SOLCIR Passion Portrait of Fernando López de Rego

What motivated you to write the book "Teresa de Calcuta: La persona"?

The idea of the book was not mine at all but someone else’s. To make it short, during a trip to the North of India in 2010 I ended in Calcutta where I happened to meet Antonio, who has lived there now for 15 years. When I was about to fly back he suggested that I write a book on Mother Teresa with the focus on the person. I thought the idea was farfetched, that I did not have the adequate background. So I simply did not even consider the idea. But for two long years he sent me a mail a month with a brief reminder: “How’s the book going?”. When Antonio came to renew the Indian visa and we met here in Alicante I finally gave up; talking with him in nearby Elche, from one second to the other I felt that I had to try it and very shortly after left for Calcutta, for the third time in three consecutive years. An extra motivation came from the realization that most of the books that had been written on the person were biased, for or against. Furthermore the focus was almost always on her activities, not on the person. And Antonio had already spoken with a good bunch of people who had known her closely in Calcutta and they all were going to lend a hand. Very soon I realized that Teresa of Calcutta, the most admired person of the second half of the century, was not just a charitable soul. In fact, she was a real Master of the Science of Living. I would have never guessed, for instance, that she had a keen sense of humour and that she had discovered by herself some of the basic recipes that modern psychology regards as part of the road to happiness, to inner peace.

Where can we buy the book?

Most libraries get it in 24-48 hours when they order it to Madrid. And it can be bought through Amazon or as a kindle version. I have some here in the office, too.

Do you have any new adventures planned? After Teresa it is the turn of Fidel, another hypercharismatic person. I have travelled now three consecutive years to Cuba and interviewed tenths and tenths of persons from all walks of life. Within 2016 I expect to publish a trilogy on that country: -“Fidel y el más allá. El Hecho religioso en la Cuba castrista” describing the unique cocktail of religious beliefs and shamanic and other traditions which exist there, all within the framework of a Revolution which was constitutionally atheistic up to 1992. -“El juicio de la Historia” is going to be an attempt to analyse pros and cons of the castroist experiment, in the framework of the rapid, drastic changes of the last 60 years. -“Errores a no cometer en la transición cubana” will close the trilogy and try to be an attempt to suggest that use is made in the unavoidable transitional process that will take place in Cuba of the recent experience in changing political and economic models of the Eastern European countries . The radiography of the hutu-tutsi conflict and a book on “Sudden conversions” for which I have done quite a bit of research in the past already will come next…and somewhen a book on “Oración y meditación”, as drawing both from the East and from the West has for decades been my approach.

#SOLCIR #passionportrait #solidarity