Pope to beatify Mother Teresa

Society Religion & Philosophy
1

… How many people have been ‘beatified’ (sp?) in the past? Was it also done for Joan of Arc?

Pope to beatify Mother Teresa in record time, The Guardian, 18 October 2003

Up to 200,000 people are expected to attend the beatification in Rome tomorrow of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, an event which promises to turn into a gala celebration with a rock musical of her life and an exhibition displaying her “relics” from India.

Her habit, rosary, sandals, the Nobel Peace medal, even strands of her hair will be on show in the Italian capital, and a vial of her blood will be presented to the Pope.

The beatification at St Peter’s Square in the Vatican will be shown live on national television in India. President Abdul Kalam of India has written a poem about her and one of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s ministers is leading an inter-religious delegation at the ceremony. The government is said to be considering naming a national award after her.

Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to an Albanian woman in Skopje in 1910. She arrived in Calcutta in 1929 as a teaching nun with the Irish order Sisters of Loreto. In 1948 she had abruptly changed direction to tend to the city’s destitute and dying, eventually founding her own order, the Missionaries of Charity. She shot to international fame in 1969 after Malcolm Muggeridge made a film about her.

By the time she died in 1997 she had become India’s most celebrated figure, the country’s only Nobel Peace prize winner, and was given a state funeral. Her beatification, the quickest in modern times, will be followed by her canonisation in two years’ time, making her the first Indian citizen to be made a saint by the Catholic church.

The Pope had to approve a single miracle before her beatification. That honour went to Monica Bersa, a woman from a remote village 250 miles north of Calcutta, who claimed a tumour disappeared three years ago after nuns pressed a medallion blessed by Mother Teresa against her stomach. It seemed to matter little that her doctors insisted her tubercular abdominal cyst had been cured with anti-TB drugs.

Reports of miraculous cures have been criticised for encouraging poor and superstitious Indians to avoid hospital.

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Mother Teresa, the country's only Nobel Peace prize winner,....

is a wrong statement.

3

:confused: Who was the other Indian winner?

She got it in 1979, i think.

4

Yahudi

How many Indians do you see on this list?

Yes one. Mother Theresa.

2003
The prize was awarded to:

SHIRIN EBADI

2002
The prize was awarded to:

JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America,

2001
The prize was awarded to:

UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA

KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General

2000
The prize was awarded to:

KIM DAE JUNG

1999
The prize was awarded to:

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS (MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES), Brussels, Belgium.

1998
The prize was awarded jointly to:

JOHN HUME and DAVID TRIMBLE

1997
The prize was awarded jointly to:

INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN TO BAN LANDMINES (ICBL) and JODY WILLIAMS

1996
The prize was awarded jointly to:

CARLOS FELIPE XIMENES BELO and JOSE RAMOS-HORTA

1995
The prize was awarded jointly to:

JOSEPH ROTBLAT and to the PUGWASH CONFERENCES ON SCIENCE AND WORLD AFFAIRS

1994
The prize was awarded joinly to:

YASSER ARAFAT , Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority.

SHIMON PERES , Foreign Minister of Israel.

YITZHAK RABIN , Prime Minister of Israel.

1993
The prize was awarded jointly to:

NELSON MANDELA Leader of the ANC.

FREDRIK WILLEM DE KLERK President of the Republic of South Africa.

1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala.

1991
AUNG SAN SUU KYI, Burma.

1990
MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH GORBACHEV , President of the USSR,

1989
THE 14TH DALAI LAMA (TENZIN GYATSO) , Tibet. Religious and political leader of the Tibetan people.

1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A.

1987
OSCAR ARIAS SANCHEZ , Costa Rica, President of Costa Rica,

1986
ELIE WIESEL , U.S.A.,

1985
INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIANS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR Boston, MA, U.S.A.

