The Ugly Truth About Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa, or should we now say Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was seen for decades on television screens around the world ministering to those she called “the poorest of the poor.” From San Francisco to Sydney, people's eyes filled with tears as the wrinkled old woman held children in her arms and proclaimed that through the power of Almighty God she would address the many ills of this world and help millions of people whose lives had been ruined by poverty. And yet, for some, their eyes only shone with anger, their hearts filled only with the beat of injustice, as they saw all too clearly a dark shadow cast by a woman who was far from the angel of the sewers who called herself what was it. .

Today we present the

ugly

truth

. We imagine that introduction has already upset some of our viewers who could and still cannot see anything resembling the dark side of the person who was called the patron saint of missionaries. You may be well aware that this woman spoke openly about the abject poverty that certain residents of India faced in the past. They may remember the devastation of the famine of 1943 and how millions of people died from hunger and disease. This was a woman who in the name of God promised to live among the poor and never deviate from that path.

As a martyr, she would suffer her own set of illnesses and yet she would never turn her back on the slums. Through her “Missionaries of Charity” she would serve the people whose home was the streets and whose daily bread was the leftovers that people threw away. She would reach out to the blind, to the lepers, to the people society had mostly turned into outcasts. And it is true, we do not question it, that she and her fellow missionaries reached out to the poor. In fact, they offered help to people on the brink who felt helpless and lost.

For those in the final throes of life, besieged by diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis, Mother Teresa and her sisters opened her house. For those who were at the beginning of her life but did not have parents to care for them, she built much-needed orphanages. In her own words, Mother Teresa said that with her boundless love she would make it her life's work to protect “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted. , not loved. , neglected throughout society, people who have become a burden on society and are rejected by everyone.” Maybe some of you are now thinking, hmm, Infographics Show, you sure are walking on thin ice if you're going to start hurling criticism at this model of human virtue.

We're not even done. Teresa and her sisters, with the help of available funds, opened hospices, orphanages and more around the world. When she finished, her Missionaries of Charity consisted of 4,000 sisters and 300 brothers doing good in 610 missions covering much of the world. They were helped by more than a million workers who did everything from giving hope to orphans to handing out free soup to the homeless. So why should such an apogee of humanity suffer criticism? Let us now become devil's advocates. As all viewers will know, nothing in this life is final. Every story has countless other narratives running through the main narrative or, as we were told as children, there are always two sides to every story.

One of the first people to start talking about the cracks in Mother Teresa's golden armor was the critic Christopher Hitchens. In fact, while she was still alive, he co-wrote and hosted a documentary called "Hell's Angel." Shortly after, he wrote the book “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.” This man certainly had a bee in his hat when it came to the lady of light. The general criticism was that Mother Teresa and her sisters were given millions and millions of dollars to do God's work and they didn't do a very good job. It is important that we say “God's work” and not just voluntary work.

In fact, many people criticized his charities, saying that even with millions of dollars, they were run by people who could not provide adequate care. Pain relief was rarely administered to anyone and it was not often to see professional medical staff among the crowd of volunteers who didn't really know what they were doing. Still, for Western audiences who watched her on television, they only saw a saint. For those who donated money, it was like doing good in the eyes of God. Of course, that may have certain benefits when doomsday arrives. You see, during the medieval period, there was something called indulgences.

In short, a person could buy his way out of hell or at least erase some of his sins from God's ethereal slate. Critics believed that Mother Teresa was selling indulgences and, to them, it was some kind of scam. This is what Hitchens had to say about it: “This brings us back to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hell and continence to the poor. Mother Teresa was no friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God.” Hitchens said that he once spoke to her face to face and she told him openly that she was not trying to get rid of poverty and that she certainly was not a social worker.

