- Teresa was not a friend of the poor but celebrated suffering and opposed empowerment measures.
- Her charity work has been cited for lack of medical care, inappropriate conditions, and questionable practices, raising doubts about her canonization as a saint.
- Teresa’s saintly image was constructed by an effective media campaign, with over 50% of writings about her being hagiographies.
- Her Missionaries of Charity was involved in a 2018 scandal where a nun and a worker were arrested for selling a 14-day-old baby.
In July 2018, a nun and a woman worker at the Missionaries of Charity in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand were arrested for selling a 14-day-old baby. The police said several other babies had also been illegally trafficked from the center. After the scandal broke, India instructed its state governments to inspect childcare facilities run by the Missionaries of Charity – the Roman Catholic order founded by self-styled “Mother” Teresa.[1]
Most Indians were shocked at the trafficking of babies, but they were not surprised that the perpetrators were Teresa’s followers. Among the countless barbaric invaders and charlatans that have barged into India, Teresa ranks as the most odious. Many ordinary people, especially in the West, think she was a saint. They also believe she lifted millions of poor people worldwide out of poverty. Well, the Albanian nun, born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, has been thoroughly exposed by highly reputable people in India and the West.
Aroup Chatterjee, a doctor who grew up in Kolkata and now works in the UK, described Teresa as “a medieval creature of darkness.”[2] British author Christopher Hitchens commented: “MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich….” [3]
The Mask of Sainthood Slips
Teresa was no saint. The Vatican manufactured her sainthood because she was the vanguard of the Roman Catholic Church’s aggressive conversion activities in India. It was also for favors rendered to the church as Teresa’s rigid stance on abortion and contraception aligned with the views of the Vatican.[4]
She was no friend of the poor either. On the contrary, the Albanian nun celebrated poverty and suffering and refused to give medicines to the inmates under her care, in the process allowing them to die painful deaths.
“Teresa was a saint of the media, not the gutters” – 2013 Canadian research report
A 2013 study by Canadian researchers backs up what rationalists and neutral observers – like Britain’s Christopher Hitchens and Aroup Chatterjee – have long held: Teresa only cared about poverty and not the poor. Researchers Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard from the University of Montreal and Carole Senechal of the University of Ottawa argue that Teresa was a saint of the media, not the gutters.[5]
The Canadian researchers analyzed over 500 published writings about Teresa and concluded that her hallowed image, “which does not stand up to analysis of the facts, was constructed, and that an effective media campaign orchestrated her beatification.” Over 50 percent of the books and articles were hagiographies, they say.
The study, published in the Journal of Studies in Religion and Sciences called Religieuses, says Teresa actually felt it was beautiful to see the poor suffer. According to the study, the Vatican overlooked the crucial human side of Teresa – her dubious way of caring for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it.
Many people, especially liberals, and Christians, find it hard to believe Teresa was an ogre and a fraud because, over the past decades, the media painted this lovely picture of a caring “mother” who dedicated her life to charity. But where the Albanian nun went wrong was in believing suffering was good for the people. She believed in her cause, but she had no idea how it affected the poor and sick people under her care. A fawning media, obliging politicians, and countless donors have overlooked these aspects. But facts are humbling, so let’s look at Teresa’s history – the uncensored bits, that is.
Tainted Donations
Teresa was very astute in using the media for her own end, raising money for her cause of adding members to the church. A sugar daddy she fawned over was the bloody Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier (who plundered Haiti) and the communist Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Taking money from Duvalier, one of the most vicious tyrants to walk the earth, would have been enough to subpoena Teresa. But she didn’t stop there.
Remember Charles Keating, the convicted fraud artist? He was the “moral crusader” who ensured Larry Flynt got a jail sentence in 1976 for publishing Hustler magazine. He was so fanatic in his holy war that US President Richard Nixon appointed him to the National Commission on Obscenity.[6]
Better known as a “financial snake oil salesman,” Keating was the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association’s chairman, the target of a federal investigation after the 1989 savings and loans collapse, which wiped out $160 billion in savings. Many of those affected were ordinary Americans, mostly retirees.
Keating, it was discovered, had given at least $1 million to Teresa and flew her around in his jet. According to The Economist, “Teresa, in return, praised his good character.” During his fraud trial, Teresa wrote to the judge, telling him what a good guy Keating was, and asked for clemency in sentencing.
“I do not know anything about Mr. Charles Keating’s work or his business or the matters you are dealing with,” she stated. “I only know that he has always been kind and generous to God’s poor and always ready to help whenever there was a need. It is for this reason that I do not want to forget him now while he and his family are suffering. Jesus has told us Whatever you do to the least of my brethren YOU DID IT TO ME.'”[7]
What Jesus would have done is debatable, but the judge gave Keating ten years for fraud.
