WEBVTT - S1: Ep 4 - The Devil's Advocates 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:20.040 M the day after Mother Teresa died. Her body lay 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.279 on a bed of ice in the mother house and Calcutta. 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:31.160 Hundreds of people stood outside in the rain, somewhere crying. Inside, 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.280 sisters knelt or stood around her body. They prayed the 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.000 Rosary aloud and approached one at a time to kiss 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:41.280 her feet. The chapel was too small for all the 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.320 visitors who wanted to pay their respects, so her body 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:46.600 was carried through the streets in an open coffin to 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:48.760 a church, where she lay in state for a week. 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:52.640 Her funeral was in a sports arena and Calcutta. Some 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.760 fifteen thousand people attended, including dignitaries from around the world, 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.720 the presidents of Albania, of Ghana, of Italy, the Queen 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:03.240 of Spain, the Queen of Belgium, the Queen of Jordan's 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:07.600 first Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Prime Minister of India, 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:10.960 declared at a state funeral, something usually reserved for presidents 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:15.840 and prime ministers, a leprosy patient carried in the eucharis twine. 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.319 Mother Teresa's personal story seems to me like a vague silhouette, 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:25.840 something so public and at the same time deeply private. 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.760 As I chiseled my way through. It wasn't long before 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:33.800 I hit something hard. Mother Teresa's cult of death and 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.920 suffering depends for its effect on the most vulnerable and helpless. 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.360 Abandoned babies, say all the terminally ill. Christopher Higins was 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.360 a political critic and author known for his blistering commentaries. 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:48.760 Some people called them hitch slaps, and in the nineteen 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:52.440 nineties he made a television documentary about Mother Teresa, a 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:57.440 scathing critique. It's called Hell's Angel. Mother Teresa regards herself 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:01.560 as mandated by Heaven, which is hot, be modest. She 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:06.600 learns spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters, which 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.720 is scarcely the essence of simplicity, and she preaches surrender 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:14.000 and prostration to the poor, which a truly humble person 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.160 would barely have the nerve to do. Throughout the program, 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:21.000 Higgins is weirdly lit half his faces and shadow, A 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.120 massive caricature of a devious looking Mother Teresa lurks in 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:28.320 the background, and Hitchens is ruthless. She takes on the 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.919 grim and tedious tones of the zealot and the finacial 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.960 such a person is manifested in the shape of a demagogue, 0:02:35.280 --> 0:02:38.679 an obscure antist, and a servant of earthly powers, a 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:44.000 presumable virgin who also campaigns against birth control. Hell's Angel 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.160 came out at a time when Mother Teresa was considered 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.600 too virtuous to be criticized. Calls for her sanehood were growing. 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:54.880 If you haven't heard some of these criticisms before, you 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.440 might be thinking, what is this guy saying? I thought 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:01.360 everyone loved Mother Teresa. Well, it isn't just Christopher Higgins 0:03:01.919 --> 0:03:04.400 who just has Mother Teresa. Because it has to be done, 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:06.720 somebody has to do it. Somebody had to do it. 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:11.600 From a cocoa punch and I heart radio. This is 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:28.080 the Turning America Lance, Part four, The Devil's Advocates. We 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.480 reached out to the missionaries of Charity Sisters and sent 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.320 them a list of questions we had. While a representative 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.240 did respond, they declined to be interviewed. Critics have a 0:03:37.240 --> 0:03:40.600 lot of complaints against Mother Teresa, and once these criticisms 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.080 entered the world, they became part of her story. They 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:45.840 still are today. I can't go into all of them, 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.200 but we're going to look at a handful. Let's start 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:50.880 by going back to something beautiful for God. That's the 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.600 documentary about Mother Teresa by Malcolm Muggridge, the film that 0:03:55.640 --> 0:04:04.840 made her famous. M Muggridge was convinced that a scene 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.320 in his film captured a miracle. It happened in the 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:10.920 home for the Dying. When the crew tried to film 0:04:10.920 --> 0:04:13.320 in there, the room was so dark that the director 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.480 worried the images wouldn't come out, But it turns out 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.600 they did. The scene was full of light. Immediately Muggaret's 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.559 thought it was divine intervention. He declared it the first 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:34.680 photographic miracle. But to Christopher Higgins, mother Teresa's critic, this 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.880 miracle seemed too good to be true, and in Hell's 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.840 Angel he included an interview with Muggridge's cameraman, a guy 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:43.760 named Ken McMillan, who said, it's true they were worried 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:45.480 about the low light, but they were using a new 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:49.680 kind of film, some new film made by Kodak, which 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:52.159 we hadn't had time to test before we left. So 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:56.040 I said, well, let's have a go, so we shot him. 