Speaker 1: Mary was out. After twenty years, twenty years of uplifting
Speaker 1: moments of spiritual grace, twenty years of vexing questions about
Speaker 1: her vocation. Mary Johnson put on her Paisley skirt and
Speaker 1: gold blouse and stepped out of the convent in Rome
Speaker 1: and into a van. This was it. Mary left the
Speaker 1: Missionaries of Charity. Her sister picked her up from the
Speaker 1: airport in Houston. On the way to her house, they
Speaker 1: made a stab. Mary would be living outside the convent
Speaker 1: for the first time in decades, and her sister said
Speaker 1: she'd need a few things.
Speaker 2: I need to pick up a mattress for you. I
Speaker 2: didn't know if you like the hard ones or the
Speaker 2: soft ones.
Speaker 1: Mary wasn't used to getting to choose a mattress, let
Speaker 1: alone having a real mattress. As a missionary of charity.
Speaker 1: They'd stuff their own mattresses with wool or whatever was around,
Speaker 1: and it was only about three inches thick.
Speaker 2: And here I was going to get to choose my
Speaker 2: own mattress from this enormous selection. So that was kind
Speaker 2: of weird.
Speaker 1: Then her sister had an errand in mind, she had
Speaker 1: a pool at her place, and she knew how much
Speaker 1: Mary loved the water, at least when she was a kid.
Speaker 1: So have all things to do. After twenty years in
Speaker 1: a convent, they went simsuit chopping.
Speaker 2: I mean, most of my body hadn't seen the sun
Speaker 2: in twenty years. And there I was going to get
Speaker 2: a swimming suit. And I was just so embarrassed and like,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't let her come into the dressing room with me.
Speaker 2: And anyway, we found a swimming suit that fit and
Speaker 2: brought her home.
Speaker 1: Mary had her own room, and even though so much
Speaker 1: was new, new mattress, new swimsuit, new bedroom, she still
Speaker 1: automatically woke up at four forty every morning. It was
Speaker 1: like she was still in sync with the community she
Speaker 1: had left as an MC. She felt that sense of
Speaker 1: community from the moment she woke up. But now early
Speaker 1: in the morning she just lay there quietly alone. She
Speaker 1: might even go back to sleep. And she liked that too.
Speaker 2: No better, well was going to ring, that was going
Speaker 2: to force me out of bed and onto my knees.
Speaker 2: That was really nice. I could choose what I wanted
Speaker 2: to get up.
Speaker 1: First thing each morning, Mary went to her sister's pool
Speaker 1: and swam. It felt luxurious, It felt free.
Speaker 2: You can take off the habit and grow your hair
Speaker 2: and start walking around like a regular person. But inside,
Speaker 2: being a missionary of charity leaves a very very very
Speaker 2: deep mark. And for me being there for twenty years
Speaker 2: and so deeply immersed, separating wasn't just simply a matter
Speaker 2: of leaving.
Speaker 1: From a cocoa punch and iHeartRadio. This is the Turning
Speaker 1: America Lands Part ten. Out there, the world had changed
Speaker 1: since Mary Johnson became a missionary of charity in the
Speaker 1: late seventies. Something she had a reference point for, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it was completely foreign. Pumping your own gas,
Speaker 1: going to the ATM, using a computer.
Speaker 2: One time, my niece made popcorn in the microwave, and
Speaker 2: I thought the house was going to explode because I
Speaker 2: had no idea what that was. I had no idea
Speaker 2: listen noises. Popcorn in the microwave was a revelation.
Speaker 1: When she left the order, a sister gave her four
Speaker 1: hundred German marks, the equivalent of a little more than
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars, for her twenty years.
Speaker 2: I looked at that deposit slip and I thought, look
Speaker 2: at that. They gave me eleven dollars for every year
Speaker 2: of service. Oh my gosh, talk about a minimum wage
Speaker 2: eleven dollars a year. Eleven dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Mary still trusted in God, but that wasn't going to
Speaker 1: pay the bills. One of her first jobs was at J. C.
Speaker 1: Penny in December of nineteen ninety seven, the Christmas rush.
