Speaker 1: The day after Mother Teresa died, her body lay on
Speaker 1: a bed of ice in the mother house in Kolcutta.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people stood outside in the rain. Some were
Speaker 1: crying inside. Sisters knelt or stood around her body. They
Speaker 1: prayed the Rosary aloud, and approached one at a time
Speaker 1: to kiss her feet. The chapel was too small for
Speaker 1: all the visitors who wanted to pay their respects, so
Speaker 1: her body was carried through the streets in an open
Speaker 1: coffin to a church, where she lay in state for
Speaker 1: a week. Her funeral was in a sports arena in Kolcutta.
Speaker 1: Some fifteen thousand people attended, including dignitaries from around the world,
Speaker 1: the presidents of Albania, of Ghana, of Italy, the Queen
Speaker 1: of Spain, the Queen of Belgium, the Queen of Jordan,
Speaker 1: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Prime Minister of India,
Speaker 1: declared it a state funeral, something usually reserved for presidents
Speaker 1: and prime ministers. A leprosy patient carried in the eucharist wine.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa's personal story seems to me like a vague silhouette,
Speaker 1: something so public and at the same time deeply private.
Speaker 1: As I chiseled my way through. It wasn't long before
Speaker 1: I hit something hard.
Speaker 2: Mother Theresa's cult of death and suffering depends for its
Speaker 2: effect on the most vulnerable and helpless, abandoned babies, say
Speaker 2: or the terminally ill.
Speaker 1: Christopher Higgins was a political critic and author known for
Speaker 1: his blistering commentaries. Some people called them hitch slaps, and
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties he made a television documentary about
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa, A scathing critique recognized it's called Hell's Angel.
Speaker 2: Mother Teresa regards soself as mandated by Heaven, which is
Speaker 2: hot modest. She lends spiritual solace to dictators and to
Speaker 2: wealthy exploiters, which is scarcely the essence of simplicity, and
Speaker 2: she preaches surrender and prostration to the poor, which a
Speaker 2: truly humble person would barely have the nerve to do.
Speaker 1: Throughout the program, Hitchins is weirdly lit, half his faces
Speaker 1: in shadow. A massive caricature of a devious looking Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa lurks in the background, and Hitchins is ruthless.
Speaker 2: She takes on the grim and tedious tones of the
Speaker 2: zealot and the fanatic. Such a person is manifested in
Speaker 2: the shape of a demagogue, an obscurantist, and a servant
Speaker 2: of earthly powers, a presumable virtue who also campaigns against
Speaker 2: birth control.
Speaker 1: Hall's Angel came out at a time when Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: was considered too virtuous to be criticized. Calls for her
Speaker 1: sainthood were growing. If you haven't heard some of these
Speaker 1: criticisms before, you might be thinking, what is this guy saying?
Speaker 1: I thought everyone loved Mother Teresa. Just Christopher Higgins, I
Speaker 1: critic has.
Speaker 3: Mother Teresa because it has to be done. Somebody has
Speaker 3: to do it. Somebody had to do it.
Speaker 1: From a cocoa punch and iHeartRadio. This is the Turning
Speaker 1: I America Lance, Part four, The Devil's Advocates. We reached
Speaker 1: out to the missionaries of Charity Sisters and sent them
Speaker 1: a list of questions we had. While a representative did respond,
Speaker 1: they declined to be interviewed. Critics have a lot of
Speaker 1: complaints against Mother Teresa, and once these criticisms under the world,
Speaker 1: they became part of her story. They still are today.
Speaker 1: I can't go into all of them, but we're going
Speaker 1: to look at a handful. Let's start by going back
Speaker 1: to something beautiful for God that's the nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: documentary about Mother Teresa by Malcolm Muggridge, the film that
Speaker 1: made her famous. Muggridge was convinced that a scene in
Speaker 1: his film captured a miracle. It happened in the Home
Speaker 1: for the Dying. When the crew tried to film in there,
Speaker 1: the room was so dark that the director worried the
Speaker 1: images wouldn't come out, But it turns out they did.
Speaker 1: The scene was full of light. Immediately muggrets thought it
Speaker 1: was divine intervention. He declared it the first photographic miracle.
