Canadian scientists will present an exposé of Mother Teresa

· Sin, Catholics, Vestibule, Religious Mafia

A study that may well provoke a minor scandal was published by the University of Montreal in Canada. Historians argue that the famous Mother Teresa of Calcutta was not nearly as holy a woman as the Catholic Church claims.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, an Albanian by nationality, entered the monastic order of the Irish Sisters of Loreto at the age of 18, in 1928. In 1931 she took the name Teresa, later was sent to Calcutta to teach at St. Mary’s girls’ school, and in the 1940s began to head a monastic organization that created shelters, schools, and hospitals for the poor and the critically ill.

The organization operates to this day in 111 countries worldwide, with hundreds of branches. In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2003—four years after her death—she was beatified. Teresa’s name became a byword and almost synonymous with infallible mercy… but does this correspond to reality? In the March issue of the journal Studies in Religion, an article by Canadian researchers will appear, who examined 502 different documents about Teresa’s life and work; after eliminating a number of duplicates, the scholars obtained 287 written testimonies that paint a less unambiguous picture.

Thus, testimonies of doctors were found that the operating shelters often had an extremely deplorable condition, were set up in poorly suited premises, were dirty, and the sick did not receive adequate nutrition and painkillers. Maybe this is due to a lack of funds and a desire to help as many suffering people as possible?

The documentary evidence does not make it so easy to accept this explanation. The financial flows that passed through Teresa’s foundation went through bank accounts about which, as the researchers claim, nothing is known. It is unknown who transferred how much money, where it was directed and how it was spent — during the Bhopal disaster (the largest industrial disaster, surpassing Chernobyl in the number of victims) or floods in India, the foundation did not transfer money directly. Which, of course, does not say anything yet, but the unpleasant discoveries do not end there.

The researchers found a statement by Teresa, cited by journalist Christopher Hitchens: “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor bear their burden, suffering like Christ. This suffering enriches the world.” Taking this quote into account, say the authors of the new study, it is quite possible that the severity of conditions in the shelters was not at all due to a lack of funds from the foundation. Mother Teresa held extremely conservative views and, for example, opposed abortion even when pregnancy resulted from rape. But if all this is true, then how did Mother Teresa manage to acquire such an impeccable reputation for everyone else?

The history of beatification, the enrollment among the blessed, is also not all smooth. For example, a miracle is described of the healing of a woman who suffered from severe abdominal pain and was helped by a medallion with Teresa’s image; for the Vatican this was an indisputable argument, but doctors had an alternative opinion. According to it, what helped was not the medallion, but the drugs used to treat an ovarian cyst and tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, as is known, was only overcome with the advent of antibiotics, so this explanation, at the very least, seems more convincing compared to an a priori unreproducible miracle.

Other criticism

It should be noted that Mother Teresa was also criticized during her lifetime. For example, for receiving an award from dictator Duvalier, who ruled Haiti unchallenged and carried out a policy of mass repression. Or for receiving donations from businessmen with dubious reputations. In 1991, a report appeared in the German magazine Stern that only 7% of donations to Teresa’s foundation went to charity, but no one has been able to bring final clarity to the accounts and financial flows.

The most authoritative and substantiated criticism may be that from Robert Fox, editor of the medical journal Lancet (one of the most prestigious medical publications in the world). Fox noted back in 1996 that the foundation has many volunteers, but practically does not involve doctors and, apparently, engages in a rather hectic imitation of healthcare than real assistance in the modern sense.

Christopher Hitchens

The journalist Christopher Hitchens, mentioned in the Canadian study, is known as the most ardent critic of Mother Teresa. A staunch atheist, secular humanist, and anticlerical, he wrote in 1995 the book The Missionary Position: Mother Tereas in Theory and Practice, which many critics called “a dirty but necessary work” (a review in The Sunday Times, for example). The arguments against the famous founder of the charitable foundation were then almost the same — questionable quality of medical care, financial opacity, the spread of religious radicalism.

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