Speaker 2: I was used to silence and prayer, and here it
Speaker 2: was Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman
Speaker 2: playing all the time. And it was all these people
Speaker 2: with credit cards buying gift after gift, and a lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff in the gift department were useless, chotski
Speaker 2: kind of things, you know, these little figurines. I couldn't
Speaker 2: figure out why people wanted little figurines. I was used
Speaker 2: to repairing broken toys to gift to kids who would
Speaker 2: otherwise have nothing on Christmas. It was strange. It was
Speaker 2: strange for me.
Speaker 1: Mary still remembers the first she went out to eat
Speaker 1: in a restaurant. Her sister took the whole family out
Speaker 1: to dinner.
Speaker 2: I was faced there with this menu, with all these choices.
Speaker 2: It took me forever to make up my mind. I
Speaker 2: didn't know if I would ever again, And you know,
Speaker 2: have a chance to choose what I was going to eat.
Speaker 2: It was like this momentous decision. I think everybody was
Speaker 2: getting kind of nervous with me because I wasn't making
Speaker 2: up my mind, and the waiter had to come back,
Speaker 2: and then eventually I ordered something.
Speaker 1: As Mary mapped out her new life, her mind wanted
Speaker 1: back to Tom Father. Tom had made the thought of
Speaker 1: leaving possible. He had helped her imagine a life outside
Speaker 1: the convent. They pictured waking up together, making coffee, holding
Speaker 1: hands in public without guilt or shame. He'd given her
Speaker 1: a taste of a fuller life, and she knew that's
Speaker 1: what God wanted for her. When Mary asked the MC's
Speaker 1: for exclstration that year of contemplation before officially leaving the order,
Speaker 1: she had called Tom. He had asked her, does this
Speaker 1: mean you would consider marrying me? She couldn't tell if
Speaker 1: he meant it. It was such an awkward proposal, but
Speaker 1: she needed time. Now she was in Texas, out of
Speaker 1: her sorry and away from the convent.
Speaker 2: So at a certain point I knew I was ready
Speaker 2: to talk to him, and that if he was gonna ask,
Speaker 2: actually really directly, if I would consider marrying him, I
Speaker 2: was ready to entertain that notion.
Speaker 1: So she called him. It was the first time they talked,
Speaker 1: and she left, but once she got him on the phone,
Speaker 1: it was clear Tom had decided to remain a priest.
Speaker 2: I definitely had to honor. That's that's what he wants.
Speaker 2: That's the way it is. And yeah, how did it
Speaker 2: feel to hear that? I was prepared to hear that.
Speaker 2: It was. It was kind of sad, you know, it
Speaker 2: kind of shut one door for me. There's very often
Speaker 2: even if something said, if it comes to a certain
Speaker 2: sense of clarity, it's a kind of a gift. I
Speaker 2: appreciated the clarity. That was good.
Speaker 1: And she moved on, still trying to hear what God
Speaker 1: had to say. When Mary left the Missionaries of Charity,
Speaker 1: she had work to do, not just finding a way
Speaker 1: to make money or learning how to use technology. She
Speaker 1: had to face the way the MCS had changed her internally.
Speaker 1: She told me about a time she was staying at
Speaker 1: a religious center. She'd moved out of her sister's house
Speaker 1: after a couple of months, and she found this center
Speaker 1: with sabbatical programming and wellness treatment for clergy. It was
Speaker 1: around this time that she noticed how muddled. Her emotional
Speaker 1: responses were.
Speaker 2: I was talking with the sister who was in charge
Speaker 2: of the place, and it was some thing very sad
Speaker 2: or upsetting. I don't really remember what I was talking
Speaker 2: to her about, but I remember that I was very
Speaker 2: sad and I felt like I wanted to cry, but
Speaker 2: what came out was these giggles and just laughter. It
Speaker 2: was like, I don't know how to express my emotions
Speaker 2: properly anymore, because missionaries of charity are not supposed to
Speaker 2: be sad. You're supposed to be cheerful all the time.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to smile. And I had just been disconnected
Speaker 2: from what I might be feeling inside. How to express
Speaker 2: that I didn't know, and so whenever there was something said,
Speaker 2: I was like laughing instead of crying. I think that
Speaker 2: one of the big things that I've been working on
Speaker 2: for many decades now is trying to reconnect my emotions
Speaker 2: and their expression, trying to reconnect my mind and my body,
Speaker 2: trying to be fully connected. I have been consciously working
Speaker 2: on that.