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:58.000 A month or two later, they're in the studio looking 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:02.039 at the footage. Thanks really up came the shots of 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:06.440 the house of a dying and it was surprising. You 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:11.960 could see every detail. And I said, that's amazing, it's extraordinary. 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:14.400 And I was going to go on to say, you know, 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:16.760 three cheers for Koda. I didn't get a chance to 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:19.279 say that because Malcolm, sitting in the front rows, spun 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:25.359 around and said, it's divine light. It's Mother Theresa. You'll 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:30.760 find that it's divine mit. Old boy Malcolm Muggert couldn't 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.720 stop talking about this miracle. He called it a halo 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.080 and a star was born. Here's Christopher Higgins and Hell's 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:42.400 Angel again. This profane marriage between tawdry media hype and 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.240 medieval superstition gave birth to an icon which few have 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.440 since had the poor taste to question, how does the 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.760 reputation of Holy Mother Teresa look if, just for a 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:57.599 moment we switch off Malcolm muggerage is kindly light? Well, 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.240 without him, there wouldn't be any Mother Trees obvious sleep, 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:03.120 because he was the one who puts her on that pedestal. 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.200 This is a roop Chatter Gee a physician in London. 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.520 He collaborated with Hitchens on the film Hell's Angel. He 0:06:09.600 --> 0:06:12.039 also published a book, jam Packed with his research and 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.880 condemnations of Mother Teresa for years he spent his spare 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:20.440 time researching the lady, as he often calls her, whatever 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:24.760 you call it, crusade against the lady. Well, maybe to start, 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.680 I wonder, could you just if you had to summarize 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.160 your overall case or perspective on Mother Teresa, what would 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:36.040 you say? I considered the whole Mother Teresa bandwagon as 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:41.839 a cult um. I would say that practically everything about 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:48.000 Mother Teresa is a result of myth and hyperbolic But 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:53.640 what fired him up in the first place? A roop 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:56.960 chatter Gee grew up in Calkatta in the nineteen seventies. 0:06:56.960 --> 0:06:59.200 He was a medical student, and back then he had 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:01.880 a very different person backtive on Mother Teresa. When I 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.880 used to go to medical school on my moped every 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.960 day in Calcata, I used to pass by one of 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.000 her places and I used to see about forty people 0:07:11.040 --> 0:07:13.360 being fed, and I would be quite thankful and happy 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:16.840 that somebody was feeding at least forty people in Calcata. 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.960 Even in her head day, not much was known about her. 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.760 It was known that she had won the Nobel Prize 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:28.440 and that she was a very good, charitable lady. So 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.600 I had absolutely nothing against her. If anything, I was 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:37.520 positive towards her. Then he moved to the UK. One 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:39.920 day a co worker asked him where he was from. 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.760 He said Calcutta, and then he said, oh, Calcata. Do 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:46.559 you know something. There's one person in the whole world 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:49.680 I respect more than anybody else. That's Mother Teresa. And 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.720 I was I was quite surprised. I said, why this is? 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:56.160 Why did she mention Mother Teresa When I said I 0:07:56.200 --> 0:08:00.120 was from Carcasa. That incident stuck to my mind, like yesterday, 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.120 I just I didn't know that people synonymized Calcata with 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:08.000 Mother Teresa. After that, he started noticing how his home 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.280 city was viewed by the Western world. I read little 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.480 things about Calcutta in a very gruesome way, and it's 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:17.120 all about poverty and leprosy and squala, nothing at all 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:22.000 about anything else. I recently came across a video where 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:25.320 a bishop in Los Angeles describes Calcutta like this, Imagine 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.640 the worst garbage jump you've seen, and now think of 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.760 the whole city that way. Reports like this didn't match 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.480 the Calcutta chatter. Je new a thriving metropolist, a cultural hub. 