellow Albanian - opera singer, Ermonela Jaho, offers an alternative view of the nun who dedicated her life to running homes in Calcutta and later around the world, providing food, shelter and care for the poor and dispossessed.
Despite her hard-line views on abortion and despite criticism over her dealings with some of the most brutal regimes, Mother Teresa was purely a force for good, argues Ermonela Jaho.
Presented by Matthew Parris - with biographer, Anne Sebba.
Producer: Maggie Ayre
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2017.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service. |
| 0:04.7 | Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests. |
| 0:08.8 | Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook. |
| 0:11.2 | Technology doesn't want to be good or bad. |
| 0:15.0 | It's in the hands of the creator. |
| 0:16.7 | It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room. |
| 0:20.7 | If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, you're doing the wrong thing. |
| 0:26.0 | Julie, at your service. |
| 0:28.0 | Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. |
| 0:31.4 | There aren't many people we've discussed on great lives who have achieved |
| 0:35.2 | sainthood, but the woman chosen by my guest today, the opera star Ermonella |
| 0:40.2 | Dijajo, was canonized in September 2016. |
| 0:45.2 | Anyes Gogneu Boiachi was born in Skopje, |
| 0:48.3 | Macedonia in 1910. |
| 0:50.9 | From the age of 12, she knew she would follow a religious path. |
| 0:54.4 | And at 18, she went to Ireland to join an Irish community of nuns in Dublin before going |
| 0:59.8 | to India, where she eventually set up the famous missionaries of charity in Calcutta, caring for the |
| 1:06.5 | sick and the dying who could not afford medical care. She became known, as you may have guessed, as Mother Theresa. |
| 1:14.0 | Eremonella, you and Mother Theresa are both women of Albanian descent. |
| 1:19.0 | Is there a shared Albanian heritage that speaks to you that appeals to you about her. |
| 1:25.6 | How would you define it? |
| 1:26.6 | Yes, I would say I recognize the dedication of the Albanian women towards what they believe and they dedicate everything. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.