Speaker 1: But to Christopher Higgins, mother Teresa's critic, this miracle seemed
Speaker 1: too good to be true, and in Hell's Angel he
Speaker 1: included an interview with Muggridge's cameraman, a guy named Ken McMillan,
Speaker 1: who said, it's true they were worried about the low light,
Speaker 1: but they were using a new kind of film, some.
Speaker 4: New film made by Kodak, which we hadn't had time
Speaker 4: to test before we left. So I said, well, let's
Speaker 4: have it go. So we shot him.
Speaker 1: A month or two later, they're in the studio looking
Speaker 1: at the footage.
Speaker 4: I did think. Up came the shots of the house
Speaker 4: of a dye and it was surprising.
Speaker 2: You could see every detail.
Speaker 4: And I said, that's amazing, that's extraordinary. And I was
Speaker 4: going to go on to say, you know, three cheers
Speaker 4: for Kodak. I didn't get a chance to say that, though,
Speaker 4: because Malcolm, sitting in the front rise spun round said,
Speaker 4: it's divine light.
Speaker 2: It's Mother Theresa. You'll find that it's divine light.
Speaker 1: Old boy, Malcolm Muggridge couldn't stop talking about this miracle.
Speaker 5: He called it a halo, and a star was born.
Speaker 1: Here's Christopher Higgins and Hell's Angel again.
Speaker 2: This profane marriage between tawdry media hype and medieval superstition
Speaker 2: gave birth to an icon which few have since had
Speaker 2: the poor taste to question. How does the reputation of
Speaker 2: Holy Mother Theresa look if, just for a moment we
Speaker 2: switch off Malcolm Muggridge's kindly lied.
Speaker 3: Well, without him, there wouldn't be any Mother Tries, obviously,
Speaker 3: because he was the one who puts her on that pedestal.
Speaker 1: This is a roop Chattergy a physician in London. He
Speaker 1: collaborated with Higgins on the film Hell's Angel. He also
Speaker 1: published a book jam Packed with his research and condemnations
Speaker 1: of Mother Teresa. For years, he spent his spare time
Speaker 1: researching the lady, as he often calls her.
Speaker 3: Might whatever you call it, crusade against the lady.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe to start, I wonder, could you just if
Speaker 1: you had to summarize your overall case or perspective on
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa, what would you say?
Speaker 3: I considered the whole Mother Teresa bandwagon as a cult.
Speaker 3: I would say that practically everything about Mother Teresa is
Speaker 3: a result of myth and hyperbole.
Speaker 1: But what fired him up in the first place. A
Speaker 1: roop Chattergy grew up in Kolkatta in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: He was a medical student, and back then he had
Speaker 1: a very different person on Mother Teresa.
Speaker 3: When I used to go to medical school, on my
Speaker 3: mobed every day in Kakata, I used to pass by
Speaker 3: one of her places and I used to see about
Speaker 3: forty people being fed, and I would be quite thankful
Speaker 3: and happy that somebody was feeding at least forty people
Speaker 3: in Kakata. Even in her heyday, not much was known
Speaker 3: about her. It was known that she had won the
Speaker 3: Nobel Prize and that she was a very good, charitable lady.
Speaker 3: So I had absolutely nothing against her. If anything, I
Speaker 3: was positive towards her.
Speaker 1: Then he moved to the UK. One day a coworker
Speaker 1: asked him where he was from.
Speaker 3: He said Calcutta, and then he said, oh, Kakuta. Do
Speaker 3: you know something. There's one person in the whole world
Speaker 3: I respect more than anybody else. That's Mother Teresa. And
Speaker 3: I I was quite surprised. I said, why this is
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five. Why did she mention Mother Tusa when
Speaker 3: I said I was from Gacasa. That incident stuck to
Speaker 3: my mind like yesterday. I just I didn't know that
Speaker 3: people synonymized Kakata with Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: After that, he started noticing how his home city was
Speaker 1: viewed by the western world.
Speaker 3: I read little things about Kakata in a very gruesome way,
Speaker 3: and it's all about poverty and leprosy and squala, nothing
Speaker 3: at all about anything else.
Speaker 1: I recently came across a video where Bishop and Los
Speaker 1: Angeles describes Kolcutta like this. Imagine the worst garbage jump
Speaker 1: you've seen, and now think of the whole city that way.