1984
DESMOND MPILO TUTU , South Africa,

1983
LECH WALESA , Poland.

1982
The prize was awarded jointly to:

ALVA MYRDAL ,

ALFONSO GARCÍA ROBLES ,

1981
OFFICE OF THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES Geneva, Switzerland.

1980
ADOLFO PEREZ ESQUIVEL ,

1979
MOTHER TERESA , India, Leader of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity.

1978
The prize was divided equally between:

MOHAMED ANWAR AL-SADAT , President of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

MENACHEM BEGIN , Prime Minister of Israel.

1977
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL London, Great Britain.

1976
BETTY WILLIAMS and MAIREAD CORRIGAN

1975
ANDREI DMITRIEVICH SAKHAROV

1974
The prize was divided equally between:

SEÁN MAC BRIDE ,

EISAKU SATO , Prime Minister of Japan.

1973
The prize was awarded jointly to:

HENRY A. KISSINGER , Secretary of State, State Department, Washington.

LE DUC THO

1972
The prize money for 1972 was allocated to the Main Fund.

1971
WILLY BRANDT , Federal Republic of Germany

1970
NORMAN BORLAUG

1969
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION (I.L.O.) Geneva.

1968
RENÉ CASSIN

1967-1966
The prize money was allocated to the Main Fund (1/3) and to the Special Fund (2/3) of this prize section.

1965
UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND (UNICEF) New York, founded by U.N. in 1946.

1964
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

1963
The prize was divided equally between

COMITÉ INTERNATIONAL DE LA CROIX-ROUGE (INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE REDCROSS) Geneva, founded 1863.

LIGUE DES SOCIÉTÉS DE LA CROIX-ROUGE (LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES) Geneva.

1962
LINUS CARL PAULING

1961
DAG HJALMAR AGNE CARL HAMMARSKJÖLD , Secretary General of the United Nations (awarded the Prize posthumously).

1960
ALBERT JOHN LUTULI , President of the South Africal liberation movement, the African National Congress.

1959
PHILIP J. NOEL-BAKER , Great Britain, Member of Parliament, life long ardent worker for international peace and co-operation .

1958
GEORGES HENRI PIRE , Belgium

1957
LESTER BOWLES PEARSON

1956-1955
The prize money was allocated to the Main Fund (1/3) and to the Special Fund (2/3) of this prize section.

1954
OFFICE OF THE UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR REFUGEES Geneva, an international relief organization, founded by U.N. in 1951.

1953
GEORGE CATLETT MARSHALL , General, President American Red Cross, ex-Secretary of State and of Defense, Delegate to the U.N., Originator of the Marshall Plan.

1952
ALBERT SCHWEITZER ,

1951
LÉON JOUHAUX , France,

1950
RALPH BUNCHE , Professor Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Director of the UN Division of Trusteeship, Acting Mediator in Palestine 1948.

1949
LORD JOHN BOYD ORR OF BRECHIN

1948
The prize money was allocated to the Main Fund (1/3) and to the Special Fund (2/3) of this prize section.

1947
The prize was awarded jointly to:

THE FRIENDS SERVICE COUNCIL (The Quakers), London.

THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE (The Quakers), Washington.

1946
The prize was divided equally between:

EMILY GREENE BALCH

JOHN RALEIGH MOTT

1945
CORDELL HULL Former Secretary of State.

1944
COMITÉ INTERNATIONAL DE LA CROIX-ROUGE (INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS)

1943-1939
The prize money was allocated to the Main Fund (1/3) and to the Special Fund (2/3) of this prize section.

1938
OFFICE INTERNATIONAL NANSEN POUR LES RÉFUGIÉS (NANSEN INTERNATIONAL OFFICE FOR REFUGEES)

1937
CECIL OF CHELWOOD, VISCOUNT, (LORD EDGAR ALGERNON ROBERT GASCOYNE CECIL) , Writer, Former Lord Privy Seal.

1936
CARLOS SAAVEDRA LAMAS Foreign Minister.

1935
CARL VON OSSIETZKY Journalist

1934
ARTHUR HENDERSON Former Foreign Secretary.

1933
SIR NORMAN ANGELL (RALPH LANE) Writer.

1932
The prize money for 1932 was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1931
The prize was divided equally between:

JANE ADDAMS Sociologist.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER President of Columbia University.