Speaker 1: In a way, she had to relearn how to think
Speaker 1: and how to feel. God had called her out, but
Speaker 1: in the real world it would take time to shift
Speaker 1: her mindset. She had to untangle guilt and questions about faith,
Speaker 1: come to terms with her relationship with Mother Teresa. There
Speaker 1: was no one moment, no final epiphany. Mary was at
Speaker 1: that center for priests and nuns when Mother Teresa died.
Speaker 2: I found out from one of them who had heard
Speaker 2: it on television, and it was it was a shock.
Speaker 2: It was very hard to mourn Mother Teresa's passing alone
Speaker 2: without the sisters. Why well, imagine someone who's very close
Speaker 2: to you, in your family, and perhaps you're a mother,
Speaker 2: and when she dies, you can't be with the family.
Speaker 2: You have to be off on your own, by yourself.
Speaker 2: That's hard. I had tried to call the sisters in
Speaker 2: Rome many times but never managed to get through. Of course,
Speaker 2: the phone there was always busy, even during regular times,
Speaker 2: so when mother died, even more so I never managed
Speaker 2: to get through.
Speaker 1: A few days after Mother Teresa died, there is a
Speaker 1: memorial celebration at a cathedral in Houston. Mary went and
Speaker 1: sat in the back. In his homily, the bishops spoke
Speaker 1: about how he met Mother Teresa once when her plane
Speaker 1: had a layover in Houston, and.
Speaker 2: He spent about half an hour with her, and there
Speaker 2: I was who had known and followed and loved her
Speaker 2: for twenty years.
Speaker 1: In the back, she knelt in the pew and cried.
Speaker 2: And it all felt so strange. They had a big
Speaker 2: picture of her up at the front, and after nearly
Speaker 2: everyone had gone, I went and stood in front of
Speaker 2: that picture. For a long time I did. I felt
Speaker 2: like I had lost a family member or someone who
Speaker 2: knew me, someone who I cared for, someone who cared
Speaker 2: for me. Of course, my last conversation with mother had
Speaker 2: been very, very difficult, so that's also kind of hard
Speaker 2: knowing that somehow I had disappointed her.
Speaker 1: That feeling did not go away easily. Over the course
Speaker 1: of your life, there are times when you have to
Speaker 1: leave things behind, maybe a relationship, a job, your family, home.
Speaker 1: Leaving DMCs is all of those at once, and that's
Speaker 1: just the first step. Then you have to make your
Speaker 1: own way.
Speaker 3: I mean, the first couple of weeks you're just happy
Speaker 3: to be back with great meals and a great bed
Speaker 3: and you know, incredibly loving people around you. But for me,
Speaker 3: the other piece of the pain is you're gone for
Speaker 3: so long and you're trying to come back into your
Speaker 3: family and so many years of their connections and growth
Speaker 3: and life you are not a part of.
Speaker 1: Sue Weber is the sister who ran the AIDS hospice
Speaker 1: in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: Even now, for me, there's elements and they're not good
Speaker 3: or bad. I think they're just I think it will
Speaker 3: always be that way, where you know you're a part
Speaker 3: of the family and you're super connected. But there's an
Speaker 3: element that there's so much that you missed in that
Speaker 3: journey that you're a lot of time was on the
Speaker 3: outside looking in.
Speaker 1: People don't really know what you've been through. How could they?
Speaker 1: How do you describe what it's really like inside a
Speaker 1: closed community led by a celebrity saint? How do you
Speaker 1: get past people's assumptions. When Sue first left, she still
Speaker 1: wore her sorry. She was still weighing what to do,
Speaker 1: go back to the EMCES or leave. She'd moved to
Speaker 1: her hometown in Pennsylvania to live with her parents. She says,
Speaker 1: when you wear the white and blue sorry, everyone notices you.
Speaker 3: You know, people would stop you on the street and
Speaker 3: be like, can I touch you?