Speaker 1: Reports like this didn't match the Kolkutta Chatterje knew a
Speaker 1: thriving metropolis, a cultural hub. So when he was on
Speaker 1: a trip to Kolkutta. He visited the Home for the Dying,
Speaker 1: the place he'd heard described as an oasis for the poor.
Speaker 3: And I was up polled that that place had given
Speaker 3: us so much publicity and it was even called a hospice.
Speaker 3: It had less than one hundred places, and it didn't
Speaker 3: have any beds. Even they had hammocks. There was no yards,
Speaker 3: no veranda, and no balcony, no nothing, know what to
Speaker 3: stretch your limbs. You were brutally treated in there.
Speaker 1: Chatterjee says he was even more shocked by the medical
Speaker 1: practices he saw.
Speaker 3: They routinely used to reuse needles and gloves. Even that
Speaker 3: practice has stopped now.
Speaker 6: It was a hush place. I think it was a
Speaker 6: hush place.
Speaker 1: Collete Livermore was with the Missionaries of Charity for eleven years.
Speaker 1: She's the Australian sister who wasn't allowed to go home
Speaker 1: when her brother was very ill. After she left the MCS,
Speaker 1: she became a physician, but back in nineteen eighty she
Speaker 1: was assigned to the Home for the Dying. Collette fed
Speaker 1: intended to patience There. She cleaned maggots from wounds and
Speaker 1: washed the bodies of people who died. One patient died
Speaker 1: in her arms.
Speaker 6: The standard medicine wouldn't have been high. And the thing
Speaker 6: I found difficult was there was no painkillers.
Speaker 7: She says.
Speaker 1: The sisters were often rough and cold. When people who
Speaker 1: had been on the street arrived at the home, the
Speaker 1: sisters would strip off their clothes right there in the room.
Speaker 6: They were all washed in a cement washing place with
Speaker 6: no privacy and just cold water throwing over them.
Speaker 1: Clotte says they often cried out when the cold water
Speaker 1: hit their skin while some visitor with a camera might
Speaker 1: be snapping photos.
Speaker 6: Their hair was shaved, and I mean, I know they
Speaker 6: had lice and all that sort of stuff, but I
Speaker 6: don't know. I found it very harsh.
Speaker 1: She says. Sometimes sister's even got aggressive.
Speaker 6: Acting harshly to someone or hitting them or.
Speaker 1: That's when did you see sisters head.
Speaker 6: People inklcutta, you know. And I understand that it's very frustrating,
Speaker 6: because you know, if you've got desperate people trying to
Speaker 6: get things food and such, they'll be pushing.
Speaker 1: Clatt couldn't get over the feeling that things could be
Speaker 1: so much better, and it wasn't the first time she
Speaker 1: felt that way. As a teenager, Collet Livermore plans to
Speaker 1: study medicine, but then she watched Something Beautiful for.
Speaker 6: God and I saw that movie and I thought, Oh,
Speaker 6: I don't need to bother being a doctor anymore because
Speaker 6: they don't need complicated medicine. They just need food.
Speaker 1: Clutt joined the EMCs, and it didn't take long for
Speaker 1: her to have misgivings about their medical care, including the
Speaker 1: care for sisters. In nineteen seventy seven, she was assigned
Speaker 1: to a house in Papua New Guinea. She was twenty
Speaker 1: two before she left. She says no one suggested she'd
Speaker 1: take medication to prevent malaria, usually taken two weeks before travel.
Speaker 1: When she arrived, she says she saw grief sons of
Speaker 1: nuns who had died from malaria, so as soon as
Speaker 1: she had a chance, she talked to mother Teresa about it.
Speaker 6: I asked her, could we take something to prevent malaria?
Speaker 6: And she said I I don't take anything. She trusts
Speaker 6: in God, but I could take it if I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Colette decided to take it, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: One night, she felt incredibly cold.
Speaker 6: My teeth were chattering. I had a terrible back pain,
Speaker 6: terrible headache.
Speaker 1: She didn't go to work that day, and she wasn't
Speaker 1: getting any better.
Speaker 6: I was arching, my back was arching, my tongue was
Speaker 6: coming out involuntarily, and I could have died.