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:37.040 So when he was on a trip to Calcutta. He 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.240 visited the Home for the Dying, the place he'd heard 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.439 described as an oasis for the poor, and I was 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.600 appolled that that place had given us so much publicity 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:49.280 and it was even called a hospice. It had less 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.320 than one places, and they didn't have any beds, even 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.400 they had hammocks. There was no yards, no veranda, no balcony, 0:08:56.559 --> 0:09:01.400 no nothing nowhere to stretch your limbs. You were brutally 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:04.760 treated in there. Chatterjee says he was even more shocked 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.280 by the medical practices he saw. They routinely used to 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:12.280 re use needles and gloves. Even that practice has stopped now. 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:16.600 It was a harsh place. I think it's a harsh place. 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:20.720 Collet Livermore was with the Missionaries of Charity for eleven years. 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:23.760 She's the Australian sister who wasn't allowed to go home 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:26.880 when her brother was very ill. After she left the 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.280 m CS, she became a physician, but back in night 0:09:30.520 --> 0:09:33.280 she was assigned to the Home for the Dying. Collett 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.680 fed intended to patients. There, she cleaned maggots from wounds 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.080 and watched the bodies of people who died. One patient 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:45.160 died in her arms. The standard medicine wouldn't have been high. 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:48.480 And the thing I found difficult was there was no 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.960 pain killers. She says. The sisters were often rough and cold. 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:55.480 When people who had been on the street arrived at 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:57.640 the home, the sisters would strip off their clothes right 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:01.079 there in the room. They were all washed in a 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:06.160 cement washing place with no privacy and just cold water 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.400 thrown over them. Clutz as they often cried out when 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.120 the cold water hit their skin while some visitor with 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.520 a camera might be snapping photos. Their hair was shaved, 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.559 and I mean, I know they had lice and all 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:24.079 that sort of stuff, but I don't know. I found 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:28.040 it very harsh. She says. Sometimes sisters even got aggressive, 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:33.440 acting harshly to someone or hitting them or when did 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:38.880 you see sisters head people in Calcutta? You know? And 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:43.640 I understand that it's very frustrating because you know, if 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.400 you've got desperate people trying to get things food and such, 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:53.040 they'll be pushing. Clatt couldn't get over the feeling that 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:57.839 things could be so much better, and it wasn't the 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:25.760 first time she felt that way. As a teenager, Collet 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.720 Livermore Plants to study medicine but then she watched Something 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:33.520 Beautiful for God, and I saw that movie and I thought, 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.600 I don't need to bother being a doctor anymore because 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.880 they don't need complicated medicine, they just need food. Clud 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.000 joined the m CS, and it didn't take long for 0:11:45.040 --> 0:11:47.920 her to have misgivings about their medical care, including the 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.760 care for sisters. In seven, she was assigned to a 0:11:51.840 --> 0:11:55.439 house in Papua New Guinea. She was twenty two. Before 0:11:55.520 --> 0:11:57.920 she left, She says no one suggested she take medication 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.880 to prevent malaria, usually taken too weeks before travel. When 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.360 she arrived, she says she saw griefstones of nuns who 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:06.920 had died from malaria, so as soon as she had 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:09.679 a chance, she talked to mother Teresa about it. I 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:13.839 asked her, could we take something to prevent malaria? And 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:20.120 she said I I don't take anything. She trusts in God, 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:25.120 but I could take it if I wanted to. Collett 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:28.360 decided to take it, but it was too late. One night, 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:32.560 she felt incredibly cold, MY teeth were chattering. I had 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:36.360 a terrible back paint, terrible headache. She didn't go to 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.640 work that day and she wasn't getting any better. I 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.880 was arching my back was arching, My tongue was coming 0:12:42.920 --> 0:12:48.319 out involuntarily, and I could have died. The sisters sent 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:51.679 for a doctor. He said it was cerebral malaria, which 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.840 is extremely serious. I didn't die. You'll be pleased to hear. 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.480 Another time, Collett was working with tuberculosis patients in the Philippines. 