Speaker 1: It's like people didn't see her. They saw what she
Speaker 1: wore and what that represented. They saw Mother Teresa, the
Speaker 1: mother Teresa. They thought they knew, and that got in
Speaker 1: the way of her decision making.
Speaker 3: I couldn't come to any clarity unless I took off
Speaker 3: the habit and was seen.
Speaker 1: So she rode to the MC's and got permission to
Speaker 1: wear street clothes. Sue's sister Joan has been out of
Speaker 1: the MC's for more than three decades. She still has
Speaker 1: a picture of Mother Teresa in her office. I love
Speaker 1: her to.
Speaker 4: Death, and she is I consider I have certain saints
Speaker 4: in heaven that I love and read about and call
Speaker 4: out to and you know, ask for divine intervention many times.
Speaker 5: She's one of them.
Speaker 1: So it was weird for her when she was teaching
Speaker 1: a religion class for kids and a Mother Teresa impersonator
Speaker 1: came by.
Speaker 4: She puts an outfit on that looks like Mother Teresa's outfit,
Speaker 4: and then she like hangs laundry, and then she kind
Speaker 4: of tells the story of Mother Teresa's life. I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's really weird. It's just you look at her and
Speaker 4: you're like, I can't even explain it. It's like, you
Speaker 4: know what the demeanor of a Mother Teresa nun is.
Speaker 4: You know what it looks like and what they do,
Speaker 4: and really do you know? You know, you're sitting there
Speaker 4: and you're like, Okay, that's not true.
Speaker 3: That's not true.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean. It's like they try to
Speaker 4: understand by her readings or her or things that have
Speaker 4: written about her, but they really don't know, and so
Speaker 4: it wasn't there.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 4: I was just saying, it's weird for me to watch
Speaker 4: someone portray Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: Sue and Joan both knew Mother Teresa. It's a comfort
Speaker 1: that they can talk about their time in the missionaries
Speaker 1: of charity and they get it. It's part of what
Speaker 1: makes them close.
Speaker 4: There's not many people that understand the missionaries of charity,
Speaker 4: and no matter how many times you try to explain it,
Speaker 4: a lot of people look at you like you're weird
Speaker 4: because of the penances that you did and didn't understand
Speaker 4: where we were coming from when we did the penances.
Speaker 4: So I don't share my I really do not share
Speaker 4: my story because people can't relate. If you haven't had
Speaker 4: the experience, you can't relate.
Speaker 1: Mary Johnson doesn't usually tell people she was an EMC.
Speaker 1: It's just easier not to go there.
Speaker 2: Where it usually comes up, actually is people will ask
Speaker 2: me where are you from? Because I still have a
Speaker 2: slight accent in my voice, and I'll say, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I was born in Michigan, kind of grew up in Texas.
Speaker 2: I say, you don't sound like that, and then you
Speaker 2: know I Eventually I get around to saying something very vague, like, well,
Speaker 2: I lived for a number of years in an international
Speaker 2: community where we all spoke English, but hardly anyone as
Speaker 2: their first language, and I had to develop a way
Speaker 2: of speaking so they could understand me with clear vowels
Speaker 2: and clear consonants, and they'll look at me with this
Speaker 2: big question mark on their faces. And sometimes I just
Speaker 2: have to explain what I did with my life for
Speaker 2: twenty years. And when I do, people who aren't Catholic,
Speaker 2: they say, oh, what a wonderful thing to have done
Speaker 2: with two decades of your life. And tell me about
Speaker 2: mother Theresa, what was she really like? And nearly without
Speaker 2: exception Catholics, they say, why did you leave? Because there
Speaker 2: are some acceptable reasons for leaving and some that aren't.
Speaker 6: I had so much shame.
Speaker 1: Kelly Dunham, the former sister who's a stand up comic,
Speaker 1: felt rejected like Jesus gave up on her offer. To
Speaker 1: give her life to him, and now here she was
Speaker 1: on the outside with no money.
Speaker 6: And I really didn't have any skills. I didn't have
Speaker 6: any more skills that were applicable to the American workplace.
Speaker 6: Like I was twenty three, twenty four years old, and
Speaker 6: I had almost a four year gap.
Speaker 3: In employment history.