Speaker 1: The sisters sent for a doctor. He said it was
Speaker 1: cerebral malaria, which was extremely serious.
Speaker 6: I didn't die. You'll be pleased to hear.
Speaker 1: Another time, I was working with tuberculosis patients in the Philippines.
Speaker 1: What she saw startled her.
Speaker 6: There was a particular mistake where a wrong injection was given,
Speaker 6: and I was horrified when I asked the sister, you know, well,
Speaker 6: how much did you give? And they didn't even know
Speaker 6: what dose they'd given.
Speaker 1: Cross in fiction was a problem since patients were mixed
Speaker 1: together in close quarters collect things. A lot of these
Speaker 1: mistakes stem from this ams belief that the sisters shouldn't
Speaker 1: have too much expertise. Expertise is an opportunity for pride,
Speaker 1: and Mother Teresa believed ignorance was actually an advantage because
Speaker 1: you're a vessel for God's will.
Speaker 6: It was a sort of form of magical thinking. If
Speaker 6: you obey God's will will be done through you in
Speaker 6: some sort of magical way. Mother used to say it
Speaker 6: was I'm just a pencil in his hands, like an
Speaker 6: inanimate object. That's what they're told. Half the time, we
Speaker 6: didn't know where we were going, and we were sent
Speaker 6: away suddenly, so there was absolutely no preparation.
Speaker 1: No language or cultural training. The other thing that troubled
Speaker 1: her was how the vow of obedience affected their work.
Speaker 1: You were supposed to obey, cheerfully, promptly and without question.
Speaker 1: But what if you saw injustice or medical mistakes? Do
Speaker 1: you speak up? Then one day and Manila sticks out
Speaker 1: to her. The sisters had what they called at Tahanan,
Speaker 1: a home for people who had tuberculosis and other illnesses.
Speaker 6: And so a little boy came with his parents, and
Speaker 6: his name was Alex, and he was very.
Speaker 1: Sick, dehydrated and malnourished, with a fever and sepsis.
Speaker 6: His skin was floppy and his eyes were sunken.
Speaker 1: They weren't supposed to accept people on Thursdays. But Collette,
Speaker 1: who was sister Tobit back then, spoke with the parents Anymay.
Speaker 6: And the professed sister came out in a boiling rage,
Speaker 6: saying Tobert, what are you doing here? I said, well,
Speaker 6: this little boy is very ill and he's been rejected
Speaker 6: by the hospital, and we need to help him. And
Speaker 6: she said, so only you know what's right. And I said, look,
Speaker 6: I don't really know what's right, but I just know
Speaker 6: that this little child is going to die if we
Speaker 6: don't do something. And she said, go back to the
Speaker 6: Dahanna and I said no, no, I won't wow, And
Speaker 6: she said I will help him this time, but you
Speaker 6: do what you're told and go back to the Dahanna.
Speaker 1: So callite dead and the child was admitted. They put
Speaker 1: him on a drip with antibiotics and fluids. That night,
Speaker 1: she snuck over to see how he was.
Speaker 6: I remember carrying him outside into the knot and just
Speaker 6: sort of thing, why why you know, to the blackness.
Speaker 6: Next day was much much better. Yeah, he survives. He
Speaker 6: became a fat little thing.
Speaker 1: In fact, Collette's intervention wouldn't go unnoticed. About a month later,
Speaker 1: she says, she walked into the dormitory and her bedroll
Speaker 1: was gone. Someone had removed it, no warning, no explanation.
Speaker 1: She'd been demoted from her post as novice mistress. She
Speaker 1: says the conflict she felt inside her pierced through her
Speaker 1: life like a thorn. Mother Teresa wrote a letter in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty. As usual, there was one thing on her mind.
Speaker 1: She said, during the year, very often, I have been
Speaker 1: longing to be all for Jesus and to make other souls,
Speaker 1: especially Indian come and love him fervently. Bringing souls to
Speaker 1: Jesus sounds a lot like conversion to me, and Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa used the word conversion in some of her letters.
Speaker 1: According to Father Brian Kolodechuk, who edited her letters for publication,
Speaker 1: she said, yes, I convert. I convert you to be
Speaker 1: a better Hindu, or a better Muslim, or a better Protestant,
Speaker 1: or a better Catholic, or a better Parsi, or a
Speaker 1: better Sikh or a better Buddhist. And after you have
Speaker 1: found God, it is for you to do what God
Speaker 1: wants you to do.
