Mother Teresa’s organisations ‘a sham’
THE article “Ruckus over conversion insult” in the Sunday Tribune Herald on March 1 refers.
Of the allegations against Mother Teresa, Ashwin Trikamjee says there is no substance to the claims.
Obviously he is ill-informed and not well read. There have been several books about this nun and her organisations, not only in India but in other countries as well.
The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, by Christopher Hitchens, published in 1995, exposed her while she was alive. She did not respond.
Subsequently, a native of Calcutta, Dr Aroup Chatterjee, published a more detailed account of Mother Teresa and her organisation.
Chatterjee, like Hitchens, was an atheist. But the doctor was roped in to offer his services at the organisation by his Irish Catholic wife, who was already a volunteer there.
Both were horrified by what went on there.
Despite Mother Teresa’s claim that she “picked people up from the streets of Calcutta”, people requesting service were told curtly to ring 102, the equivalent of 911.
The order owned several ambulances, but these were used to transport nuns to and from places of prayer.
Mother Teresa claimed that her order fed 4 000, 5 000, 7 000 or 9 000 people every day (the number varied). Yet the two or three soup kitchens in Calcutta feed a maximum of only 300 people a day.
The kitchens would provide food only to people with “food cards” that were allocated mainly to the Catholic poor.
Mother Teresa’s organisations throughout the world are for training monks or nuns, not for aiding the poor.
Her shelters will usually only help children if the parents sign a form of renunciation giving the rights to the children to her organisation.
Mother Teresa insisted that her natural family clinics prevented unwanted pregnancies, but this claim had no basis.
Although Mother Teresa insisted that suffering was beautiful as it evoked Christ’s suffering, when she was ill she visited exclusive, expensive hospitals.
The hospice in Calcutta through which Mother Teresa gained such wide recognition is small (80 beds) and provides little medical care. Needles are reused, all patients must have their heads shaved, visitors are forbidden, and painkillers are rarely, if ever, used.
The nurses do not speak the local languages and are not usually involved in the care of the patients. This duty is assumed by volunteers.
Mother Teresa often accepted money from questionable sources.
When criticised, she said: “We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious.”
The irony is that Mother Teresa is known as a humanitarian and a person who committed her life to helping the poor. KUMAR PILLAY
Verulam