1930
LARS OLOF NATHAN (JONATHAN) SÖDERBLOM Archbishop.

1929
FRANK BILLINGS KELLOGG Former Secretary of State,

1928
The prize money for 1928 was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1927
The prize was divided equally between:

FERDINAND BUISSON

LUDWIG QUIDDE Historian. Professor at Berlin University.

1926
The prize was awarded jointly to:

ARISTIDE BRIAND Foreign Minister.

GUSTAV STRESEMANN Former Lord High Chancellor (Reichs-kanzler). Foreign Minister.

1925
The prize was awarded jointly to:

SIR AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN Foreign Minister.

CHARLES GATES DAWES Vice-President of the United States of America.

1924-1923
The prize money for 1924-1923 was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1922
FRIDTJOF NANSEN , Norway.

1921
The prize was divided equally between:

KARL HJALMAR BRANTING Prime Minister.

CHRISTIAN LOUS LANGE Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Brussels.

1920
LÉON VICTOR AUGUSTE BOURGEOIS, France.

1919
THOMAS WOODROW WILSON, President of the United States of America.

1918
The prize money for 1918 was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1917
COMITÉ INTERNATIONAL DE LA CROIX ROUGE (INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE REDCROSS) , Geneva.

1916-1914
The prize money for 1916-1914 was allocated to the Special Fund of this prize section.

1913
HENRI LA FONTAINE, Belgium.

1912
ELIHU ROOT Former Secretary of State.

1911
The prize was divided equally between:

TOBIAS MICHAEL CAREL ASSER, the Netherlands.

ALFRED HERMANN FRIED, Austria.

1910
BUREAU INTERNATIONAL PERMANENT DE LA PAIX (PERMANENT INTERNATIONAL PEACE BUREAU) , Bern.

1909
The prize was divided equally between:

AUGUSTE MARIE FRANÇOIS BEERNAERT, Belgium.

PAUL HENRIBENJAMIN BALLUET D'ESTOURNELLES DE CONSTANT, BARON DE CONSTANT DE REBECQUE, France.

1908
The prize was divided equally between:

KLAS PONTUS ARNOLDSON, Sweden.

FREDRIK BAJER, Denmark.

1907
The prize was divided equally between:

ERNESTO TEODORO MONETA, Italy.

LOUIS RENAULT, France.

1906
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, USA.

1905
BARONESS BERTHA SOPHIE FELICITA VON SUTTNER née COUNTESS KINSKY von CHINIC und TETTAU, Austria.

1904
INSTITUT DE DROIT INTERNATIONAL (INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW) , Gent, Belgium. A scientific society.

1903
SIR WILLIAM RANDAL CREMER, Great Britain.

1902
The prize was divided equally between:

ÉLIE DUCOMMUN, Switzerland.

CHARLES ALBERT GOBAT, Switzerland.

1901
The prize was divided equally between:

JEAN HENRI DUNANT, Switzerland.

FRÉDÉRIC PASSY, France.

Unfortunately Ghandi was not a recipient in case you thought he was.

The statement therefore is correct.

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.

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mother theresa is love by all indians regardless of religen belief

In Calcutta, Mother Teresa’s Legacy Crosses Lines

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by rvikz: *
where you got the info? sholay ?
[/QUOTE]

rviks, the issue is Nobel PEACE price - Sholay is correct

8

Mother Teresa has done a lot for downtrodden, ills and poor. India celebrated her Nobel price.

By some Hindu sector she was blamed for conversion, though the reports could never be confirmed.
Christianity has no right to sell Mother Teresa.
Not long ago the Vatican Pope said, ‘In first millennium we converted the Europe, in second Millennium we converted Africa and in third Millennium it is the turn of Asia.’

What is authentic, the Christian beatification, or the angel religion narrating theory, or Hindu Sai Baba providing ashes from air?