Speaker 8: When I first joined, the energy and the spirit of
Speaker 8: the society was extremely powerful. It was never about converting people, but.
Speaker 1: That didn't last. Sue Weber says, she's a former MC
Speaker 1: who is a SUPERI in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 8: The longer I stayed in the order, it started to
Speaker 8: be about converting people. It became more about how many
Speaker 8: people did you convert.
Speaker 3: I heard from many, many people that this was happening
Speaker 3: on a large scale that they were converting surpriitiously at
Speaker 3: the point of death.
Speaker 1: In his book, Rube Chattergy tells the story of one
Speaker 1: former sister who says sisters were trained to ask a
Speaker 1: dying person if they wanted a ticket to heaven, and
Speaker 1: if they agreed to press a wet cloth to their
Speaker 1: forehead and quietly baptize them, not.
Speaker 9: One has died. Result Jesse session ticket was St. Peter.
Speaker 9: We call it because tickets and Peter will not let
Speaker 9: them go in we call baptism tickets was mister, this.
Speaker 1: Is Mother Teresa. In nineteen ninety two, speaking at a
Speaker 1: clinic in California.
Speaker 9: We asked the person, do you runs you wanted blessing
Speaker 9: by which your sins will be forgiven and you will
Speaker 9: receive God. And they have never refuse. So twenty nine
Speaker 9: thousand have died in that one house from the time
Speaker 9: we began the work in nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 3: And they were collecting the numbers because you get brownie
Speaker 3: points if you convert.
Speaker 9: Because it's so beautiful to see the people.
Speaker 3: Die, so much joy, and it's actually a pretty lowly
Speaker 3: thing to do to take advantage of somebody's altered mental
Speaker 3: state and to exploit them like that.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most repeated critique of Mother Teresa is that
Speaker 1: you romanticized poverty. Christopher Hutchins put it this way, that
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor, She
Speaker 1: was a friend of poverty. Chantony Chacerbarty, a professor of
Speaker 1: history at the University of Kolcutta, says westerners ate her
Speaker 1: story up.
Speaker 10: I think the Western fascination with her was because she
Speaker 10: was using the Indian sari as a projection of her
Speaker 10: glorification of poverty. The sadi clad women on the streets
Speaker 10: of Calcutta, working among destitute people living on the streets.
Speaker 10: I think that fascinated a lot of Western people, trying
Speaker 10: to project India as somewhat, you know, a place like Mars,
Speaker 10: almost through chartategy.
Speaker 1: Put it a little more strongly.
Speaker 3: The West felt so smug and so glad that this
Speaker 3: white woman who's a Catholic, very very rigid Catholic, was
Speaker 3: looking after these disgusting, desperate people in a remote corner.
Speaker 10: Of the world.
Speaker 1: The Western interest in Mother Teresa's work led to a
Speaker 1: lot of donations. Some report tons of millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: but the exact amount is unclear. The mcs don't reveal
Speaker 1: their financial information, including to us we asked. When one
Speaker 1: Forbes India reporter asked how much they receive in donations,
Speaker 1: he was told, God knows, he is our banker.
Speaker 8: We have a lot of money. A lot.
Speaker 1: This is Sue Webber again. When she became a superior
Speaker 1: at the Aid's Hospice in San Francisco, she got a
Speaker 1: checkbook for the first time, but she says she couldn't
Speaker 1: really use it.
Speaker 8: I had to go through so many channels to get
Speaker 8: like a refrigerator, a small refrigerator to put the men's
Speaker 8: medicine in I had. I had access to an account
Speaker 8: that had over fifty five million dollars in it, and
Speaker 8: I couldn't buy a refrigerator as the superior of the house.
Speaker 1: Collette Livermore, the former sister from Australia, put it this way.
Speaker 1: We had plenty of money, but in the name of poverty,
Speaker 1: we didn't want to use it. Instead, they begged. That's
Speaker 1: what the sisters called it. Begging. They begged donated supplies,
Speaker 1: whether food or medicine or clothes. Mother Teresa believed it
Speaker 1: was a chance for the donor to come closer to christ.