The scene now gets murkier. Teresa received a letter from the Deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles, telling her that the money Keating had given her was stolen from hard-working people and suggesting that she return the money. “The victims of Mr Keating’s fraud come from a wide spectrum of society. Some were wealthy and well-educated. Most were people of modest means and unfamiliar with high finance. One was a poor carpenter who did not speak English and had his life savings stolen by Mr Keating’s fraud.”[8]
“You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the indulgence he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it! If you contact me, I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession.”
The Deputy DA has yet to receive a reply. “Saints, it seems, are immune to audit,” commented Hitchens.
Insider reveals
One of the most compelling accounts of the macabre world of Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, is by the Australian Collete Livermore. A nun who worked in Teresa’s order for 11 years, she ended up sick and disillusioned. In 1984, she quit and wrote the book Hope Endures, which talks about a little-known but disturbing side of Teresa, which she says hurt the truly needy.[9]
“The (Missionaries of Charity) order cared more about obedience than doing the right thing”
Livermore explains how the nuns were not provided with medical advice, the use of mosquito repellents, or information about malaria and vaccinations because Teresa believed “God” would look after the nuns. Livermore got into trouble with the order for helping a man with dysentery who was in danger of dying.
“The order cared more about obedience than doing the right thing,” she writes. Teresa quoted the Bible (Peter 2:18-23), which orders slaves to obey their masters even if they are abusive and difficult, and used this text to urge her nuns to obey superiors without question.
In Manila, Teresa wouldn’t let the nuns have a washing machine, which forced them to wash the underwear of the incontinent with brushes. Livermore felt the order was more concerned about inflicting hardship on the nuns than helping the sick. More angst was in store for Livermore when she was forbidden to help a sick boy named Alex. That’s when Livermore decided to leave the order because she didn’t like how she was expected to let the poor suffer.
Pain (for others) is Beautiful
”There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s passion. The world gains much from their suffering”
Before she died, Teresa had opened over 600 missions in 123 countries. Some of these missions have been described as “homes for the dying” by visiting doctors. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. ”There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s passion. The world gains much from their suffering,” was her reply to criticism, cited Hitchens.
Each time Teresa herself fell sick, she sought the finest medical care. Despite the fact that medical tourists from the West travel to India for treatment, Teresa reckoned India wasn’t good enough for her. She was admitted to California’s Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation.[10]
Vatican’s Handmaiden
Shortly after her death in September 1997, the pope nominated Teresa for beatification, the first step towards sainthood. However, by doing this, the pope violated a Vatican tradition that allowed a cooling-off period of five years to guard against dubious characters.
“Surely, any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery” – Christopher Hitchens says of Teresa’s so-called miracles
Writes Hitchens: “As for the ‘miracle’ that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely, any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of (Teresa), which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn’t have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican’s investigators? No.”[11]
The woman’s husband, Seiku Besra, said: “My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle. This miracle is a hoax.”[12]
But then, dubious characters are part of the Christian pantheon. The most famous of these is ‘Saint’ Dismas, the thief who supposedly died on the cross alongside Jesus. According to Christian legend, Dismas repented only minutes before his death, gaining him immediate entrance to heaven.[13]
Another unsavory character that John Paul II put up for sainthood was Pius IX, who reigned as pontiff from 1846 to 1878 and who referred to Jews as “dogs.”[14]
Doubted her Own Faith
Though she was an arch-conservative member of the Catholic Church, Teresa lacked faith, which should effectively debar her from being canonized as a “Christian” saint. Her diaries, investigated by Catholic authorities in Kolkata, revealed that she had been racked with doubts: “I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God, and that he does not really exist.”[15]
People think “my faith, my hope, and my love are overflowing and that my intimacy with God and union with his will fill my heart. If only they knew,” she wrote, “Heaven means nothing.”
Il Messeggero, Rome’s popular daily newspaper, commented: “The real Mother Teresa was one who for one year had visions and who for the next 50 had doubts – up until her death.”
Showcasing Poverty
What did Teresa and her charity achieve in the last six decades? Not a dent has been made in the sum total of suffering because of Teresa. Take Kolkata. Virtually nothing has changed there, except that Teresa has given that metropolis a bad name.