9

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by yahudi: *
Mother Teresa has done a lot for downtrodden, ills and poor. India celebrated her Nobel price.

By some Hindu sector she was blamed for conversion, though the reports could never be confirmed.
Christianity has no right to sell Mother Teresa.
Not long ago the Vatican Pope said, ‘In first millennium we converted the Europe, in second Millennium we converted Africa and in third Millennium it is the turn of Asia.’

What is authentic, the Christian beatification, or the angel religion narrating theory, or Hindu Sai Baba providing ashes from air?
[/QUOTE]

why not vhp,rss take care of lepers and poor people instead
of buiding ram temple?

10

I thought that Mother Teresa was from the Balkans (born in the Ottoman Empire), not from India....

11

^ She was borne Skopfe, Macedonia I think but spent most of her public life in Kolkata, India.

She brings credit to sainthood.

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Mommie Dearest
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, October 20, 2003, at 1:04 PM PT

Mother Teresa: No saint

I think it was Macaulay who said that the Roman Catholic Church deserved great credit for, and owed its longevity to, its ability to handle and contain fanaticism. This rather oblique compliment belongs to a more serious age. What is so striking about the “beatification” of the woman who styled herself “Mother” Teresa is the abject surrender, on the part of the church, to the forces of showbiz, superstition, and populism.

It’s the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for “beatification,” the first step to “sainthood,” until five years after his or her death. This was to guard against local or popular enthusiasm in the promotion of dubious characters. The pope nominated MT a year after her death in 1997. It also used to be that an apparatus of inquiry was set in train, including the scrutiny of an advocatus diaboli or “devil’s advocate,” to test any extraordinary claims. The pope has abolished this office and has created more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century.

Continue Article

As for the “miracle” that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn’t have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican’s investigators? No. (As it happens, I myself was interviewed by them but only in the most perfunctory way. The procedure still does demand a show of consultation with doubters, and a show of consultation was what, in this case, it got.)

According to an uncontradicted report in the Italian paper L’Eco di Bergamo, the Vatican’s secretary of state sent a letter to senior cardinals in June, asking on behalf of the pope whether they favored making MT a saint right away. The pope’s clear intention has been to speed the process up in order to perform the ceremony in his own lifetime. The response was in the negative, according to Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the Canadian priest who has acted as postulator or advocate for the “canonization.” But the damage, to such integrity as the process possesses, has already been done.

During the deliberations over the Second Vatican Council, under the stewardship of Pope John XXIII, MT was to the fore in opposing all suggestions of reform. What was needed, she maintained, was more work and more faith, not doctrinal revision. Her position was ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms. Believers are indeed enjoined to abhor and eschew abortion and contraception, but they are not required to affirm that abortion and contraception are the greatest threat to world peace, as MT fantastically asserted to a dumbfounded audience when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Believers are likewise enjoined to abhor and eschew divorce, but they are not required to insist that a ban on divorce and remarriage be a part of the state constitution, as MT demanded in a referendum in Ireland (which her side narrowly lost) in 1996. Later in that same year, she told Ladies Home Journal that she was pleased by the divorce of her friend Princess Diana, because the marriage had so obviously been an unhappy one …

This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for “the poorest of the poor.” People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the “Missionaries of Charity,” but they had no audience for their story. George Orwell’s admonition in his essay on Gandhi—that saints should always be presumed guilty until proved innocent—was drowned in a Niagara of soft-hearted, soft-headed, and uninquiring propaganda.

One of the curses of India, as of other poor countries, is the quack medicine man, who fleeces the sufferer by promises of miraculous healing. Sunday was a great day for these parasites, who saw their crummy methods endorsed by his holiness and given a more or less free ride in the international press. Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2090083/

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They also got testimony from her detractors, including author Christopher Hitchens, who condemns her for taking donations from shady people - such as disgraced financier Charles Keating - while doing little to modernize her grimy hospices.

Kolodiejchuk said the allegations were investigated, and “in the end, Mother Teresa was not found to be without virtue in these cases.”