Speaker 8: So I was told with another sister to go look
Speaker 8: at vehicles.
Speaker 1: So you remembers when she was in the Bronx and
Speaker 1: they needed a new car.
Speaker 8: So we get there and we look at different vehicles
Speaker 8: and there's a small jeep. So I call the house
Speaker 8: and I said to the regional superiors, So we found
Speaker 8: the vehicle and this is how much it costs. Can
Speaker 8: we go ahead and purchase it? And she goes, no,
Speaker 8: you should beg for it, and I was like what,
Speaker 8: and I said, I'm not begging for it. I said,
Speaker 8: we have the money, and I would have never had
Speaker 8: a problem at all to beg for anything if we
Speaker 8: didn't have it.
Speaker 1: By begging for it, it's basically.
Speaker 8: It's a lie because you're basically presenting that you need
Speaker 8: something and you don't have the wherewithal to get it, right,
Speaker 8: that's a lie.
Speaker 1: So you refused to beg for it, but she knew
Speaker 1: she had to obey her regional superior.
Speaker 8: So I said, this is exactly what I said to
Speaker 8: the guy. So I said, hey, I'm just curious, like
Speaker 8: would you give us that cheap? Would you just give
Speaker 8: it to us? And he was like for free? And
Speaker 8: I was like yeah, and he was like, well, don't
Speaker 8: you have any money, And I go, oh, no, we
Speaker 8: have plenty of money. I'm just curious if you would
Speaker 8: just give it to us. And he started laughing and
Speaker 8: he goes no, and I was like okay. So I
Speaker 8: called back the region and I was like, they won't
Speaker 8: give it to us for free, and then we ended
Speaker 8: up buying it.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa often spoke of suffering, but critics asked how
Speaker 1: much did you do to alleviate it. There's a particular
Speaker 1: moment in an interview on William F. Buckley's firing Line
Speaker 1: on PBS in nineteen eighty nine, where she tells the
Speaker 1: story of a woman who had cancer. The woman wasn't
Speaker 1: terrible pain, but Mother Teresa told her that the pain
Speaker 1: was a sign that she had come so close to
Speaker 1: Jesus on the cross that he could kiss.
Speaker 9: Her, and the lady, though she was in some great pain,
Speaker 9: she joined their hands together and said, Mother Teresa, please
Speaker 9: tell Jesus to stop kissing me.
Speaker 1: As Mother Teresa tells this story, you can see that
Speaker 1: she's starting to smile. What's weird about this moment to
Speaker 1: me is hearing people laughing in the background. After this
Speaker 1: woman says to Mother Teresa, please tell Jesus to stop
Speaker 1: kissing me. I guess it's supposed to be funny, but
Speaker 1: doesn't it also mean this person just wants the pain
Speaker 1: to stop. The interviewer then says to Mother Teresa, Christ
Speaker 1: entered his own passion willingly. Most humans enter unwillingly into pain.
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa replies that he'd be surprised how content the
Speaker 1: poor people in India are that on their suffering faces
Speaker 1: you see a beautiful smile. That her work is to
Speaker 1: help them accept suffering as a gift. Mother Teresa knew
Speaker 1: the power of a good story. She repeated anecdotes until
Speaker 1: they were parables, and she had a way with journalists.
Speaker 1: One expert said it was like she cast a spell
Speaker 1: on them. She may not have enjoyed publicity, but she
Speaker 1: saw the value in it. She was strategic about grinting interviews.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she made agreements that she'd be allowed to review
Speaker 1: an edit material before it was published. Books about her
Speaker 1: are often full of inaccuracies, more legend than fact, and
Speaker 1: some of the people I talked to told me the
Speaker 1: church was more than happy to benefit from that legend.
Speaker 1: It wasn't only Mother Teresa who knew how to use
Speaker 1: the media. Mary Johnson says the church saw its value to.
Speaker 5: And I do feel that the church used her. I
Speaker 5: remember I traveled with her once to Louisiana, the first
Speaker 5: place where the abuses of priests who were pedophiles had
Speaker 5: become known.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, a Louisiana priest admitted to abusing
Speaker 1: more than thirty children. He was eventually sentenced to twenty
Speaker 1: years in prison. While the trial was underway, the Missionaries
Speaker 1: of Charity opened a new house just an hour away
Speaker 1: in Baton Rouge.
