Mother Teresa Was No Saint To Hindus

The Vatican has announced that it will be declaring “Mother Teresa” a saint on Sept 4th 2016 (see here), this despite the fact that Mother Teresa’s charity has been internationally documented as being nothing more than a fraud which hoarded donations collected from criminals and dictators, while allowing Indian Hindus to die in unsanitary condition so that their souls could be collected for the Vatican in death bed conversion ceremonies. JFH members have staged several demonstrations in different location to protest the sainthood of Mother Teresa and educate the public about her recorded unsaintly activities. Please see and share our research below.

Mother Teresa: No Saint To Hindus
#NoSaintJFH

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The Following Is Based Upon Research From:

“Mother Teresa, the final verdict” by Aroup Chatterjee & “The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice” by Christopher Hitchens. Information is backed up by outside sources when available.

The life and purported works of Mother Teresa are increasingly coming under tighter scrutiny coupled with a large measure of cynicism and increasing demands for transparency as the epic biopic movie “The Letters” depicting her “sainted” life premiered, on Friday December the 4th. In addition just recently, it has been announced by the Vatican that Mother Teresa will be declared a Saint by the new Pope Francis. The pontiff marked his 79th birthday by approving a decree that the nun had performed a second miracle making her eligible for Sainthood, the Vatican declared in a statement. She will likely be canonized in September 2016 to coincide with the 19th anniversary of her death and Pope Francis’ Holy Year of Mercy. [1] Mother Teresa’s gigantesque reputation as an iconic figure of great humanitarian works has remained relatively unchallenged and unopposed for decades. This unparalled reputation as an irreducible paragon of virtue of legendary proportion has even preceded her words and actions when it should be precisely the opposite. It is time to cast light of the real words and actions of Mother Teresa and prove that she does not deserve “Sainthood” under any religious institution.

Hemley Gonzalez – “Stop Missionaries Of Charity”

Mother Teresa had a very dubious way of caring for the sick. In fact many male and female volunteers including doctors, anthropologists and sociologists have gone on record with harsh and damning criticisms of the abysmal substandard of care provided in her home for the dying and destitute in Calcutta in spite of the fabulous assets (albeit primarily undisclosed) of the world famous charity. Often untrained volunteers were given tasks which normally require one to be trained in medicine and therapy. The number of vocal and disillusioned followers is increasing. One such person is Hemley Gonzalez who grew up in a poor neighborhood himself in the US and was inspired enough after reading a biography on Mother Teresa to volunteer at Nirmal Hriday, the home for the dying and destitute for two months in 2008. Gonzalez states that he was shocked to see the gross negligence. Needles were washed in cold water and reused dozens of times. Even disposable gloves were reused. This is a very unsanitary if not outright lethal practice which would have invoked colossal malpractice lawsuits in any other medical institution. Gonzalez narrates accounts of an untrained volunteer wrongly feeding a paralyzed inmate who choked to death and another where an infected toe of an inmate was cut without anesthesia. There were many who had a chance to live if given proper care. Gonzalez was at once repelled and moved enough to start an alternative charity with fiscal transparency and accountability called ‘Responsible Charity’ where professional medical help was given. He was motivated enough to run a counter campaign on Facebook called ‘STOP MISSONARIES OF CHARITY’ and has over 2000 members. He was even interviewed by Forbes magazine in India. [2] [3]

STOP MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY: https://www.facebook.com/missionariesofcharity/

Former Nun Susan Shields – Teresa Was Hoarding Wealth

Susan Shields who was a nun with the Missionaries of Charity order in the Bronx, Rome and San Francisco writes in her article ‘House of Illusion’ that she knew of immense quantities of money including $50 million donated in all sincerity by people from all walks of life which lingered unproductively in bank accounts. The sisters were rarely allowed to spend money on the poor they were trying to help and lived ascetic lives. Susan Shields recollects that the sisters were given use of a large three story convent in San Francisco with many large rooms. The heat remained off all winter in this exceedingly damp house and several sisters contracted TB during the time she lived there. This kind of deprivation was justified by Mother Teresa’s philosophy in order to keep the sisters living an extremely ascetic life in tune with the poor they were serving. The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank. Instead of spending the money the sisters were forced to plead poverty and thus manipulated generous, credulous people into giving more goods, services and cash. She wrote that jewelry, cash and valuable articles were just lying in the basement. The flood of donations was considered to be a sign of God’s approval of Mother’s congregation. The nuns were told that they received more gifts than any other religious congregation because God was pleased with Mother. The size of a great fortune increased with every postal service delivery. The money in the bank was treated as if it did not exist. Thus the affectation of modesty and humility masked both greed and ambition not to say arrogance. Susan Shields left the order in 1989 in great discomfort with what she experienced. [4]

Stern Mag Blasts Teresa For Neglect

The German magazine Stern (10 September 1998) published a devastating critique of Mother Teresa’s work on the first anniversary of her death entitled ‘Mother Teresa, Where Are HerHeH Millions?’ The article concluded that her organization is essentially a religious order that does not deserve to be called a charitable foundation do to the charges of neglect of residents, indifference to suffering, massaging of figures, manipulation of the media and knowingly handling millions of dollars of stolen cash. The Missionaries of Charity never responded to these allegations. It is ironic that the article was still scathing in spite of the fact that the publication is traditionally pro Catholic and the original drafts were heavily edited to tone down the valid and legitimate criticism and skepticisms expressed and demonstrated. [5]

Mother Teresa Hell’s Angel

Criticisms of Mother Teresa peaked during her lifetime as well. Apart from the November 1994 documentary “Mother Teresa: Hells Angel” which aired in the UK on BBC TV as the very first attempt to explode the Mother Teresa myth, there was a harsh critique on conditions in her orphanages in India that was published in the Guardian of London (14 October 1996) where charges of gross neglect and physical and emotional abuse were made. The article alleged her own complicity and knowledge in the unacceptable practices that went on in her homes. (Chaterjee, Final Verdict)

SEE VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65JxnUW7Wk4

Dr. Robin Fox Speaks Out – TB Patients Not Separated

Dr. Robin Fox, editor of the international and highly esteemed medical journal the Lancet wrote how he visited the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1994 and he wrote in his own words how disturbed he was that TB patients were not separated neither were painkillers used along with a total neglect of diagnosis. Dr. Fox was professionally qualified to pronounce upon the standards of care. At that time Mother Teresa had been working Calcutta for forty five years and for nearly thirty of them had been favored with immense quantities of money and materials. [6]

Molly Moore – Babies Have Rashes And Smell Like Urine

The American journalist Molly Moore covering Bill and Hillary Clintons’ 1996 trip casually mentioned in the Washington Post the children smelling of urine when Hillary Clinton visited Mother’s orphanage. [7] She had to endure the reader’s wrath for her passing comment! Such was Mother Teresa’s extent of insane, uncritical, unreserved popularity. She was above reproach.