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:06.680 What she saw startled her. There was a particular mistake 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:10.520 where a wrong injection was given, and I was horrified 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:13.240 when I asked a sister, you know how much did 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:17.120 you give? And they didn't even know what dose it 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:20.520 had given. Kas in fiction was a problem since patients 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.600 were mixed together in close quarters collect things. A lot 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.959 of these mistakes stem from this empty belief that the 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:30.239 sisters shouldn't have too much expertise. Expertise is an opportunity 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:33.520 for pride, and Mother Teresa believed ignorance was actually an 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:36.880 advantage because you're a vessel for God's will. It was 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:40.440 a sort of form of magical thinking. If you obey 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.120 God's will be done through you in some sort of 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:49.160 magical way. Mother used to say, it was I'm just 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:55.160 a pencil in his hands, like an inanimate object. That's 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:58.120 what they told Half the time. We didn't know where 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:02.520 we were going, and we were sent away suddenly, so 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:07.760 there was absolutely no preparation, no language or cultural training. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:10.439 The other thing that troubled her was how the vow 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.920 of obedience affected their work. You were supposed to obey cheerfully, promptly, 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.400 and without question, but what if you saw injustice or 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:26.280 medical mistakes? Do you speak up? Then one day in 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.440 Manila sticks out to her. The sisters had what they 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.760 called a Tohanan home for people who had tuberculosis and 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:39.840 other illnesses, and so a little boy came with his parents, 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:45.440 and his name was Alex, and he was very sick, 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:50.400 dehydrated and malnourished, with a fever and sepsis. His skin 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:54.440 was floppy and his eyes were sunken. They weren't supposed 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:57.720 to accept people on Thursdays, but Collette, who was Sister 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.640 Tobitt back then, spoke with the parents any way, and 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:06.920 the professor sister came out in a boiling rage, saying Tobert, 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:11.880 what are you doing here? I said, well, this little 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:15.080 boy is very ill and he's been rejected by the 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:19.640 hospital and we need to help him. And she said, so, 0:15:19.800 --> 0:15:25.200 only you know what's right. And I said, look, I 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.720 don't really know what's right, but I just know that 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:30.560 this little child is going to die if we don't 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:32.880 do something. And she said, go back to the dahana 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:41.040 and I said, no, I hope I won't. And she said, 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:46.200 I will help him this time, but you do what 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:50.320 you're told and go back to the so collect dead 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.280 and the child was admitted. They put him on a 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.760 drop with antibiotics and fluids. That night, she snuck over 0:15:56.880 --> 0:16:01.280 to see how he was. I remember carrying him outside 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:07.120 into the night and just sort of saying, why, why 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:12.800 you know too the blackness. Next day he was much 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:19.120 much better. Yeah, he survived. He became a fat little thing. 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:29.680 In fact, Collett's intervention wouldn't go unnoticed. About a month later, 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.480 she says, she walked into the dormitory and her bedrole 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.359 was gone. Someone had removed it, no warning, no explanation. 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.840 She had been demoted from her post as a novice mistress. 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.960 She says the conflict she felt inside her pierced through 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:59.080 her life like a thorn. Mother Teresa wrote a letter 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.840 in seven As usual, there was one thing on her mind. 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.520 She said, during the year, very often, I have been 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.639 longing to be all for Jesus and to make other souls, 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:14.840 especially Indian come and love him fervently. Bringing souls to 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:17.800 Jesus sounds a lot like conversion to me, and Mother 0:17:17.960 --> 0:17:20.080 Teresa used the word conversion in some of her letters. 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:24.240 According to Father Brian Colodetuch, who edited her letters for publication, 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.399 she said, yes, I convert. I convert you to be 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:30.760 a better Hindu, or a better Muslim, or a better Protestant, 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:33.000 or a better Catholic, or a better Parsi, or a 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:36.040 better seek or a better Buddhist. And after you have 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.200 found God, it is for you to do what God 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:44.520 wants you to do. When I first joined the energy 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:51.000 and the spirit of the society, it was extremely powerful. 