Speaker 5: The sisters had been invited there in order to repair
Speaker 5: the image of the church. If the people of the
Speaker 5: diocese saw Mother Teresa and to sisters, that would be
Speaker 5: the example that could kind of make up for these
Speaker 5: horrible things that the priests had done.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the Missionaries of Charity and Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: sort of became a pr tool for the church.
Speaker 5: Exactly, a PR tool, a symbol, And I do think
Speaker 5: that's a way of using someone.
Speaker 1: A lot of people wanted to use that symbol. After
Speaker 1: Malcolm Muggridge's filmed Something Beautiful for God, he promoted her
Speaker 1: like crazy. He saw her potential for advancing conservative causes,
Speaker 1: especially with her stance on abortion. He and a number
Speaker 1: of American politicians advocated for her to be given the
Speaker 1: Nobel Peace Prize, and when she was abortion was at
Speaker 1: the center of her acceptance speech.
Speaker 7: And I feel one thing I want to share with
Speaker 7: you or the greatest destroyer of peace today is the
Speaker 7: crive of the innocent unborn child. If a mother and
Speaker 7: murder her own child in her own roomb, what is
Speaker 7: left for you and for me to kill each other
Speaker 7: to meet the nations who have legalized abortion, they are
Speaker 7: the poorest nation.
Speaker 1: Christopher Higgins, the man behind the documentary Hells Angel, He
Speaker 1: sees this speech and much of Mother Teresa's work as
Speaker 1: part of a larger, unstated political agenda to advance the
Speaker 1: goals of the church.
Speaker 2: If you give women control over their ratory reduction and
Speaker 2: come back to that village in ten years time, everything
Speaker 2: will be better right away. It's the only thing that
Speaker 2: works well. Mother Treesa spent her entire life say that
Speaker 2: that solution was imcommissible. She waged her entire life making
Speaker 2: sure that didn't happen. So I wish there was a
Speaker 2: hell to which she could go, because she has a
Speaker 2: lot of death on the conscience, and a lot of
Speaker 2: misery and stupidity and ignorance and dirt and filth and
Speaker 2: disease as well.
Speaker 1: It just strikes me again and again how polarized these
Speaker 1: camps are. It's like you either love her or you
Speaker 1: hate her.
Speaker 5: The image of Mother Teresa that I had encountered out
Speaker 5: in the world wasn't anything like the woman I had.
Speaker 1: Known Here's Mary Johnson either.
Speaker 5: They were people who made her out to be this
Speaker 5: complete holy saint and said all kinds of silly things
Speaker 5: like every morning she had only a banana for breakfast
Speaker 5: and she you know, just these apocryphal stories that were absurd,
Speaker 5: or they were people who were very, very critical, and
Speaker 5: not that there weren't things to be critical about, but
Speaker 5: who didn't really understand where Mother Troops was coming from
Speaker 5: at all, and attributed motives to her that were not
Speaker 5: at all her motives.
Speaker 11: I just think if we're going to talk shit, we
Speaker 11: should talk the right shit, right.
Speaker 1: Kelly Dunham was a sister with the MC's in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. She's heard the criticisms I just laid out
Speaker 1: and has plenty of her own. She calls the MC's problematic.
Speaker 1: But on the day Mother Teresa was made a saint,
Speaker 1: Kelly posted a YouTube video critiquing the critiques.
Speaker 11: People complain about Mother Teresa is that she urged people
Speaker 11: to accept her suffering, to say, you know, to offer
Speaker 11: it up, and also said that suffering Jesus kissing that okay.
Speaker 11: So on the macro, if somebody is suffering and it's
Speaker 11: caused by somebody else's actions, especially a powerful person, and
Speaker 11: you tell them and accept it, you're obviously contributing to
Speaker 11: a system of oppression and we should fight like hell
Speaker 11: against that. But on the micro, and this is always
Speaker 11: what people are talking about, helping somebody who's dying to
Speaker 11: find meaning in their suffering or their death. Who are
Speaker 11: you to say, like that's not like, that's not cool,
Speaker 11: that that's not good to offer them like you the
Speaker 11: non dying person.