Mary Loudon – Teresa Ran A Concentration Camp

Mary Loudon, a volunteer in Calcutta testified that her initial impression of the Mother Teresa home for the dying is that it looked like a concentration camp where all the patients had shaved heads (In Indian culture long hair for women is essential and the women were humiliated with this stipulation), clothes were removed and any possessions confiscated. An open overall with stings was provided however no underwear was provided. Food was nutritionally inadequate and always the same. The patients were put on very rudimentary pallets or WWI type stretchers which the nuns made. The stretchers had green plastic type sheet (remember cotton is grown and spun in India and cheaply available in plenty) and small scratchy blankets. There was no garden or yard for leisure. Two rooms were crammed with fifty to sixty men in one small room and fifty to sixty women in another. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Needle Sharing

Needles were reused over and over and nuns rinsed hypodermic needles under the cold water tap. [8] When a nun was asked why she was not using boiling water to sterilize the needles she dismissively said “There’s no point, there’s no time”. A young boy of about fifteen was dying and an American doctor advised Mary Loudon that she had been trying to treat this boy and that he had a relatively simple kidney complaint that had got worse and worse because he hadn’t had antibiotics and he actually needed an operation. The nuns refused to take him to the hospital. He died unnecessarily as did many others including a new born baby girl called Maria who was admitted, the superior decided that she was not to be fed from a teated bottle as there was an epileptic child in the room; teats were passed around and not properly cleaned and the superior insisted that epilepsy was contagious. Maria was fed so badly that she died in two months. A woman was dying from TB and there was no intervention from the nuns. God decides who lives and who dies. The only painkillers used were aspirin and very rarely if the patient was lucky Brufen. Mere aspirin was given to patients with cancer, linctus to those with TB and glucose drips with old needles rinsed in cold water to those in comas. And everybody regardless of creed gets a good Catholic funeral. When young children or teenagers died because they were refused adequate treatment the usual refrain from the nuns would be gross indifference, ‘If we do it for one we have to do it for everybody’. Mother treated the Indian poor very differently than she did herself. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Dr. Preger Starts Alternative “Calcutta Rescue”

Dr. Jack Preger (OBE) another disillusioned Catholic volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity was also so appalled by what he witnessed that he founded his own charity called ‘Calcutta Rescue’. He wrote disparagingly and despairingly about the hypodermic needle sharing policy. Patients with TB were not isolated despite the highly contagious nature of the disease. Patients with Hepatitis B and C were not isolated either and the needle sharing would have made patients highly susceptible to even further contagious diseases. There is no justification for the needle sharing policy of Missionaries of Charity as they have stockpiles of needles, syringes and medical supplies that are lying unused. Even Prince Charles bought syringes and needles when he visited the Mother Teresa clinic. The order is so famous that they needn’t even have to ask and floods of steady supplies would stream in. Shockingly she would receive a bounty of donations of syringes and needles from the west but these were not used. [4] Tracey Leonard another appalled volunteer wrote ’the equipment supplied is usually IV sets, syringes and needles, catheters, scalpels, and boxes and boxes of gloves (none of which we ever seem to use)’. Whether Calcutta’s poor caught AIDS or Hepatitis C mattered little to Mother Teresa so long as her fame was on the ascent and an incredulous world believed whatever she uttered. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Jesuits And Volunteers Dismayed

However when it came to her own ailing health Mother Teresa was a little less complacent and the best doctors were flown in from overseas to have a pacemaker fitted by highly skilled heart surgeons and she recuperate in the post-cardiac care unit at the Woodlands Nursing home, the most exclusive private clinic in Calcutta. Preger wrote that the harvest of cash and kind and the ever increasing flow of volunteers (who could have given round the clock surveillance) she received could be used to upgrade her medical programs although she resisted the idea of developing them into full-fledged hospitals. Father Chetcuti a Jesuit volunteer had written that Mother Teresa had relied on donated stuff and was obsessed with freebies, a mindset which came from a lifetime of receiving shiploads of donations from all over the world. She was opposed to spending even small amounts to buy medicine or equipment to save lives in India. In two decades that passed until Mother Teresa’s death the care deteriorated. Father Chetcuti wrote his experiences in his commentary ‘Choosing to serve the Destitute’ chronicling his time as a volunteer at Nirmal Hriday her home for the dying back in the 1980s. [9]. Western volunteers were disturbed by Mother Teresa’s needle sharing policy but most of them kept quiet. A Dr. Mary Poplin from California had volunteered in Calcutta for a couple of months in 1996 and wrote that a young handicapped girl had a considerable lung congestion. There was no respiratory machine. The volunteers began to protest and one healthcare professional was so distressed that she left after a couple of days. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Muckrakers Rake Teresa

Sam Westmacott a British Freelance journalist worked as a volunteer at the home for the dying and the orphanage in Calcutta in 1996. She wrote in the Daily Telegraph about her experiences. ‘It is easy to understand the criticisms of Mother Teresa’s methods. Hygienic they were not. Rubber gloves were re-used after minimal sterilization and beyond basic medicines, there was little nursing equipment – not even for cleaning patients’ grotesque bedsores. Neither were the patients turned. Doctors and nurses had to learn their ‘loving, untrained way’. Perturbingly, many faithful volunteers remained staunchly loyal to Mother Teresa even after their experiences in Calcutta. One young volunteer and devout Christian stated that Missionaries of Charity was merely a ‘Band-Aid’ operation and even stated that a small local organization called Ankur Kala which she used to pass on her way to Mother House was doing a more useful job than the internationally famous order. However she remained a staunch fan never the less! Another British Doctor who had volunteered several times wrote that he was totally overwhelmed with being put in charge with little equipment and no trained staff. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Catholic Charities Denounce Teresa