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.600 It was never about converting people. But that didn't last. 0:17:56.760 --> 0:17:59.560 Sue Weber says, she's a former m C who was 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.320 a sure year in the early The longer I stayed 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:08.399 in the order, it started to be about converting people. 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.200 It became more about how many people did you convert. 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:16.560 I heard from many, many people that this was happening 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:21.359 on a large scale, that they were converting surreptitiously at 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.760 the point of death. In his book, A Root Strategy 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.760 tells the story of one former sister who says sisters 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:29.840 were trained to ask a dying person if they wanted 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.480 a ticket to heaven, and if they agreed to press 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:35.000 the wet cloths to their forehead and quietly baptize them. 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:44.359 But Run has died. The ticket wasn't bitterly called because 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:49.159 Ticus and Peter will not let them go in they 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:55.800 called baptism tickets. Was This is Mother Teresa speaking at 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:59.320 a clinic in California. We asked a person, do you Runs, 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:04.960 Do you want a blessing by which your scenes will 0:19:05.000 --> 0:19:08.080 be forgiven and you will receive God? And they have 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:12.680 never really used. So twenty nine have died in that 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:17.159 one house from the time we began to buck in 0:19:18.400 --> 0:19:21.760 two and they were collecting the numbers because you get 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.920 brownie points if you convert, because it is so beautiful 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:30.399 to see the people die. It's so much choi And 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.960 it's actually pretty lowly thing to do to take advantage 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:38.359 of somebody's alternate mental state and to exploit them like that. 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:46.359 Maybe the most repeated critique of Mother Teresa is that 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:51.159 you romanticized poverty. Christopher Hedges put it this way, that 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.520 Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.440 was a friend of poverty. S Antony Chaco Party, a 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:01.040 professor of history at the University of Calcutta, says westerners 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:04.800 ate her story up. I think the Western fascination with 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:11.000 her was because she was using the Indian sardi as 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:16.119 a projection of her glorification of poverty. The Saudi clad 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:20.600 women on the streets of Calcutta, working among among destitute 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:24.480 people living on the streets. I think that fascinated a 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:30.240 lot of Western people, trying to project India as a somewhat, 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.359 you know, a place like Mars. Almost the Roop Charity 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.280 put it a little more strongly. The West felt so 0:20:37.520 --> 0:20:42.360 smug and so glad that this white woman who's a Catholic, 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:47.200 very very rigid Catholic, who was looking after this disgusting, 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:55.000 desperate people in a remote corner of the world. The 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.320 Western interest in Mother Teresa's work led to a lot 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:00.320 of donations. Some report tens of millions of dollars a year, 0:21:00.840 --> 0:21:03.119 but the exact amount is unclear. The m c s 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.480 don't reveal their financial information, including to us we asked. 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.600 When one Forbes India reporter asked how much they received 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:13.359 in donations, he was told God knows he is our banker. 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:18.680 We have a lot of money, a lot. This is 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.560 Sue Webber again. When she became a superior at the 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:24.520 AIDS Hospice in San Francisco, she got a checkbook for 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.119 the first time, but she says she couldn't really use it. 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.880 I had to go through so many channels to get 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:34.480 like a refrigerator, a small refrigerator to put the men's 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:38.280 medicine in. Mm hmm. I had. I had access to 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.480 an account that had over million dollars in it, and 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:47.920 I couldn't buy a refrigerator. As the superior of the house. 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.880 Collet Livermore, the former sister from Australia, put it this way. 