Speaker 12: They could not alleviate all the poverty of Kolkatta, and
Speaker 12: the focus is on the poorest.
Speaker 13: Of the poor, not the poor.
Speaker 1: Father Brian Khaladechich, the head of the MC Fathers, says
Speaker 1: that the quality of medical care and empty houses has
Speaker 1: improved over time, but also that's not the point.
Speaker 12: You have to understand.
Speaker 13: For example, the home for the dying.
Speaker 12: In its context, it was set up not to be
Speaker 12: a clinic to give medical care. It was set up
Speaker 12: to exactly what it's set home for the dying, the
Speaker 12: ones who are dying, so that last moments to have
Speaker 12: some relief, some care, some human love.
Speaker 1: At Mother Teresa's funeral, a cardinal put it this way,
Speaker 1: he said, Mother Teresa was aware of this criticism. She
Speaker 1: would shrug as if saying, while you go on discussing
Speaker 1: causes and explanations, I will kneel beside the force of
Speaker 1: the poor and attend to their needs. After Mother Teresa
Speaker 1: died in nineteen ninety seven, her supporters jump started the
Speaker 1: complicated process of advocating for her sainthood, a process that
Speaker 1: typically starts five years after somebody dies.
Speaker 13: The Archbishop of Calcutta went to the department the Congregation
Speaker 13: for a Saints and asked if he could start already,
Speaker 13: And they said, hey, wait a minute, she only died
Speaker 13: a month ago. Hold your horses.
Speaker 1: But Father Brian Koladachik says, soon, Pope John Paul the
Speaker 1: Second waved the waiting period. Father Brian was the official postulator,
Speaker 1: basically the advocate for her canonization and her fiercest critics
Speaker 1: a Rupe Chatterjee and Christopher Higgins. They both testified they
Speaker 1: gave the official critical perspective for the canonization process, a
Speaker 1: type of role previously known in the Catholic Church as
Speaker 1: the advocatis diaboli or devil's advocate. That's actually where the
Speaker 1: term comes from. As part of the canonization process, the
Speaker 1: Church needed to attribute two miracles to Mother Teresa that
Speaker 1: happened after her death. This is proof that she's interceding
Speaker 1: from heaven. Reports poured in the church research to claims
Speaker 1: had eventually approved two miracles. They declared secured a Bengali
Speaker 1: woman's stomach tumor and saved a Brazilian man in a coma.
Speaker 1: Almost twenty years after Mother Teresa's death, a crowd packed
Speaker 1: Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City for her canonization. A
Speaker 1: massive portrait of Mother Teresa overlook the proceedings from them
Speaker 1: in front of Saint Peter's Basilica, and a million tiny
Speaker 1: copies of the painting were passed out at the event.
Speaker 1: During the ceremony, two MC sisters carried in a relic
Speaker 1: a vial of Mother Teresa's blood and Pope Francis, the
Speaker 1: head of the Catholic Church, said the words to proclaim
Speaker 1: her new status, We declare and define Blessed Teresa of
Speaker 1: Calcutta to be a saint. On her tomb in the
Speaker 1: mother House, they engraved the words love one another, as
Speaker 1: I have loved you. Next time on the Turning, all of.
Speaker 5: A sudden, Naobia's snacks to me, and she's whispering in
Speaker 5: my ear, Sister Donat, I love you.
Speaker 1: The Turning is written by Allen lance Lesser and Me.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Allen lance Lesser and Emily Foreman. Our
Speaker 1: editor is Rob Rosenthal Andrea asoahe is. Our digital fact
Speaker 1: checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Special links to Dennis Wills
Speaker 1: of DG Will's Books, Treig a Llie, Amy Gaines, Sarah Olander,
Speaker 1: Catherine Joyce, Betha Macaluso, Travis Dunlap, and consulting producer Mary Johnson.
Speaker 1: Her memoir and Unquenchable Thirst provided inspiration for this series.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Jessica Alpert and John Parati from
Speaker 1: Rococo Punch and Katrina Norvel from iHeartRadio. Our theme music
Speaker 1: is by Matt Reid. For photos and more details on
Speaker 1: the series. Follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch. You
Speaker 1: can reach out via email to the Turning at Rococo
Speaker 1: punch dot com. I'merica Lance. Thanks for listening.