Today, large expanses of India are entering the First World, thanks to rapid industrialization and high economic growth generated by free enterprise. On the other hand, Kolkata, virtually alone among India’s cities, seems stuck in LDC (least developed country) mode. While its long association with Marxism, another despicable import, may have something to do with the lack of progress, the presence of the povertymongers ensures the city finds it impossible to shake off its “Third World” image. Teresa’s fundraising sermons have drilled into people’s minds that it is a city of lepers and beggars. As Hitchens said, “On one instance, the nuns claimed, untruthfully of course, that (Kolkata) had 450,000 lepers, knowing that the rich have a poor conscience and would promptly despatch their dollars.”
Making of a Myth
Despite these disturbing facts, how did Teresa succeed in building an image of holiness and infinite goodness? According to the three Canadian researchers, her meeting in London in 1968 with the BBC’s Malcom Muggeridge, an anti-abortion journalist, was what catapulted her to superstardom.[16]
In 1969, Muggeridge made a eulogistic film about the missionary. During filming, the interiors of Teresa’s mission in Kolkata were too dark, and he thought the scene wouldn’t come out well. But when the film was developed, it was amazingly bright. Muggeridge trumpeted it as the ”first photographic miracle” when it should have been attributed to the new film stock being marketed by Kodak.
Teresa discovered the power of mass media; she traveled the world and received numerous awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize.
No Accountability
Today, around the world, Teresa’s charities have attained untouchable status, which helps them fend off any attempts by the authorities to stop their morbid experiments on sick and poor people.
There is also the question of the missing millions. Millions of dollars were transferred to the charity’s many bank accounts, but most of the accounts are secret. ”Given the parsimonious management of (Teresa’s) works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?” ask Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard of the University of Montreal.[17]
According to the researchers, Teresa raised almost $100 million before 1980. A good chunk was used for building houses for the missionaries. Just 5 percent went to the cause. Let’s hear that again – just 5 percent of that went to the poor.
Breaking India Tool
In India where Teresa did her ‘charity’ work for more than half a century, the government flagged off a train named Mother Express to commemorate her birth centenary in 2010. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that the party, and therefore, the country, was headed by the Italian Catholic Antonia Maino, a.k.a. Sonia Gandhi. Christian NGOs and church groups had a free run during her ten-year proxy rule.
Notably, all the abandoned children taken in Teresa’s missions are brought up as Christians. These children were never offered a choice in the matter of religion.
Teresa has been known to be stingy even during national emergencies. During numerous floods in India, she offered numerous prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary but no direct or monetary aid, the Canadian researchers say.
Notably, all the abandoned children taken in Teresa’s missions are brought up as Christians. These children were never offered a choice in the matter of religion.
Teresa was (and her mission continues to be) actively engaged in proselytizing work, which is not only illegal but will negatively impact India’s complex social hierarchy. In effect, by allowing the likes of Teresa to operate in India, the government is giving the green light for the long-term balkanization of the country because wherever Hindus have become a minority in India, separatist movements have cropped up. Against this backdrop, the Indian government should close down the Missionaries of Charity and other similar missionary organizations that exist purely to break the country.
In conclusion, always remember the legendary Hitchens’s words, “Everything everyone thinks they know about Teresa is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.”[18]
Citations
[1] https://time.com/5341579/india-mother-theresa-charity-baby-sale/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/sep/02/mother-teresa-saint-criticism-miracles-missionaries-abortion-suffering-canonisation
[3] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/10/the-fanatic-fraudulent-mother-teresa.html
[4] https://missionariesofcharity.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/dr-aroup-chatterjee-hemley-gonzalez-discuss-mother-teresa-christopher-hitchens-and-the-negligence-and-fraud-of-the-catholic-nun/
[5] http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint.html
[6] http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21600648-charles-keating-moral-crusader-and-financial-snake-oil-salesman-died-march-31st-aged
[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/10/29/the-company-she-keeps/247eced4-f77b-413a-8615-b887b0127429/
[8] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/10/29/the-company-she-keeps/247eced4-f77b-413a-8615-b887b0127429/
[9] https://www.amazon.com.au/Hope-Endures-Leaving-Searching-Meaning/dp/1416597832
[10] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-31-mn-1142-story.html
[11] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/10/the-fanatic-fraudulent-mother-teresa.html
[12] https://nypost.com/2002/10/14/mother-teresa-miracle-a-hoax-says-vatican-bashing-hubby/
[13] http://www.livescience.com/52258-most-controversial-catholic-saints.html
[14] https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=8259
[15] https://www.commondreams.org/views/2007/10/22/mother-teresa-john-paul-ii-and-fast-track-saints
[16] https://ffrf.org/news/video/item/16897-the-illusory-vs-the-real-mother-teresa
[17] http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/udem-news/news/20130301-mother-teresa-anything-but-a-saint.html
[18] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/346644-everything-everyone-thinks-they-know-about-mother-teresa-is-false