Speaker 6: That was hard to explain, you know. And I remember
Speaker 6: I had a composition notebook that had like all the
Speaker 6: jobs I was applying to, and I'd cut out a
Speaker 6: New Yorker cartoon and it was a guy doing a
Speaker 6: job interview and he said, am I a team player?
Speaker 6: Are you kidding? I was in a cult? And I'd
Speaker 6: crossed out cult and put convent. And that cartoon actually
Speaker 6: helped me a lot, because I felt so alone.
Speaker 1: When she first left, she was embarrassed about leaving, but
Speaker 1: over time she feared being judged for joining in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was more closeted about it. I didn't know
Speaker 6: anybody else who was an ex non. And then as
Speaker 6: I started going to something called the Conference for Catholic Lesbians,
Speaker 6: and that whole thing was full of.
Speaker 1: Excenns Kelly was done to learn just how many lesbian
Speaker 1: ex nouns there were. They had pool parties and prayed
Speaker 1: the Rosary.
Speaker 6: Which I thought was like such a great thing to
Speaker 6: do at a pool party. And then at some point
Speaker 6: everyone took off all the clothes and went swimming, and
Speaker 6: I was like, this is great.
Speaker 1: This is way better than the combat. This is really great.
Speaker 1: When Collette Livermore left the MCS and went home in Australia,
Speaker 1: mother Teresa sent her letters asking her to come back.
Speaker 1: She tucked little cards inside them.
Speaker 5: Three times. She sent me a god depicting a crossed figure.
Speaker 1: In the illustration, Jesus was covered in wounds and bleeding,
Speaker 1: with his hands tied.
Speaker 5: With her riding at the bottom, saying be the one.
Speaker 1: But Collett didn't go back. Instead ed she pursued what
Speaker 1: she dreamed of as a teenager, She went to medical school.
Speaker 1: Most of her classmates were thirteen years younger than she was.
Speaker 1: She says in med school she learned to think again,
Speaker 1: to doubt, to analyze the evidence rather than to give
Speaker 1: unquestioning assent to what she was told. But even as
Speaker 1: her worldview shifted, she still felt the shadow of her
Speaker 1: eleven years as an MC. In med school, she avoided
Speaker 1: telling people she'd been a sister with Mother Teresa. They
Speaker 1: treated her differently if they knew, and instead of volunteering
Speaker 1: for procedures, she'd find herself hanging back hoping she wouldn't
Speaker 1: be selected.
Speaker 5: My confidence was gone. I was very unassertive as well.
Speaker 5: You know in classes, who've got all these young people
Speaker 5: around you bringing with self confidence and they want to
Speaker 5: have a go.
Speaker 1: As a doctor. For a while she worked in Northern
Speaker 1: Australia and every week or two she'd fly two hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty miles on a mail carrier to a remote
Speaker 1: settlement and treat the Aboriginal community there. Sometimes Kleet worked
Speaker 1: alongside MCS sisters. On a rare occasion, when Collette got
Speaker 1: a chance to eat a meal with them, they asked
Speaker 1: her why she left. She explained, and Collette found that
Speaker 1: they too had experiences when superiors told them to refuse
Speaker 1: health to the sick. She was relieved it validated her experience.
Speaker 1: Collet's professional life was fulfilling. Her work as a doctor
Speaker 1: was busy, and she got a chance to travel and
Speaker 1: experience cultures that were new to her. Her life was full,
Speaker 1: but the EMC imprint was there.
Speaker 5: Well, I haven't married. I would have liked to have.
Speaker 5: I was really really wanting to find a life partner,
Speaker 5: but it just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Do you think the missionaries of charity had affected some
Speaker 1: of that? Was it timing or also just kind of
Speaker 1: it took a while to break out of that mindset,
Speaker 1: do you think or Oh?
Speaker 5: I think it was both. I know I did want
Speaker 5: a partner and to have kids because the biological clock
Speaker 5: was ticking, I had very poor self confidence. I mean,
Speaker 5: lots of people leave the comment and find partners the
Speaker 5: next day, so I don't know what it is with me.
Speaker 5: That's what I used to want, But yeah, I didn't anyway,
Speaker 5: and I'd get very sad and thinking everyone can find
Speaker 5: a partner except me, what's wrong with me? Blah blah
Speaker 5: blah and so. But I got over that in a while.