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:54.320 We had plenty of money, but in the name of poverty, 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.480 we didn't want to use it. Instead, they begged. That's 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:01.040 what the sisters called it, begging. They begged or donated supplies, 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.760 whether food or medicine or clothes. Mother trees. I believed 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:06.480 it was a chance for the donor to come closer 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:11.080 to Christ. So I was told with another sister to 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.520 go look at vehicles. So he remembers when she was 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:16.920 in the Bronx and they needed a new car. So 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:18.840 we get there and we look at different vehicles and 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.440 there's a small jeep. So I called the house and 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:24.600 I said to the regional superior, so we found the 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:26.440 vehicle and this is how much it costs. Can we 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:29.200 go ahead and purchase it? And she goes, no, you 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:33.600 should beg for it, and I was like what, and 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:35.639 I said, I'm not begging for it. I said, we 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:39.320 have the money. And I would have never had a 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.240 problem at all to beg for anything if we didn't 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:47.080 have it. By begging for it, it's basically, um, it's 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:51.879 a lie because you're basically presenting that you need something 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:55.679 and you don't have the wherewithal to get it, right, 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:58.960 that's a lie. So you refused to beg for it, 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:01.879 but you usually had to obey her regional superior. So 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:03.600 I said, that is exactly why. I said to the guy, 0:23:04.240 --> 0:23:06.440 so I said, hey, I'm just curious, like, would you 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:08.719 give us that cheap? Would you just give it to us? 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:12.320 And he was like for free and I was like yeah, 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:15.560 And he was like, well, don't you have any money, 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:17.080 and I go, oh, no, we have plenty of money. 0:23:17.119 --> 0:23:18.800 I'm just curious if he would just give it to us, 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:21.280 and he started laughing and he goes no, and I 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:23.560 was like, okay. So I called back the regional and 0:23:23.600 --> 0:23:26.440 I was like, they won't give it to us for free, 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:37.920 and then we ended up buying it. Mother Teresa often 0:23:37.960 --> 0:23:41.000 spoke of suffering, but critics asked how much did you 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:44.240 do to alleviate it. There's a particular moment in an 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:48.920 interview on William F. Buckley's Firing Line on PBS, where 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:50.840 she tells the story of a woman who would cancer. 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:55.119 The woman wasn't terrible pain, but Mother Teresa told her 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.200 that the pain was a sign that she had come 0:23:57.240 --> 0:23:59.080 so close to Jesus on the cross that he could 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:02.720 kiss her. And the lady, though she wasn't a great pain, 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:06.480 she joined their hands together and said, Mother Teresa, please 0:24:06.560 --> 0:24:11.840 tell Jesus to stop kissing me. As Mother Teresa tells 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:14.040 this story, you can see that she's starting to smile. 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:16.880 What's weird about this moment to me is hearing people 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:20.200 laughing in the background after this woman says to Mother Teresa, 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:23.359 please tell Jesus to stop kissing me. I guess it's 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:25.480 supposed to be funny, but doesn't it also mean this 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:29.560 person just wants the pain to stop. The interviewer then says, 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:33.359 to Mother Teresa, Christ entered his own passion willingly. Most 0:24:33.480 --> 0:24:37.880 humans enter unwillingly into pain. Mother Teresa replies that he'd 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:40.479 be surprised how content that poor people in India are, 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:44.080 that on their suffering faces you see a beautiful smile. 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:47.680 That her work is to help them accept suffering as 0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:56.040 a gift. Mother Teresa knew the power of a good story, 0:24:56.600 --> 0:24:59.680 repeated anecdotes until they were parables, and she had a 0:24:59.720 --> 0:25:02.640 way journalists. One expert said it was like she cast 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:06.560 a spell on them. She may not have enjoyed publicity, 0:25:06.760 --> 0:25:09.160 but she saw the value in it. She was strategic 0:25:09.200 --> 0:25:12.760 about granting interviews. Sometimes she made agreements that she be 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:15.480 allowed to review an edit material before it was published. 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:19.840 Books about her are often full of inaccuracies, more legend 0:25:19.920 --> 0:25:23.760 than fact, and some of the people I talked to 0:25:24.080 --> 0:25:26.320 told me the church was more than happy to benefit 0:25:26.400 --> 0:25:52.760 from that legend. It wasn't only Mother Teresa who knew 0:25:52.760 --> 0:25:55.720 how to use the media. Mary Johnson says the church 0:25:55.800 --> 0:25:58.200 saw its value too, and I do feel that the 0:25:58.320 --> 0:26:01.880 Church used her. I remember I traveled with her once 0:26:02.000 --> 0:26:09.560 to Louisiana, the first place where the abuses of priests 0:26:10.440 --> 0:26:15.720 who were pedophiles had become known. In nineteen eighty five, 0:26:15.960 --> 0:26:19.200 a Louisiana priest admitted to abusing more than thirty children. 0:26:19.880 --> 0:26:23.480 He was eventually sentenced to twenty years in prison. While 0:26:23.480 --> 0:26:26.520 the trial was under way, the Missionaries of Charity opened 0:26:26.520 --> 0:26:29.040 a new house just an hour away in Baton Rouge. 0:26:29.520 --> 0:26:32.800 The sisters had been invited there in order to repair 0:26:32.880 --> 0:26:35.600 the image of the church. If the people of the 0:26:35.720 --> 0:26:39.040 diocese saw Mother Teresa and the sisters, that would be 0:26:39.920 --> 0:26:43.560 the example that could kind of make up for these 0:26:43.600 --> 0:26:46.960 horrible things that the priests had done. It sounds like 0:26:49.119 --> 0:26:52.200 the missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa sort of became 0:26:52.240 --> 0:26:56.800 a pr tool for the church exactly, a pr tool, 0:26:56.920 --> 0:27:02.400 a symbol um and I do think that's a way 0:27:02.440 --> 0:27:10.879