Her mission was to create more Catholics in the world and expand the Catholic Church. He and others argued that she never attempted to solve poverty or alleviate some of the pain that comes with it. How could it be, they said, her facilities were poorly managed and did not focus on poverty reduction methods in terms of education or women's empowerment. In 2010, long after the so-called “Angel of Mercy” had passed away, a Forbes writer visited one of the Missionaries of Charity and said what she found were volunteers and others asking what exactly was happening there. The article said that these places had always resisted change and that things had to be done the way Mother Teresa wanted, which more often than not meant volunteers doing jobs they were not trained to do.

The writer said: “Missionaries have always kept change at bay. But in a world where it is very difficult to hide behind secrecy, the number of disillusioned followers is increasing.” She interviewed one of the volunteers, a guy from the United States who went to India to do something good. It is worth mentioning here that the volunteers have no say in the operation of the places nor do they have any idea of ​​all the money that comes in and where it goes. This particular volunteer expressed surprise at what he discovered during the first few days. In his own words, he said: “I was shocked to see the negligence.

The needles were washed in cold water and reused, and expired medications were given to the inmates. “There were people who had a chance to live if they received the right care.” Then again, people have asked how so much cash can do so little, but that volunteer said that in a short time he witnessed someone's unnecessary death. He said another volunteer without any medical training had tried to feed a paralyzed person, but he did it wrong and that person died. He said he also saw someone who had a toe amputated and was not given any type of anesthesia.

Yet another volunteer said she saw at one facility “syringes run through cold water and reused, aspirin given to people with terminal cancer, and cold baths given to everyone.” Mother Teresa did not allow any criticism of such practices. People responded to those criticisms by saying: hey, these places are home to the sick, the poor, and the dying; They are not a hospital. Ok, naysayers say, that's fine, but why not offer real medical expertise with all that money? As you'll soon see, the money donated wasn't exactly pennies. And what about those who recovered? Surely there should be some kind of rehabilitation to help them when they were ready to leave.

A European volunteer said that sometimes people left of their own free will, but other times they were forced to return to the streets without help or guidance on how to survive. For that reason, they may soon return. In this sense, it almost sounds like the prison system of many countries and their “revolving doors.” Some of them would prefer not to have empty beds. In the world of perpetual poverty, there is the term Charitable-Industrial Complex. Mother Teresa has been accused of being part of that, perhaps even of being an imam. That same volunteer we just mentioned said a woman was very sick with diabetes and then she left.

Her sisters said that she had been admitted to another center, but a few days later the volunteer saw her on the street again. She still couldn't walk well. There are numerous reports of money being donated to certain Missionaries of Charity facilities, but not much of that money is seen. A German report dating back to 1991 said that only seven percent of donated money showed up where it was donated. Well, where is the missing money? No one knows, but Forbes points out that it is controlled by the Vatican now that Mother Teresa rests in peace. One of the people who should know better than anyone what Mother Teresa did was Dr.

Aroup Chatterjee. He grew up in Calcutta and while studying to be a doctor he was one of the few voices crying out about the terrible plight of the poor. He shouted from the slums. He later traveled to the United Kingdom, where he said he was shocked by British adulation of Mother Teresa. In fact, she was portrayed as a saint, although when he was campaigning in the slums of India he said he never saw any of the sisters. He later wrote about what he called a “cult of suffering” and spent much of his time trying to understand how, if anything, Mother Teresa and her group of sister angels were helping the poor.

He spoke to many, many people who had worked closely with the sisters and concluded with him writing the book "Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict." Some people may not trust his verdict, but it could be said that he was in a very good position to deliver it. Of course, her support was never bad for her. An investigation found that the Vatican Bank, also known as the Institute for Works of Religion, had a gigantic account in her name. He said the account was worth billions and that if one day she had decided to make equally gigantic withdrawals, the bank would have been on its knees.