Mustafi agrees that Mother Teresa was full of virtue, but says she did not perform a miracle. He said Besra was on anti-TB drugs for nine months, and they dissolved the tumor.

“She had a medical disease which was cured by medical science, not by any miracle,” he said by telephone. “I’ve been shouting against this miracle to anyone who will listen.”

Kolodiejchuk said five doctors in Rome were asked about Besra. “The unanimous opinion… was that there was no medical explanation for it,” he said, adding that the doctors declined the invitation to testify before the Vatican committee.

Mustafi said he was never contacted by the Vatican, adding, “Mother Teresa is having a big laugh over this.”

Meanwhile, the 30,000 members of India’s Science and Rationalists’ Association, who work to expose charlatans and gurus offering miracle cures and meditations, are also upset.

“Look, Coca-Cola promotes their business, and that’s what Sister Nirmala is doing. Sister Nirmala is a good businessman, nothing more,” Prabir Ghose, general secretary of the group, said of the nun who now heads the Missionaries of Charity.

Sister Christie, a nun at Mother House, the order’s headquarters, smiles at such skepticism.

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary,” she said. “For those who don’t believe, no proof is enough.”
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/nation/7045939.htm

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Re: Pope to beatify Mother Teresa

I’m not up on the full history of the Vatican, but as far as I know beatification has always been one of the steps in becoming a saint. That would mean all persons declared saints by the Vatican have also been beatified. I may be wrong though.. St Peter, who was the first pope, is a saint, but I’m not sure if he, or other early saints, were beatified or if the formal process was even in existence then…

yahudi, I see you’re still reaching in your struggle to disprove all religion. Remember, this is your motto: You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

MM, in case you’re not familiar with him, Christopher Hitchens is simply a contrarian. No matter what the topic is, he will find a way to condemn it. It’s how he earns his living.. can’t blame him for that. It is, afterall, helpful to hear opposing opinions. Just don’t hold too much stock in his words alone. Support them with others if you truly believe in them. :rolleyes: edit: OK, I guess you did.. still :rolleyes:

My comments: Teresa was a good woman. She’s earned all the praise she’s given. If this is how the Vatican and Catholics wish to display their opinion of her then more power to them.

On a side note.. I was in Rome the weekend before this, took a tour of the Vatican museums.. nice place :slight_smile: I kinda wish I was there this past weekend though. I think it would have been neat to see that ceremony in person…

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But another thing, on why Teresa was beatified so soon.. the Vatican is very political. Pope JP2 knows the the tradecraft well. There are some political elements to her being beatified now.. but even if it wasn't done so soon, I'm sure she still would have been at some point in the future. I think the reason this happened now is more because of the personal connection between the pope and her (dont anyone even go there).. he knows he wont be in the seat much longer and this is the one thing he wanted to do if he couldn't do anything else, he just had the internal connections to bypass precedent and make it happen.

16

There will be theories in future pro and against Mother Teresa. Communists used to say that Mother Teresa is a medicament and not a cure.

How many of us can serve leprosy patients? There are thousands of grown up people in Calcutta who were picked up by Mother Teresa from streets, when they were little kids and were thrown away by their illegal or poor parents.
Is the status of Mother Teresa bonded to any sainthood?

No, If I have to believe in the miracle of any Prophet or pope, I would like to believe Gogya Pasha, is a god entertainer.

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Christopher Hitchens On Mother Theresa

Yahudi, would you like to read this?
i am new here, read this thread, so felt like putting my two bits. We all know mother teressa, at a very superficial level.

chk this-

Christopher Hitchens On Mother Theresa
(Interview)

www.secularhumanism.org/l..._16_4.html

FI: There is a Roman Catholic doctrine about the redemption of the soul through suffering. This can be seen in Mother Teresa's work: she thinks suffering is good, and she doesn't use pain relievers in her clinics and so forth. Does she take the same attitude towards her own health? Does she live in accordance with what she preaches?

HITCHENS: I hesitated to cover this in my book, but I decided I had to publish that she has said that the suffering of the poor is something very beautiful and the world is being very much helped by the nobility of this example of misery and suffering.

