This week, we are happy to bring you an article by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who wrote to us this week asking to publish an article he wrote about Mother Teresa.

Father Cantalamessa is a Franciscan Capuchin priest who serves as the papal preacher to Pope Benedict XVI — and did so with Pope John Paul II before him. Regular readers of the Register will recognize his name — we regularly quote his homilies in articles, because he has such keen insights into important contemporary faith questions. We are grateful to him for his essay on “The ‘Atheism’ of Mother Teresa.”

When he offered it to us for publication, we were already planning to quote a few words on Blessed Mother Teresa he had said in reply to questions. How much better it is to be able to allow him to speak directly to our readers in an exclusive feature-length article.

The story of Mother Teresa’s “dark night of the soul” is a story that Register readers have been acquainted with for years. We first broke the story in January, 2003, in an interview with Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Missionary of Charity priest who is the postulator for Mother Teresa’s cause for canonization.

Our interview got much attention at the time, but only from religious publications. We have to smile now when we see the news media reporting that Time magazine broke the story in August 2007 — more than four years after it was in the Register, and only after the publication of Father Koldiejchuk’s excellent book, Come, Be My Light.

Speaking of Time magazine, though, some criticized the editorial the Register printed last week, saying that it was too harsh on the article in Time magazine — and on reflection, they may be right. The article was not exactly as we would have written it, but on balance it was quite fair.

Enjoy Father Cantalamessa’s essay. Know that, in reading it, you are reading an article about one of the greatest saints of our times by one of the most perceptive spiritual communicators of our times. The opportunity to read this kind of journalism is exactly why you subscribed to the Register in the first place.