Other Catholic charities working in India have changed their way of working and many of them are openly critical of Mother Teresa’s approach and neither CAFOD nor Christian Aid (a Catholic Charity) would consider funding her work. Leo Baysam the head of Christian Aid’s Southern Asia operations said ‘She makes no attempt at community health programmes for example. But people in the West carry on giving her money …. The long term care they offer children have no vision, no plan, no stimulation or education…’ nothing however detracted from Mother Teresa’s image, and to her, image was important, image was everything. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Sally Warner Blogs Against Teresa

Sally Warner, an Australian volunteer who worked in several of Teresa’s orphanages from 1997 onwards wrote that the nuns were very cruel, callous and there was severe neglect and widespread pilferage of toys by the nuns. Toys disappeared and some ended up locked in cupboards not to be used. A slum dweller woman named Baby Katun reported her frustration that when important Westerners arrived children would be fed and given new clothes only apparently to have them taken back after the delegation had left. Baby had been banned from sewing classes for being ‘cheeky’ as she had an argument with the Catholic nuns over Catholic prayers which she refused to participate in and she was allegedly slapped by a nun. Baby had given a statement ‘The Sisters are only there to feather their own nests. They are absolutely awful. Poor people are always shoed away from their doors. Every Christmas there are a lot of clothes that come from abroad. This is also the time that the Sisters get their yearly visits from their family members. Some of the clothes are distributed in the slum, but most of the clothes and goodies are sent away with the nuns’ relatives, sometimes they take away so much stuff that they would have to hire taxis (which are expensive in India). And, a lot of the food ration that is meant for the poor is also sold – the rice, the wheat, the maize – all sold to the local shops. All Catholic families got help of one kind or another at Prem Daan and at least one member from each of the dozen Catholic families there have been employed at Prem Daan. The families also get monthly food rations. A leper called Kamol testified that the brothers at the Titagarh leprosarium (Gandhiji Prem Niwas) were misappropriating materials meant for the poor. He complained that all he got was two kilos of bulgar wheat a month. Ms. Warner wrote that she was horrified that simple measures like soap and running water were not provided for persons working with babies and they had to wash their hands in a ‘plastic basin floating with soap scum’. A young boy called Anil had a foot deformity which could have been corrected but was needlessly left to suffer a life of disability. A girl named Princy with a cleft palate was eighteen months old was never even considered for surgery in spite of Warner’s pleas and will grow up with permanent disabilities which were all along avoidable. She witnessed child labor, a mute twelve year old girl doing children’s washing in an upstairs room. Like Sam Westmacott, she wrote that children were not picked up but were fed on their backs. In Madras (now Chennai) the nuns had a dedicated cook for themselves which served ‘delicious’ food whereas the children’s diet was inadequate. The Indian workers (not belonging to the order) worked hard and had inferior food. Warner was invited by the nuns to join them for meals and never to eat the workers’ food. She saw a superior nun severely slap two workers. The workers did not understand any other language Warner was told! All western volunteers were served a hearty and healthy breakfast to their stomachs content however Indians could only have breakfast if they attended mass. Poor Indians were barred from entering Mother House to talk to nuns. Warner wrote that the only pictures allowed on the orphanage walls were those of Teresa and Jesus. In Calcutta Warner wrote that there would be poor people begging foreigners outside Mother House after a major flood had struck surrounding villages and a nun stated ‘They know we never give anything from Mother House. ‘These orders are known to have come from Mother Teresa herself. In a room there were forty children with various disabilities – the room was only 10m by 10m. The small playground was locked and a plastic paddling pool which an Australian volunteer had donated in 1999 had disappeared soon afterwards. Teaching was minimum or non – existent. Nuns often didn’t know the age of the children. Warner complained repeatedly to the nuns and obviously no action was forthcoming as she went on a petition campaign to collect a large number of statements from Catholic volunteers asking for a certain minimum number of changes. She was routinely ignored and once even threatened. [10] (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Food Rotted While The Poor Starved

Richard Dean, a practicing General Practitioner in London went to Calcutta as a volunteer in 1980 described large quantities of food grain such as rice and wheat mostly gifted from the US, stored in the compound rotting. Every month there would be a mini riot and poor people would burst through the gates and grab some wheat and rice and go away. Shockingly, expired drugs ten to twenty years old were used on patients by the brothers who had no medical or nursing training. They would often use drugs without knowing what they were for. Needles were not replaced and the tips had become like fish hooks and it was a job to get the needle in and another to get it out causing unimaginable agony to the patients. It was agonizing for Richard Dean to witness all this abusive behavior. The brothers would however receive the very best treatment for themselves at the gleaming new American hospital. However when an impoverished rag picker appeared with the biggest hydrocoele (a fluid filled sac around the testicle, often first noticed as swelling of the scrotum) that Dean had ever seen and which quite literally came down from his groin to his knees, the brothers typically refused to finance his treatment retorting the similar refrain ‘If we do it for one, we have to do it for thousands.’ He described his experience with the Missionaries of Charity as horrific. He actually left the brothers towards the end of his stay and found some Hindu organizations who were doing excellent work with far less resources. He also left Catholicism. Dean wrote that Mother Teresa’s organization was at least partly responsible for him eventually leaving Catholicism and that even though he had been back to Calcutta a few times since 1980 he had never been back to see anybody from the Missionaries of Charity. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Priests Accuse Teresa Nuns Of Torture

One Kalighat priest, Debi Charan Haldar, who lived and worked close to the home did go and record in an interview to a local magazine stating that many Sisters were very harsh towards the patients at Nirmal Hriday and that almost every night he and others would hear heartrending cries from the old patients and that he suspected the Sisters were indulging in physical torture. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