FI: A horrible thing to say.

HITCHENS: Yes, evil in fact. To say it was unChristian unfortunately would not be true, although many people don't realize that is what Christians believe. It is a positively immoral remark in my opinion, and it should be more widely known than it is.

She is old, she has had various episodes with her own health, and she checks into some of the costliest and finest clinics in the West herself. I hesitated to put that in the book because it seemed as though it would be ad hominem (or ad feminam) and I try never to do that. I think that the doctrine of hating the sin and loving the sinner is obviously a stupid one, because its a false antithesis, but a version of it is morally defensible. Certainly in arguments one is only supposed to attack the arguments and not the person presenting them. But the contrast seemed so huge in this case.

It wasn't so much that it showed that her facilities weren't any good, but it showed that they weren't medical facilities at all. There wasn't any place she runs that she could go; as far as I know, their point isn't treatment. And in fairness to her, she has never really claimed that treatment is the point. Although she does accept donations from people who have fooled themselves into thinking so, I haven't found any occasion where she has given a false impression of her work. The only way she could be said to be responsible for spreading it is that she knowingly accepts what comes due to that false impression.

FI: But if people go to her clinics for the dying and they need medical care, does she send them on to the proper places?

HITCHENS: Not according to the testimony of a number of witnesses. I printed the accounts of several witnesses whose testimony I could verify and I've had many other communications from former volunteers in Calcutta and in other missions. All of them were very shocked to find when they got there that they had missed some very crucial point and that very often people who come under the false impression that they would receive medical care are either neglected or given no advice. In other words, anyone going in the hope of alleviation of a serious medical condition has made a huge mistake.

I've got so much testimony from former workers who contacted me after I wrote the book, that I almost have enough material to do a sequel.

FI: You point out that, although she is very open about promoting Catholicism, Mother Teresa has this reputation of holiness amongst many non-Catholics and even secular people. And her reputation is based upon her charitable work for the sick and dying in Calcutta. What does she actually do there? What are her care facilities like?

HITCHENS: The care facilities are grotesquely simple: rudimentary, unscientific, miles behind any modern conception of what medical science is supposed to do. There have been a number of articles - I've collected some more since my book came out - about the failure and primitivism of her treatment of lepers and the dying, of her attitude towards medication and prophylaxis. Very rightly is it said that she tends to the dying, because if you were doing anything but dying she hasn't really got much to offer.

This is interesting because, first, she only proclaims to be providing people with a Catholic death, and, second, because of the enormous amounts of money mainly donated to rather than raised by her Order. We've been unable to audit this - no one has ever demanded an accounting of how much money has flowed in her direction. With that money she could have built at least one absolutely spanking new, modern teaching hospital in Calcutta without noticing the cost.

The facilities she runs are as primitive now as when she first became a celebrity. So that's obviously not where the money goes.

FI: How much money do you reckon she receives?

HITCHENS: Well, I have the testimony of a former very active member of her Order who worked for her for many years and ended up in the office Mother Teresa maintains in New York City. She was in charge of taking the money to the bank. She estimates that there must be $50 million in that bank account alone. She said that one of the things that began to raise doubts in her mind was that the Sisters always had to go around pretending that they were very poor and they couldn't use the money for anything in the neighborhood that required alleviation. Under the cloak of avowed poverty they were still soliciting donations, labor, food, and so on from local merchants. This she found as a matter of conscience to be offensive.

Now if that is the case for one place in New York, and since we know what huge sums she has been given by institutions like the Nobel Peace committee, other religious institutions, secular prize-giving organizations, and so on, we can speculate that if this money was being used for the relief of suffering we would be able to see the effect.

FI: So the $50 million is a very small portion of her wealth?

HITCHENS: I think it's a very small portion, and we should call for an audit of her organization. She carefully doesn't keep the money in India because the Indian government requires disclosure of foreign missionary organizations funds.