Speaker 5: I thought, you know, if it happens, it happens. But
Speaker 5: never did. Oh, everybody gets lonely. Sometimes I'd get hope
Speaker 5: from friendships, and I find hoping. You know, my nephews
Speaker 5: had a new little girl. She's beautiful. I've got great nieces,
Speaker 5: and I find a lot of solace in nature, in
Speaker 5: beautiful things. When I go bushwalking and seeing flowers and
Speaker 5: beautiful vistas of the sea. All that makes me feel happy.
Speaker 5: You get those moments where you're just there and it's everything.
Speaker 5: The most important thing is love. Everything you can do
Speaker 5: to strengthen that is the most valuable thing.
Speaker 2: I would have been happy to date there. Nobody was
Speaker 2: interested in me. I really stuck out in Southeast Texas.
Speaker 2: You know. I wasn't really kind of dating material also
Speaker 2: in the beginning, and I was still trying to figure
Speaker 2: things out.
Speaker 1: For a while. Mary Johnson toyed with the idea of
Speaker 1: starting her own community, one for women and men, open
Speaker 1: to many faiths, even those with no faith. It would
Speaker 1: be only the good parts of the MCS, a life
Speaker 1: focused on love and serving the poor. She ended up
Speaker 1: working a number of different jobs. She ironed clothes, worked
Speaker 1: as a receptionist in a doctor's office, and as a
Speaker 1: liturgical director at a church. She went back to college
Speaker 1: and then went on to graduate school to study writing,
Speaker 1: and that's where she met Luke.
Speaker 2: And we just had an immediate connection.
Speaker 1: About three years after she left the MCS, Mary was
Speaker 1: at a ten day writing residency. On her first day,
Speaker 1: she was overwhelmed and intimidated the people she met. Pontificated
Speaker 1: about authors she'd never heard of. At lunch, a charming
Speaker 1: but shy fellow residence sat opposite her. They started talking.
Speaker 1: Luke was a doctor, but he was studying poetry. He'd
Speaker 1: gotten frustrated with parts of being a physician, like dealing
Speaker 1: with insurance companies, and he felt like studying poetry was
Speaker 1: a way to restore his soul.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't even say that we were really dated.
Speaker 2: It was this one week together. I went back to Texas,
Speaker 2: and you know, within a couple of months he was
Speaker 2: inviting me to move in, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Mary says Luke was a good listener, creative, quirky, the
Speaker 1: type of person who wants to keep growing, always improving
Speaker 1: with time, getting deeper better. Somehow they could talk for hours.
Speaker 1: Moving in with Luke for the first time put on
Speaker 1: display how many habits from MC life were still a
Speaker 1: part of Mary. She apologized constantly for things that didn't matter,
Speaker 1: because that's what she did for twenty years.
Speaker 2: If you broke a plate as a missionary of charity,
Speaker 2: you had to kneel down and kiss the floor and
Speaker 2: confess your fault for having busted displate. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I was apologizing. I was asking permission for things that
Speaker 2: nobody asks permission for. You know, it wouldn't be all
Speaker 2: right if I uh have a cup of tea now,
Speaker 2: you know, just ridiculous things. But it took a long
Speaker 2: time for a lot of those things to fall away
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Getting closer with Luke allowed her to process some of
Speaker 1: her darker times with the MCS. She says he recognized
Speaker 1: what she was struggling with, partly because of his past experience.
Speaker 1: In college, he worked on a crisis intervention hotline.
Speaker 2: And he had also been on a board of an
Speaker 2: abused women's shelter, so he was very familiar with the
Speaker 2: cycle of women who get stuck in abusive relationships of
Speaker 2: one sort or another. And I think he saw my
Speaker 2: relationship with the Church, with Mother Theresa, with Jesus as
Speaker 2: having a lot of those elements of abuse, and how
Speaker 2: very often that abuse can be something that actually strengthens
Speaker 2: the bond between the abuser and the abused, reinforcing feelings
Speaker 2: of guilt, reinforcing an unequal power dynamic, holding you captive
Speaker 2: in one sense or another. So I think he understood
Speaker 2: all of that even more clearly than I did.
