No role model

So Mother Teresa’s life was dedicated to selflessly relieving the suffering of others? Nikki Galuszka (letters January 15) could not have chosen a more inappropriate role model.

In 2013 Serge Larive´e and Genevie`ve Che´nard, of the University of Montreal, and Carole Se´ne´chal, of the University of Ottawa, published a report entitled ‘The Dark Side of Mother Teresa,’ based on the analysis of 287 documents covering 96 per cent of the literature on her life and work.

In an article entitled ‘Mother Teresa: Anything but a saint,’ on the official website of the University of Montreal, they criticised Teresa’s “rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts and her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received”.

The researchers concluded that the nun was generous with blessings and prayers, but very tight-fisted with her millions of dollars of donations when it came to giving help to the distressed: “Given the parsimonious management of Mother Teresa’s works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

Larive´e, Che´nard and Se´ne´chal reported that she had 517 missions in over 100 countries, but the missions have been described as “homes for the dying” by visiting doctors in Calcutta. They observed “a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers.”

In 1994 Dr Robin Fox, in an article in the journal the Lancet, described Teresa’s facilities as “haphazard,” telling how he witnessed a man with malaria being treated with ineffective antibiotics and paracetamol.

With her professed love for the poor, one would think that she would have shunned Third World dictators who caused such poverty, yet she socialised with the brutal Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, from whom she accepted the Legion d’Honneur in 1981, and Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania with an iron fist.

The New York Times concluded that she was “less interested in helping the poor than in using

them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic beliefs.”

Mother Teresa was more a friend of poverty than a friend of the poor. MARTIN HANSON

Nelson

cook.

YouTube will teach them how to boil an egg in about three minutes. There are a surprising number of video clips on ‘How to cook food for millennials,’ and it includes all of the old favourites - toast, baked beans, and where to buy them.

Perhaps the best source of wisdom is their grandparents who know it all and have the time to train them. They also can provide wisdom on many other parts of life. GO GRAN AND GRAMPS! Dennis Fitzgerald

Melbourne

own good” to be cared for by the state.

Rebranded, this neoliberal ‘training’ programme’s format seems to be for young people to be economically compelled, state- and socially-pressured to leave their families and communities to be cared for by ‘The Market’, for their own good of course.

To grossly exaggerate: to leave families devastated by the very same state, their own, and the very same ‘market’, since 1984 to be ‘trained’ to

be good little servants for their Chinese, American and other overseas tourist masters elsewhere.

King, and by association National, appear to think that taking the young people away from Kaikohe is a surefire recipe for recreating Kaikohe’s sense of community. Go figure that one out.

I just want to know, when will our blood boil over? WALLY HICKS

Kohukohu reading, and I say it’s not all bad. It was not a balanced article and to say it was the writer’s finest is not supported by this Kaikohe resident.

The power of the press; when efforts are made to respond to that article are ignored by the same paper, how does one defend its community?

The Herald editorial team is defending its writers from criticism, with no responders allowed to comment. Is that fair play, or is the Herald playing politics? A dangerous ploy if they get offside with their readers. JOHN COLEMAN

Kaikohe