I think the answer to questions about her wealth was given by her in an interview where she said she had opened convents and nunneries in 120 countries. The money has simply been used for the greater glory of her order and the building of dogmatic, religious institutions. Christopher Hitchens On Mother Theresa**** ****Christopher Hitchens On Mother Theresa*

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:flower1: Soul, Welcome to Gupshup. :slight_smile:

i don’t know how much of the above is accurate. It is the first time i am reading of something like this and i would prefer to read it from a multiplicity of sources like BBC or others. i think she did more than most people on this planet, and since i don’t possess even a hundredth of her humanity and selflessness, i don’t think i’m in the position to throw cold water on the work she did. She has passed away, let God be the Judge of her.

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Thank you nadia for the welcome.

Very close friend in Mumbai, Farida C.P. She and her two younger sisters became orphans at an early age when their parents committed suicide together. Initially, they were taken in by their relatives but who did not treat them well and once when an uncle tried to molest them, they ran away and sought shelter in the mission run by Ms. Theresa of Albania and her “sisters”. The three girls were asked to convert from Islam to Christianity as a condition to be given shelter and on refusing to do so were thrown on the streets in the middle of the night. They then sought shelter in a Gujarati ashram in Ghatkopar where they were allowed to stay with a few standard conditions like no meat, onion, etc. and could keep their religion and faith. They then lived in this place for the next few years.

We hear a lot about charitable work done by missionaries in running schools. At least in Delhi they are hardly charitable. My brother and sister went to Catholic run schools (St. Xaviers and Mater Dei) and I went to a secular private school. My siblings’ tuition fees were similar to mine and my parents had to pay through their nose. They did provide free tuition, books, meals, etc. for poor students but only to Christians. There was never a single case of a poor Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Buddhist student getting any free aid. I haven’t seen the workings on an Islamic charity first hand and won’t comment but Hindu and Sikh charities don’t discriminate. I have seen poor Muslims also being fed at langars and other feeding places.

How many people have heard of Baba Amte, or Mody who performed so many free eye operations and is in guiness book for most cataracts in a day, or Abdul Sattar Edhi and his Edhi foundation (granted he is not an Indian and a Pakistani but still from our neck of the woods). There are many such other Indian philantrophes and selfless social workers. But all we heard was of Ms. Theresa and her Sisters of Charity. A "selfless’ European woman providing solace and comfort to those dark-skinned, poor, malnutritioned Hindoos.

BTW, an interesting read on Sisters of Charity by Susan Shields who was part of the organization

Infact, there was a silent and subtle pressure put on the Indian government by international community to give her a grand state funeral. I can bet you most of those nations must have been European and Latin American. Of course, a fitting finale to the myth created.

On Saturday I was watching CNN Headline News. A Calcutta doctor who initially treated a woman whose stomach tumor was cured by Ms. Theresa’s “miracle” was skeptical and wanted to refute the myth that it was a miracle and was actually the work of medicines that the lady took. CNN report subtly underplayed his skepticism and let the miracle myth stand. Had the miracle been a Hindu or Moslem miracle, the same newsmagazine would have pooh-poohed it and shown ignorant, superstitious communities.

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Dear Soul,
There are many people, orphans, brought up in Mother Teresa centers and are called by their original Hindu or Muslim names, so is same with the patients treated in her centers.
During her life many a time different anti Teresa stories appeared in Indian media and met a natural end.

You write, ‘very close friend’, what does it mean? Does it mean your friends? What was the age of two orphans that they could think and refuse conversion?

Do you have any information how leprosy patients are treated in Indian hospitals? Especially leprosy patients from poor class, in govt hospitals they are untouchables for literate doctors.
What wrong Mother Teresa has done if she made some shelters for them and taught her pupils to take care of them?

I am sure that Bengalis, (West Bengal) Indians are not idiots and the must have dethroned Teresa centers long back if all anti Teresa literature has values.

‘Pain killers’ I do not know if Mother Teresa preferred or opposed them, but just for your information ‘pain killers’ do not treat the pain, they paralyze your nerves, while pain remains.

best rgds