False Claims And Exaggerations

It is essential to dispel the cult of lies that has become central to the propagation of the Teresa myth. Mother Teresa herself was the most responsible for the misrepresentation of her activities. She has been rightly described by author of the “Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice” by late author and Teresa critic Christopher Hitchens as a pious and religious hypocrite of the first degree. Mother Teresa arrogantly assumed that she had free holy license to lie because of her celebrity status and the power and authority of the worldly powers that backed her. Because of this she had enormous political power, affluence and influence. Mother Teresa had been habitually economical with the truth over the last half a century when talking about her operations. She always said that ‘journalists can do the work of God’. Kathy Ward of Ireland’s Sunday Independent stated ‘there is no doubt that she has sought publicity’. She played the media skillfully and with adept with so many decades of practice. Mother Teresa was one who worried the least about statistics. She repeatedly expressed that what matters is not how much work is accomplished but how much love is put into the work. Then one begs the question, why did she continuously bolstered and exaggerated figures and outright lie? She told the media ‘I have two hundred small babies in my hospital in Calcutta.’ She however did not have any hospitals in Calcutta. Some writers have made exaggerated and false claims about the charitable functions of the Missionaries of Charity including that they have 122 leprosy clinic. In matter of fact they only have a single leprosy clinic in Calcutta and that an open air one. Mother herself set the precedent for these false and gross exaggerations of her charitable activities. She stated that she spent 20,000 Indian Rupees a week just on food for the 59 centers. In 1977 Mother Teresa had four centers in Calcutta and presently her order has eight not counting her three large nunneries in the city. She also publically declared that she had 102 centers of natural family planning claiming that some 69,000 less babies were born because of this in Calcutta, then on another public occasion touted doubled the figures to 164,000 and the final number crunch came on Scottish Television where she stated that one million less babies were born! Mother Teresa declared that there are ten million people in Calcutta but that she was not aware of one woman among the very poor who has had an abortion. She stated this quite frequently during her lifetime harking back to her old theme, ’We always have space for another child’ , ‘Bring me all your unwanted children’ – her order does not have single maternity home or mother and baby unit. Mother’s heavily scientifically flawed natural contraception method study was headed by her own gynecologist Professor Ajay Ghosh. It is now quoted endlessly by the Catholic anti-contraception lobby as a valid study. Many of the women in the study actually became pregnant and went on to have abortions. Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar who was a co-author of the study remained close to Mother Teresa till her death. When she opened up a fertility center, Mother Teresa gave her a glowing testimonial. Ironically there is an ideological ban on fertility treatments in the dogmatic brand of Catholicism Mother Teresa subscribed to. The Vatican absolutely disallows them. However Mother was never averse to exceptions and reciprocation of services rendered to bolster her vested interests. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Adoption Scandal

The Missionaries of Charity used to charge an unofficial adoption fee and were quite open about placing their children with Catholic families often in exchange for large donations. Donations from adopting couples remain a large source of income for the organization. In 2013, thirteen of her orphanages recently closed in India for their inability to comply with the new state rules where orphanages must let single and gay couples adopt. [11] Previously the orphanages could decide who the child would be adopted by. In the small classroom prayer is also solely Catholic despite telling the world that she allowed the children the option to pray to their own Gods. In his book “The Final Verdict”, Aroup Chatterjee describes how he witnessed a very poor woman with children thrown out into the street by the nuns. After some agitation and anger expressed by local shopkeepers who took pity on the poor women the nuns reappeared at the door and said that they would only take care of her if she signed over the children to them (and the author safely assumes the children would then be adopted by a Catholic family) .The irate and incredulous mother though poor, refused to sign her children over to them. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

More False Claims

Mother Teresa also made outrageous and truly bizarre claims in front of the world media that she fed 9000 people a day when in fact the numbers were more like 150 a week and mostly exclusively those who had a family card which really translated as those families that had converted to Catholicism. This practice only applied in India and not in her homes in Western countries where this pernicious religious discrimination would never have been tolerated. She only took in 500 to 700 people a year despite claiming tens of thousands. False and exaggerated claims continued in succession ‘We never refuse a child’. She claimed that she taught thousands of children, however she did not have a single proper structural school for slum children or any kind of children. Many people assumed that she helped huge numbers with the vast assets and resources at her disposal. In actual matter of fact hardly a mere 12c was spent on each slum dweller per year. In all probability a portion of this measure figure was spent on upkeep of her religious community. A very small, minutiae portion went to the poor. Given all her grandiloquence and image making wouldn’t people naturally assume that Mother Teresa spent 101% of her money on the poorest of the poor? Questions have been raised pertaining to the vast fortune reported to the order of the Missionaries of Charity. Nothing is known what happens to the endless donations and prize monies Mother Teresa received. Mother Teresa had told Sudeb Roy Chaudauri, a Calcutta journalist shortly before receiving the Nobel that ‘I shall spend this (Nobel of $ 160,000 or so which included $ 110,000 prize money) for lepers and for housing for the poor’. No housing for the poor was seen except for 50 Catholic families in Hatgachia and no new leprosy facilities were built in India either. It cannot be emphasized enough that if you were Catholic, you were treated differently. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Did Her Money Go To The Vatican?

The lion’s share of donations actually went to the upkeep of nuns, brothers and training novices and religious homes such as nunneries and monasteries. The orders main bank is the Vatican Bank, formerly known as IOR (Institute for religious work which is secretive). The Vatican was always of a recipient of the countless millions collected. Even though Mother Teresa always emphasized that her organization was a strictly Indian one, in 1965 it ceased being governed by the Calcutta Archdiocese and came under direct governance of the Vatican in all probability for financial purposes. This unknown but substantial sum was being deposited with the Vatican Bank with its dubious and murky connections. Mother Teresa’s order does not keep any public accounts except in Britain where the laws are strict. In India, charities are not obliged to publish their accounts but most of the others do except Missionaries of Charity who are exceptionally secretive and aggressively protective over their accounts. She declared as much as she had to the relevant government departments knowing that the public would not have access to her accounts. Mother Teresa was always fiercely loyal to her backers, the largest of which were corrupt financiers and dubious dictators and she never revealed their identities. She would conceal their identities by saying the money was coming from God himself.

