Mother Teresa’s halo

For Westerners, one figure that is associated with Calcutta more than anyone else is Mother Teresa. This tiny woman, born into an Albanian family in 1910, felt God’s calling and left everything behind to become a very passionate missionary. She joined the Sisters of Loreto 1928 in Ireland, and soon afterwards arrived in Calcutta. She then had a vision in which God apparently told her to found her own order, and take care of the poorest. She followed the divine command, and from 1950 the ‚Missionaries of Charity‘, as the new order was named, started to care for the poorest of the poor – of which there are many in the most sprawling urban conglomerate on earth. It’s really impressive to see how rapidly her order expanded. As of 2012, it counts more than 4500 sisters and has more than 700 active houses in 133 countries. Mother Teresa herself continued to live an extremely humble and simple life. In the so called Motherhouse in Calcutta, where she lived until her death in 1997, you can see her room – with spartan furniture and a cross and a crown of thorns on the wall. She received the Nobel peace price in 1979, and was beatified by the pope in 2003 – this means the Catholic Church credits one miracle to Mother Teresa. If they can find another one, the Vatican will make her a saint.

It was a very informative visit to the Motherhouse, and I enjoyed the solemn atmosphere there, with the sisters quietly moving around in their traditional white cotton saris with the blue lines, and the beautiful singing of their choir floating from the chapel through the entire building. In the loud and chaotic city that is Calcutta, they definitely manage to create a moment of peace.

But this is not how this story ends.

I had heard about criticism about her work before, and knew that they were an extremely conservative order. Mother Teresa had used every political platform during her life to lobby against abortion, even her nobel peace price acceptance speech was focused on abortion, which she described as „the biggest destroyer of world peace“. She also strongly opposed contraception – while in line with the Vatican, this attitude is hard to understand given that she seemingly tried to alleviate mass poverty and cared for AIDS patients in her hospices. I read with some disbelief on the sisters‘ prayer sheet in the chapel in the Motherhouse, that they pray daily for God’s mercy for ‚couples who use artifical family planning‘, along with ‚youth who are into rock music‘. I hope we can still be saved from hell.

Somewhat intrigued how this little nun managed to become so world famous, I started reading about her. And it didn’t take much to stir some doubts about this saint on the waiting list. Actually, the more I read, the more shocked I became. In the picture that several investigative journalists have painted of Mother Teresa and her super-order, the halo doesn’t shine so brightly.

Walter Wüllenweber, a journalist for the German magazine stern, asked in his arcticle that appeared 1998 on the first anniversary of her death: ‚Mother Teresa, where are your millions?‘ In fact, the order is presumed to receive more donations than any other charitable foundation. Yet, the money does not get used for the purpose people donated it for. Despite the reportedly dire situation in the hospices that are not even close to modern medical standards, the order refused to buy new medical equipment, and sisters have also been discouraged from obtaining more than a very basic medical education. Dr. Robin Fox, former chief editor of the prestigious medical journal ‚The Lancet‘, has described the conditions at one of Mother Teresas homes for the dying that he visited as ‚haphazardous‘. The prevailing thought there seems to be that prayers are more powerful than medicine. Mother Teresa has also been harshly critized for her apparent embracing of suffering. She said in several interviews that suffering is a gift from god that allows you to participate in the suffering of Christ. In line with this attitude, dying patients in her hospices did not receive strong painkillers that modern palliative medicine would consider appropriate and ethical.

Susan Shields was a Missionaries of Charity sister for 11 years before she resigned. She called it ironic that the world thinks Mother Teresa was fighting poverty while she actually perpetuated it. In response to the analogy that one should teach a man how to fish so he can sustain himself in the future, Mother Teresa is quoted to have stated that the poor are too weak to hold a fishing rod. So she preferred giving fish. And sometimes not even that. Despite the reputation that her organization is one of the biggest charities in Calcutta, the help they provide is dwarfed by projects other charities run there. Mother Teresa was a media star, that’s for sure. I guess she provided a good conscience for the rest of the world that someone is helping the poor, so you don’t have to do it yourself. It’s convenient that way, and no need to check what’s actually happening on the ground.

All the property they own is given for free to the sisters, they even fly for free, run their soup kitchens with donated food and the help of volunteers. With a misunderstood and somewhat fanatic commitment of poverty, the millions that people donate for specific causes hardly get touched – but still the order continues to collect donations around the world. The money is not abused – according to many stories such as Susan Shields‘, it is simply not used at all. ‚Mother Teresa was obsessed with helping the poor by the simplest means possible‘, says Shields, and wanted to proof that she can help the poor without money, simply through God’s help.

What happens to all the money? Great Britain is the only country where the order is forced to lay their books open – and they show that 90% of the donations are transferred into Vatican bank accounts. And what happens there is so secret, that ’not even God is allowed to know‘, as Walter Wüllenweber writes. The only thing that’s for sure is that this money doesn’t reach the ones it was intended for – the poorest of the poor, that the order vowed to care for.

Somewhat sobering to find out that not even Mother Teresa’s halo is for real.

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If you are interested, here are some articles and books for further reading:

Fox, Robin (1994), „Mother Teresa’s care for the dying“, The Lancet 344 (8925): 807.

Christopher Hitchins: The Missionary Position – Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.

Susan Shields, „Mother Teresa’s House of Illusions – How She Harmed Her Helpers As Well As Those They ‘Helped’” Homepage of the Council for secular humanism – The article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 18, No 1

An English translation of the German article by Walter Wüllenweber that appeared in stern 1998 can be found here (sorry this site is a bit messy)

Für deutsche Leser gibt es hier noch einen interessanten Blogartikel zum gleichen Thema:

http://rassloff.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/mutterteresa/

Ein pdf des Artikels im stern von 1998 findet ihr hier:

Walter Wüllenweber, „Nehmen ist seliger als geben“, stern, 10/09/1998