In 2003, Pope John Paul II announced the beatification of Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, now popularly known by the name ‘Mother Teresa,’ (MT) and in December 2015 Pope Francis announced that Teresa would be canonized a saint. The recipient of many honors, among them the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, MT founded the Missionaries of Charity, consisting of over 4,500 sisters active in 133 countries. She has also been lauded as one of the most influential women of the 20th century, adored and revered by millions. But beneath a veil of humility and charity lies the disconcerting and irreversible truth which should cause inquiry and skepticism into the nature of Teresa’s preachments.
The traditional procedure of beatification, the first step to becoming a saint, cannot begin until five years after the death of the nominee so as to curb the influence of politics and society. MT was nominated in 1997, a year after her death. The practice would also include rigorous scrutiny into the miraculous claims made for the nominee under the advocatus diaboli or the office of the “devil’s advocate.” John Paul II had abolished this office during his term, and subsequently created more saints than all other popes had combined since the 16th century!
Monica Besra, a Bengali woman, claimed that she simply looked upon a picture of the “Mother Teresa of Calcutta,” and her cancerous tumor disappeared. It should be of interest, then, that her physician said that Ms. Besra didn’t even have a tumor to begin with, and that she simply had a tubercular cyst, remedied easily by conventional medicine. His testimony, oddly enough, never reached the ears of the Vatican. But then, if they never listened to Galileo, our humble friend the doctor should hardly be expected to suffice, should he? To any thinking person, the sheer fakery of these so-called “miracles” should be a topic of contempt and ridicule.
When Pope John XXIII was still at the head of the church, MT opposed any motions of reform made during the Second Vatican council, instead vociferously lobbying for greater faith, and criticizing any attempt to doctrinal revision. Calling abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace” in her Nobel Peace Prize speech, she lobbied for the criminalization of divorce and remarriage as a part of the Irish state constitution in 1996 — the vote which she just barely lost. The same year, she publicly said that Princess Diana’s divorce was good news since the marriage had been an unhappy one.
The charitable nature of the Catholic church has often been of some curiosity to me, given their history of selling pardons and blessings to the wealthy, while assuring the poor of eternal damnation and hellfire given the slightest transgression of doctrine. Mother Teresa would often proclaim poverty and suffering as a ‘gift from God,’ something to be welcomed. As Christopher Hitchens correctly observed, “MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty.” She preached only hard faith as the solution to everything, when we know that there has always been one rudimentary yet effective cure to poverty. This solution is the empowerment of women. Give women some control over their reproductive health, so they are not chained by their husbands and society to unwanted pregnancies, early death and disease. Throw in some credit and educate them well, and the whole floor will rise, culturally, socially and economically. Against this one solution, MT campaigned her entire life.
If there was another dear friend of Mother Teresa’s (aside from poverty), it would have to be the worst of the wealthy. MT solicited money from the disgusting dictatorial Duvalier family in Haiti, taken from the Haitian poor, and praised them for what they had done. She also managed to get 1.25 million from Charles Keating, who most readers would know was the villainous fraud of the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal, who additionally allowed her the use of his private jet (not too shabby an exchange in return for a crucifix and a blessing!). She even acted as a character witness for him, and when the court later sent her a letter inquiring if she would be willing to return the money to the aggrieved victims, she didn’t bother to reply! Where did this money go?
If you’ve ever had the terrible pleasure, as I have, to visit her rundown hospice in Kolkata, my hometown, you would share my feeling of disgust at the unsanitary conditions she subjected the poor to, while preferring a particularly expensive clinic in California for her own health concerns (also: her order refused to ever publish an audit of expenses). Having opened 500 convents around the world bearing her own name, it is incredible that we recognize this charlatan with the modesty and humility she continues to be popularized by even today.
An article published in the British medical journal The Lancet heavily criticized the state of MT’s facilities in 1994, “her rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her overly dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception and divorce.”
It seemed MT’s idea of helping the poor and dying was having her nuns baptize them as they lay dying regardless of their wishes. The “homes for the dying” were so terrible that a third of the people wouldn’t even get any medical care, dying slowly in unimaginable pain and suffering and helplessness. They wouldn’t provide enough food, sterilize their needles — there weren’t even painkillers! Money wasn’t a problem, considering the hundreds of millions of dollars the foundation created by MT was successful in accumulating. She once even had the gall to reply to her criticism, “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.” Excuse me, but why does this lunatic continue to remain under a Niagara of praise, reverence and adoration? As far as I’m concerned, her name should be used in disgust and scorn and derision, as it deserves to be. And what then, pray tell, must we think of the Church which would prioritize honoring someone who lends spiritual solace to the dictators and wealthy exploiters of the world?
The woman was as fanatically generous with prayers as she was miserly with actual aid and help. When a number of floods in India occurred after the Bhopal gas tragedy, she offered prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary, but when asked, she refused to make any monetary contribution whatsoever! This is not moral; it’s obscene. Numerous volunteers in Kolkata were positively shocked by the fanatical ideology and love for poverty shown by the “Missionaries of Charity,” but of course, their testimony would never make a great story now, would it? But what can we expect from someone whose faith comes from an institution that has had a long history of sexual repression, authoritarianism and intolerance for other faiths. Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus, indeed.
Teresa is scheduled to become an official saint this September. Only a complete collapse of our critical faculties can explain the illusion that such a person has been manifested persistently as a demagogue of the deprived and oppressed. It has often been of some amusement to me how often a person can commit deplorable acts, and not only be excused, but receiving of public adoration so long as they don holy robes. I am not afraid to be thought of as arrogant or argumentative. But I’ll be damned to stand by as a silent spectator to this farcical nonsense, and I think the Roman Catholic Church should be ashamed, as it is has chosen to do just this. Amen.
Rudy Fatehpuria, a contributing writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at AFatehpuria19@wooster.edu.