“We Are Religious, Religious, Religious”

Please bear in mind that Mother Teresa’s global income was more than enough to outfit several first class clinics in Bengal. The real description of her institutions was that it was merely the propagation of a cult based on death, suffering and subjection. The decision not to develop proper outfitted clinics with doctors, nursing and professional care and equipment lay with Mother Teresa herself who stated that ‘we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not nurses, and we are not social workers. We are religious, religious, and religious’. In the daily life of the Missionaries of Charity more importance is given to prayer than to actual work. ‘We are not social workers’ Mother Teresa would say ‘We are first and foremost contemplatives’. Mother Teresa admonished all priests who engaged in community work: ‘I say to all priests: ‘You have not become priests to be social workers’. Kalighat her famous hospice for Calcutta’s dying destitute is very small with fewer than a hundred places. She had no involvement with the poor of Kalighat, she did not even run a soup kitchen there. Teresa order does not offer any facilities for the extremely unfortunate poor women and children in Kalighat. This place was the first of many establishments and it was here that the film ‘Something Beautiful for God’ was made and bought her international fame. She rarely visited any of her other homes in Calcutta for at least the last two decades of her life as she spent half the year abroad as the Pope’s political ambassador where she spent most of her time on religious and administrative work. She never compromised religion for the sake of charity. Her loyalties were never divided when it came to advancing papal pelf and power over the world. It was in the 1970s that she began spending the vast majority of her time abroad and took on a massive international expansion programme – Calcutta did not feature in that programme. Much of her international travel was for religious and diplomatic rather than charitable reasons. She refused to make any of works of her particular brand of charity into an institution. She refused to have hospitals or employ a full-time doctor unless they gave free service. She refused all sophisticated types of equipment in her homes even the simplest microscope which could rapidly diagnose certain sicknesses, unless of course it came to herself. When she was ailing with heart problems she had more than fifteen thousand dollars of the most advanced and sophisticated medical aids and equipment in her room at any one time! (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Death Bed Baptisms

In January 1992 after heart surgery at Scripps clinic, CA Mother Teresa made a lengthy speech to an enraptured audience of doctors and nurses and gloated about secretive conversions of her patients in India. She told a predominantly Christian captive audience that she had ‘cheated’ Heaven as no one had died without receiving the special Baptism ticket for St. Peter as she called it. She stated that ‘We ask them, the dying person if they want a blessing by which their sins will be forgiven and they can receive God. They have never refused’. She boasted that 29,000 had died in Kalighat from the time it began in 1952. Mother Teresa surreptitiously taught the sisters to baptize those who were dying. The sisters were to ask each person in danger of death if he wanted a ‘ticket to Heaven’ An affirmative reply was to mean consent to Baptism. The sister was then to pretend that she was just cooling the person’s forehead with a wet cloth while in fact she was baptizing him quietly saying the necessary words. Secrecy was important so that it would not come to be known that the sisters were baptizing Hindus. Susan Shields who wrote about this issue and who was known as Sister Virgin left the order in 1989 as she grew more uncomfortable with the deceit, pretense and hypocrisy. (This issue of death bed conversions and Catholic baptisms is also covered in Wikipedia under Mother Teresa criticisms and controversies). Dead bodies were not treated with respect by the Missionaries of Charity. There was no refrigeration. As per Hemley Gonzalez he witnessed dead bodies in the morgue be given Catholic last rites. In February 1992 when Princess Diana visited Kalighat her personal protection officer Ken Wharfe had to do a security check of the morgue. He wrote ‘The mortuary attached to the hospice run by Missionaries of Charity is the most appalling place I have visited in my life. Indeed the hospice itself was effectively a mortuary. Tracy Leonard describes the morgue as a place ‘where the line between the living and the dead was sometimes blurred. She recounts an experience where she found a living (albeit just) person in the morgue and then in surreal drama bringing him out of it to the room. He had been wrongly diagnosed by a Brother! (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Better Charities Got Less Recognition

Aroup Chatterjee in his formidable treatise on Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict goes into great detail explaining how the Ramakrishna Mission a Hindu based charity does phenomenal rescue and outreach work with a fraction of the resources man and media power and publicity. He goes onto explain and educate readers that there are around two hundred charities operating in Calcutta alone and that Missionaries of Charity is one of the most insignificant in terms of relief work despite its international fame, acclaim and fabulous resources. The quality of care and the array of structures in place that the majority of these alternative charities have for the most part is outstanding and their track record during the many floods, famines and bouts of starvation resulting from natural calamities is simply astounding and astonishingly impressive. Disastrous floods struck West Bengal in August 1996. Many of the suburbs of Calcutta were also submerged bringing immense difficulties to the poor there. Yet again the Missionaries of Charity were utterly inactive. Relief work as brought to the victims by other organizations, primarily the Rama Krishna mission and Bharat Sevashram. The Rama Krishna Mission issued a statement asking for children orphaned by the floods to be referred to the center’s orphanage in Barrackpur, a Calcutta suburb. Although Mother Teresa never lifted a finger during the 1995 nor 1996 floods she mentioned working flat out during the Calcutta floods. This may have been true on a single, solitary occasion but this is definitely not the usual nature of the work of the Missionaries of Charity, these were gross exaggerations. During the fifty years that Mother Teresa was doing charity worked in Calcutta there were about a dozen very major floods in Calcutta with hundreds to thousands dying on each occasion and countless millions homeless. The city itself was flooded quite a few times, paralyzing urban life and badly affecting the poor of the city. Only during one of those floods did Mother Teresa offer some kind of help. It is typical image making and media and self-projection that one occasion should be symbolic of her work when truthfully and in all fairness her lack of inaction during the other floods and tragedies should receive emphasis given the grandiosity of her worldwide image as a towering repository of humanity and boundlessness and compassion. It should not be oversighted that Mother Teresa when describing her operations in India never told the world of the less than basic nature of the standard of care. She disguised this sordid reality in the lingo of ‘love’ and ‘beautiful’. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Where Was Mother Teresa?