If that's not enough to suspend us on this thin ice we're skating on, they also called her a racist...well, actually, a white savior-type racist who pitied a people who couldn't save themselves and the needed as a benefactor. in chief. Of course, she was applauded by giddy white people who thought her applause helped those poor people of color, without giving much thought to the details and genesis of widespread abject poverty. As for the Western media, with its decades-long bombast toward Mother Teresa, it also, critics say, played a role in a kind of white colonialism. In an interview, she said: “I spent months in libraries in London.

I also traveled the world researching it. I followed slum dwellers, beggars and destitute children with a video camera. I interviewed hundreds of people. “I stood with a video camera outside Teresa’s house for hours.” And her verdict was Mother Teresa, or the idea of ​​her great, brilliant, immutable goodness was "false." She spoke of the deplorable state of the facilities she visited, the lack of hygiene, the unnecessary deaths and of course the baptisms that were given to people on her deathbed without her consent. Worse still, she said, when Mother Teresa claimed the Nobel Peace Prize from her, she was quick to explain how she had saved the lives of tens of thousands of people in India.

Well, after Chatterjee did his research on her, she said that she could possibly give him the number 700, which isn't much considering the many, many millions of dollars he received from her. His research also found that in Calcutta, the Missionaries of Charity were providing very little help in terms of food and water compared to most other charities. In some countries hardly any aid was provided and what was really happening was conversion to Christianity. But the media loved her, of course. Many of you probably weren't alive when she was, but rest assured, she almost never appeared outside of television.

Politicians could get a lot of points from her for shaking her hand, while con artists, dictators and other very bad people were happy to appear with her on camera. Speaking of politicians, Bill Clinton made her an honorary citizen of the United States, because she showed "how we can realize our dreams of a good and just society." Everyone wanted a piece of her. It was as if she had received a television canonization, which Chatterjee attributes primarily to the American media.This was happening, he says, while India's most vulnerable people were still not getting the help they needed...

The New York Times caught up with him recently and he said, for the most part, what we've already told you, minus the “blankets stained with feces…washed in the same sink used to wash dishes.” He said that at least today the Missionaries of Charity have medical professionals who come and when things go bad for people they take them to a hospital. In the past, he said that he found it difficult to explain the myth of her to the people of Calcutta. "They weren't interested when she expressed that the miracles people said she had performed might not be miracles at all.

She wasn't exactly popular for her opinions. Mother Teresa was finally sainted in 2016 for supposedly curing a man with a tumor. Thousands and thousands of people around the world cried tears of joy. Chatterjee's claim that this was more than anything else fell on deaf ears in the West. He concluded his talk with the Times by saying: "They don't care about whether a "Albanian nun has hindered the dignity or prestige of a third world city. So obviously they may be interested in the lies, charlatans and fraud that are going on, but they are not interested in the whole story." On top of all this, he was known to associate with very dubious people, including neo-fascists in Italy and a dictatorship in Argentina whose members were later convicted of genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Jean-Claude Duvalier was also accused of torture and genocide. She received millions from swindler Charles Keating and flew on his private jet. In America, this humble, unassuming woman received only the best medical treatment rich people can buy. After her death, even NPR credited her making a genuine miracle in real life, writing: “Hardcore rationalists are not likely to see such cases as evidence of a 'miracle' even if they recognize that they have no alternative explanation.” As was soon pointed out, you don't have to be a hardcore rationalist to believe that nuns don't make terminal brain abscesses disappear with a flick of the wrist, but this was all part of the myth and it seemed like almost everyone agreed with it.

Blame Mother Teresa for that? Well, in her private diaries she wrote about her doubts and her “emptiness and darkness,” but that never stopped her from imposing a “ticket to heaven” on people or demanding that women have no right to make decisions about their own bodies. We leave you with a question that someone once asked him. They asked if the poor should have to endure their suffering. His answer was: “I think it is very beautiful that the poor accept their lot, share it with the passion of Christ. I think the suffering of the poor is helping the world a lot.” Now you need to watch “The Exorcism of Saint Mother Teresa.” Or, for something of a different nature, “13 Places No One Can EVER Visit.”