In Uttarkashi at the foothills of the Himalayas where an earthquake had killed 1500 people in October 1991 the government of India came in for some sturdy criticism for being tardy in spending the $ 246 million dollars it had received from the World Bank for the rebuilding of Latur, but nobody commented on the inaction on the part of the Missionaries of Charity whose fabulous assets were not bought to help in any way. During the earthquake on September 30, 1993 in the western state of Maharashtra in one of the biggest natural disasters in the history of India, 8000 people died and five million lost their homes and all their possessions. Over two hundred NGOs rushed to help and many are working to this day as the rebuilding of a large district both physically and emotionally can take decades. The Indian government put in a special grant of 8 Billion rupees. Missionaries of Charities contribution?? You guessed it! When the plague struck India in 1994, Mother Teresa again had no involvement whatsoever during or after the plague with treatment or prevention. In December 1984 when three and half thousand mainly poor people and families died and more than two hundred thousand maimed and injured in the Bhopal from inhaling toxic gas leaked (gross negligence) by the Multi National giant Union Carbide, Mother flew in and was surrounded by angry and grieving relatives of the many victims. The audience was incredulous when she uttered the insensitive and most inappropriate and callous words ‘Forgive, I say forgive’ at the climax of such an immeasurable tragedy and promptly left. Bhopal Gas leak was the single largest industrial disaster evet to have occurred. I believe she merely gave out Catholic religious medallions to the survivors! There was no dearth of horrendous death, suffering, injury and misery and many families and individuals suffered the effects and symptoms of the chemical fallout for decades. Her long list of absenteeism from very real and tangible tragedies, epidemics and natural calamities and disasters on a colossal scale is notable and considerable. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Money From Dictators And Thieves

Missionaries of Charity have never been held accountable for and rarely demonstrated clear transparency for the literally hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars they have received over the past four decades ostensibly for the “poorest for the poor”. Teresa unhesitatingly and most willingly accepted huge amounts of money from convicted felons such as Charles Keating of the “Savings and Loans Scandal” to the tune of at least, 1.25-1.4 million dollars. Judge Lance Ito who conducted Keating’s trial, concluding with the inevitable sentence was simply astonished and dumfounded when the “saintly” nun wrote to him requesting leniency for Charles Keating calling him a “friend of the poor” and implored Judge Ito to therefore do what Jesus would have done by demonstrating clemency. [12] District Deputy Attorney Paul Turley wrote back to her in a personal response, a respectful but detailed explanation of Keating’s crimes and the undue hardships he had foisted on thousands of individual investors whom he had defrauded out of many hundreds and thousands of dollars. He promptly exhorted that Mother Teresa should do what Jesus would have done, namely not keep the fruits of crime and return the money to its rightful owners. She never responded. It is interesting to note here that she never intervened to assist any others outside her vested interests, in any other trial in spite of so many other legitimate civil and criminal cases as she considered this outside of her religious domain. However at times she said that she wanted to open a special jail for doctors who performed abortions, so she was not against selective custodial sentencing per se. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

She also accepted donations from a legion of dictators, murderers and thieves such as the infamous “Baby Doc” Duvalier” or Jean-Claud Duvalier [13] whose own corrupt lifestyle was luxurious thanks to revenue from his participation in the drug trade and practice of selling dead Haitian citizen’s cadavers overseas. She had flown to Haiti to accept the “Legion of Honor” and a grant from the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti and in return lavished praise and encomium on the reputedly murderous crime family. Robert Maxwell the infamous British tycoon and fraudster who milked his employees pensions funds to the tune of hundreds and millions of pound had many fundraisers for her. She also accepted undisclosed sums of money from a devout Catholic called Robert Hanson, an FBI agent who received at least one million pounds from the KGB as a spy. [14] Ultra-right wing hawkish war hungry and powerful politicians such as Robert McNamara the US Defense secretary was one of Mother Teresa’s consistent and strongest advocates in her bid for the Nobel Peace prize recommending her over the years on three different occasions. The facts that sinners had presumed that giving to Mother Teresa would somehow absolve or reduce their sins helped Mother Teresa through the years. Many of Mother Teresa’s friends were racists. Her friend Rutelli, the then Mayor of Rome had said he wanted to rid the city of Gypsies by 2000. Time and time again the rich, the powerful, the vicious, the bigoted and the exploiter rallied around her. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Mother Teresa had claimed that her organization cannot work for the rich, nor accept any money for the work they do and that her Missionaries of Charity had to be a free service to the poor. The fact of the matter is that the Missionaries of Charity have for decades been the recipients of the extraordinary largess of governments, large foundations, corporations and private citizens, including wealthy Hindu families. She always insisted on having the very best of treatment for her own ailing health at the Birla Heart Research Institute or the Woodlands Nursing Home, one of the best clinics in Calcutta where there were no fees charged to her at all. Moreover strict orders were given to volunteers not to visit her at these fine clinics and hospitals as the order presumably did not wish them to witness the vast gulf between care that she gave and received! Mother Teresa did not deliver at the basic primary level either. With all her funds she could have looked after all the needs of all the poor in Calcutta, such as running a massive soup kitchen, or a primary school in each of Calcutta’s slums. Ninety five percent or more of the buildings of Missionaries of Charity have been donated either by governments or the Church. Mother Teresa has gone on record stating “We don’t accept government grants. We don’t accept Church donations. We depend solely on Providence.” Mother Teresa took money and property from the Calcutta Corporation where her home in Dum Dum, Calcutta is also built on land donated by the West Bengal government. She took large donations from notable and ultra-wealthy Hindu business magnates and even sent her nuns for free training to Hindu charities and non-Catholic charities. In Madras two corporate donors MRJ Tyres and Ashok Leyland donated a lot of the foodstuff. She had no hesitation in twisting and bending facts in order to promote her fiery, intolerant brand of dogmatic Catholicism. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

More Obsessed With The Unborn

Mother Teresa had more of an obsessive preoccupation with unborn children than with living children. She had a dogmatic, fundamentalist opposition to abortion (calling mothers murderers who aborted their fetuses), contraception and divorce. Most of her global agenda was traversing the world, especially the US and Rome where she was literally resident more so than in Calcutta, aggressively courting and lobbying politicians on the world stage who espoused anti-abortion views and pushing the Catholic agenda. Her entire award speech on the occasion of her winning the Nobel peace prize in 1979 was for the most part a vituperative tirade against abortion. Mother Teresa was the emissary of a highly politicized papacy. Her world travels were not the mere wanderings of a pilgrim but highly determined and focused political agendas. In contrast Mother Teresa never spoke out about the practice of child labor as this would be too’ political’ for her. There are at least two dozen organizations in India working to eliminate the ancient tradition of child labor and child slavery. Further Mother Teresa’s involvement with civil or criminal trials that suited her ambitious political agenda can be demonstrated by the fact that she flew to the USA to file a ‘friend- of –the- court’ brief for a Mr. Alexander Loce who had been convicted of trespassing into an abortion clinic to stop his estranged ex-fiancée from having an abortion. Little did Mr. Loce know he would have a ‘living saint’ as an ally! There had been a dire earthquake in Latur, India killing some 1,500 people and causing untold damage and devastation but again the ‘Living Saint’ had more pressing engagements! (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Her lack of respect and encroachment on women’s rights can be observed in her stance in 1971 during the course of the aggressive war in Bangladesh when mass gang rapes of mainly Hindu women and young girls occurred. Mother Teresa implored the hapless victims not to abort the seed of the invader and violator. She took her fundamentalist dogma to such an insensitive extreme under such tragic circumstances. Thousands of helpless female victims including a mere eight year old girl who was slit, were reportedly used like ‘cigarette’ machines by the invading soldiers and repeatedly brutally raped until they died. Out of many thousands at least fifty of the babies that were born out of these tragic circumstances were adopted by the Missionaries of Charity and in all probability placed in Catholic homes. Mother Teresa’s refugee camp was in Calcutta’s outskirts by the airport and played a minor part in the Bangladesh war relief. Most of the other organizations were helping at the border with Bangladesh where the action was. The fact that her camp was near the airport immensely bolstered her publicity as American senators and dignitaries and journalists from the UN and the WHO made her camp a compulsory and sometimes the only stop when coming to assess the civil war in Bangladesh on the ground. In twenty five years Mother Teresa had not made more than three trips to Bangladesh, the world’s second poorest country and a twenty minute flight from Calcutta. Mother Teresa even opposed abortion out of rape on a political platform. Mother Teresa and the Pope refused to accede that artificial contraception should be available to women under any circumstances including after rape. The Pope had made similar strenuous appeals in Bosnia to scores of raped and traumatized forcibly impregnated hapless women not to abort the seed of the violator. They had such an implacable extreme ideological opposition that the Vatican cancelled their token $2500 annual contribution to UNICEF because it was offering the morning after pill to women who had been raped in central African refugee camps. However, for all her moralizing, when Princess Diana divorced Mother Teresa expressed her support of the divorce in spite of her otherwise dogmatic opposition in Ireland. She expressed no opposition to the royal family of Monaco divorces who were Catholics. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Dubious Political Alliances

Teresa was a non-honoree Vatican citizen and simultaneously an Indian citizen which is illegal and used to vote up until the 1970s and influenced her nuns to vote for the Congress Party with whom many believe the Vatican is aligned. She was also given an honorary US citizenship in 1996. However when it came to friends in high places such as her strong political connections to the Congress Party she endorsed (by stating that there are more jobs and the people never seemed happier) the harsh Emergency of 1975 to 1977 when her close friend and ally PM Indira Gandhi suspended democracy and civil rights in India and censored the media and incarcerated many political prisoners who opposed her repressive tactics and draconian and anti-democratic measures. It is ironic that Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi who was the de facto ruler of the Congress party even though officially he did not hold political office ran amok of basic human rights during the Emergency on a coercive campaign of forced sterilization of Indian males. Many of these men had not even been married. Sanjay Gandhi also razed homes of the poor in his obsession to beautify Delhi. Mother Teresa voiced no opposition to these flagrant violations and human rights abuses which she was well aware of. Mother Teresa was very well connected to Jyoti Basu West Bengal’s former chief minister whom she gleaned special favors from and she retained powerful allies in the bureaucratic system both at state and Centre levels. Bureaucrats hesitated to ask uncomfortable questions especially about her funds as they were fearful of her political connections especially her powerful friends within the Congress party which was extensively influential at the time. (Chaterjee / Hitchens) Mother Teresa also reportedly defended a pedophile priest, Fr Donald MacGuire who was convicted of molesting boys in federal and state courts and is serving a twenty five year federal prison sentence. [15] The Vatican is a leading offender in the pandemic child sex abuse scandal. There has been prevalent ritualistic abuses and extensive child pornography ‘farm’ of 2,500 children including a one year old boy in Goa by a Catholic priest called Freddie Peat. Of course no compensation is offered by the Church to its poor victims in the Third World. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Teresa Used And Abused Calcutta

Christopher Hitchens wrote in his critical commentary ‘The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice’ stated that with all the funds at her command Teresa could have built the finest teaching hospital in Calcutta. However, Mother Teresa and her allies had a vested interest in portraying Calcutta as a stone age and primitive city to give the impression that her primitive and substandard charitable functions and sites are appropriate and sufficient given the squalor and backdrop of Calcutta as justification. She used Calcutta and denigrated the city and the Hindu religion that gave her so much. The order built their Tangra home for the mentally ill destitute in Calcutta with the building (built for her) donated by a local businessman Bimal Jain. The pumping house for the home was donated by Navin Khilani. The land was given rent free by the government. Even her first trip abroad in 1960 was sponsored and paid for by the late G.D. Birla, the wealthy Hindu business magnate. Mother exploited institutions in Calcutta and its tradition of tolerance towards all religions and proved herself to actually be an obstacle for other charities in the city in getting funds from abroad. She also often sent her residents from Prem Daan to Calcutta’s National Medical College and the Pavlov Hospital for anti-TB medication. Mother Teresa took for free from other charities of Calcutta such as the children’s charity CRY where her Sisters were trained for free. She used the mental handicap charity where she sent some of her charges for the day everyday as her order did not provide any training or rehabilitation facilities in her orphanage. The children were bought to and from her orphanage in the Kendra’s sole ambulance when all the ambulances donated to Mother Teresa by Indian doctors and others were being used as taxi services to chauffeur nuns, brothers and novices to Church or other religious homes. [16] There is even a documented picture of one of the ambulances filled with live chickens for a feast on Mothers birthday. The side panels inside the ambulances were reportedly removed and replaced with seats for the nuns and brothers to sit! (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Mother Teresa even took money from an orphanage called Nav Jeevan to accept one of their older children who could not be adopted! Mother Teresa requested Anandalok, a fledging Indian charity that provides amongst other services cardiac intensive care to the poor for a nominal charge to provide funds for one of her charges who required treatment for leukemia at a hospital run by Christians. Only a year before Mother Teresa had snubbed Anandalok charity who had invited her to preside over an artificial limb donation ceremony for poor handicapped villagers. She lied and called out sick and ditched at the last moment to go and get an award in Delhi by her cohorts in the ruling Congress Party, her Catholic co-religionist Sonia Gandhi. Her priorities were always political opportunities for the Church and Vatican to gain greater access to the corridors of power. Mr.D.K. Saraf the head of Anandalok also related how in February 1996 when a large number of shacks adjoining Mother’s Prem Daan home burnt down and the slum dwellers did not even think of going to her for assistance but instead came to the fledgling charity Anandalok which undertook the rebuilding of the shacks and also bought pots and pans etc. for them. The nuns merely watched as the charity workers from Anandalok worked through the day rebuilding. Mr. Saraf stated that he was surprised and amused Mother Teresa asked a poor charity like Anandalok compared to her financial strength for money. However he opined ‘But I am quite bitter the West (and so many Indians), make such a fuss about her. Can you tell me what exactly she is doing?’ She gave credence to the unfair, undeserved reputation and widely held belief and perception in the Western world that Calcutta was a mere charnel house full of poverty and dying people on the streets and that she and her roving band of ‘angels’ were the sole saviors of the city’s impoverished inhabitants. She in fact indirectly tarnished Calcutta’s reputation and lost the city countless billions in tourism by continuously and consistently projecting it as a city of poverty, death and decay in order to propagate her own cult of suffering, death and misery which she immensely profited by. Whitman lucidly describes how Mother Teresa dealt with ingratiating Indians who did not matter- she had little time and barely masked her contempt for them. Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread. She said that suffering of the poor was very beautiful as it bought them closer to God. This theory was never applied to her when she was ill. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Teresa Treated Indians Differently Than Westerners

Mother Teresa was philosophically opposed to spending even small amounts of money to buy medicine or equipment to save lives in India. There was astronomical difference between the standards of care in her homes in the West and those in India. Conditions were so stark that even those prone to elevate Mother Teresa bought out the facts at time. In an authorized biography Kathryn Spink who admires Mother Teresa notes ‘There were those trained doctors and nurses who came to work there on a voluntary basis who were horrified at the failure to observe the kind of fundamental rules of hygiene that would protect the sisters from infection and the patients from contaminating each other. “Further the ‘No Family’ cases was always rigidly applied. Mother Teresa uncompromising tone and message was ‘If you had lied to us that you did not have any family, so without a family you shall remain during such time that you are under our holy roof’. Visits by friends or family were not allowed. It is interesting to note at this point that a human resources expert commented that in pure financial terms alone, the money Mother Teresa saved every year through her volunteers in Calcutta amounted to millions of dollars. She refused to hire doctors and nurses unless and until they volunteered. Hardly any of the Westerners have even heard of the Ramakrishna Mission, a Hindu based charity and the country’s biggest charity that does immense and outstanding relief work for the poor with comparably less resources and publicity. On the other hand Calcutta Rescue which was started as an alternative charity by a dissatisfied and disgusted Teresa volunteer is better known because it was started by a Westerner. Mother Teresa built up a distorted image with repeated inferences and comments that it was she who taught charity to Indians. ’We thought charity was for Christians only’. (Chaterjee / Hitchens)

Conclusions

In summary it is easy to see why Mother Teresa was not a saint but merely a fundamentalist Catholic (when asked, she flatly stated she would have sided with the Church authorities against Galileo!) with a global domination political agenda, taking every opportunity to promote and propagate her dogmatic and rigid faith and her political ally and master namely the Pope and the Vatican. Visiting and bringing Catholicism to people are seen by the order as the most vital functions of a Teresa nun worldwide. She was not small, humble and pious but immensely rich and powerful. She did not like ‘institutions’ that offered better care to people but she made strenuous efforts to develop her order into a world-wide institution, including stations in Islamic countries. Missionaries of Charity was a Catholic Empire and its founder strove extremely hard to expand it at any cost. She was the grand officiate and administrator overseeing and building ever increasing tight knitted networks with religious authorities, worldwide political leaders and governments to open more and more convents and homes. She even attempted to meddle in Indian politics and democratic political processes by using her position and leverage to bring pressure to bear on the Indian government. Image making aside she was a very powerful and influential person who could have done immense sincere good works with her wealth and resources that genuine charities could only imagine. The transgressions of the order are so humongous and inveterate that there would be sufficient evidence to build a dossier of virulent and systematic human, child and women’s and religious rights abuses against Missionaries of Charity in orders of magnitude not to mention donor fraud and financial irregularities. The message is loud and clear, namely a clarion call to mankind for zero tolerance for high crimes and pandemic corruption in the appealing garb of religiosity and piety.

WORKS SITED

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[2] http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/10/forbes-india-mother-teresa-charity-critical-public-review.html

[3] https://www.facebook.com/missionariesofcharity/

[4] http://www.deeshaa.org/shields-teresas-house-of-illusions/

[5] http://www.srai.org/mother-teresa-where-are-her-millions/

[6] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/news/09/0907/teresa.shtml

[7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/03/29/a-tour-of-newer-delhi/13dd1844-8eaf-44f7-b197-2aef691b345a/

[8] http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/human-rights/2014/04/squalid-truth-behind-legacy-mother-teresa

[9] http://www.amazon.com/Choosing-Serve-Destitute-Personal-Account/dp/1872245196

[10] http://sallywarner.blogspot.in/

[11] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/10/09/447191942/mother-teresas-missionaries-of-charity-says-no-more-adoptions-in-india