Speaker 1: Mary was racked with guilt for disappointing Mother Teresa, for
Speaker 1: turning her back on her vows. In the convent, she
Speaker 1: had rituals that helped with the guilt, and she had
Speaker 1: the discipline. Without those, it lingered, and she couldn't hide
Speaker 1: it from Luke.
Speaker 2: At one point, I was still feeling all this guilt
Speaker 2: for all sorts of things. In one day, I said,
Speaker 2: beat me, beat me. And he knew about the discipline.
Speaker 2: He had seen the callouses on my knees, he'd seen
Speaker 2: the scars on my arm. He knew that history there,
Speaker 2: and he helped me in his arms for a long time.
Speaker 2: And I cried, And you know, it took a while
Speaker 2: for the guilt to go away. It took a long while.
Speaker 1: When Mary left the Missionaries of Charity, she often dreamt
Speaker 1: about the sisters she'd left behind. They weren't happy dreams.
Speaker 1: She'd be in a tunnel trying to run away, the
Speaker 1: sisters chasing her. Or she'd be in a house with
Speaker 1: the sisters and they'd block all the exits so she
Speaker 1: couldn't get out.
Speaker 2: When I wake from those dreams, I realized, there's this
Speaker 2: icky residue still kind of stuck to me, and I
Speaker 2: can't get rid of this goopy tari stuff that's clinging,
Speaker 2: you know, to me metaphorically.
Speaker 1: When she moved to Vermont to be with Luke, she
Speaker 1: stopped going to church every week. She was still religious,
Speaker 1: but things just didn't feel as sure as they used to.
Speaker 2: I began to feel more and more that the church,
Speaker 2: in many ways just wasn't making a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Now she had a chance to explore her own spirituality,
Speaker 1: to reclaim faith for herself, to find a way to
Speaker 1: relate to God without that relationship being mediated by rituals
Speaker 1: and rules. It was liberating, but it was also confusing.
Speaker 2: So it was just a couple of years after I'd
Speaker 2: left the Sisters, and I'd been through so many different changes.
Speaker 2: I was trying to figure out, you know, do I
Speaker 2: even believe in God anymore? I don't know. And it
Speaker 2: was confusing because there'd been all these promises about how
Speaker 2: God was going to take care of you and this
Speaker 2: and that, and I don't know. It just didn't seem
Speaker 2: to be happening exactly in the way that everything was
Speaker 2: just so confusing.
Speaker 1: She and Luke lived in an idyllic fire hose at
Speaker 1: the end of a road with a forest behind it.
Speaker 1: She went out on a walk one day.
Speaker 2: I went up on this hill in the Green mountains,
Speaker 2: overlooking a pond.
Speaker 1: She thought about this God that used to be her
Speaker 1: best friend, who she talked to and saying to you
Speaker 1: on the playground as a kid, the God who became
Speaker 1: her spouse.
Speaker 2: I just stood up and I shouted. I shouted, God,
Speaker 2: if you're out there, I need to know. I really
Speaker 2: need to know. Please tell me. Hey, listen, I need
Speaker 2: to know. And there was no immediate revelation, but it
Speaker 2: was just a gradual coming to own awareness that what
Speaker 2: other people meant when they said God, that didn't seem
Speaker 2: accurate from my perspective.
Speaker 1: Eventually she became an atheist. She says, the stories about
Speaker 1: God just don't ring true anymore. Physics and literature and
Speaker 1: music they feel honest. She says, the mystery of the
Speaker 1: universe is exciting. She's okay living with questions.
Speaker 2: It just became very clear to me that reality was
Speaker 2: a lot bigger than religion, and that any effort to
Speaker 2: contain reality in a box or in a story was
Speaker 2: doing a disservice. How much harm do we do by
Speaker 2: pretending to know things that it's impossible to know?
Speaker 1: But she still thinks love is at the center of
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 2: When you say love and is it a feeling or
Speaker 2: is it an action? Is love something someone Will's? Love
Speaker 2: is both a noun and a verb. For me, I
Speaker 2: seek that verb love. I want to love.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, ten years after she left
Speaker 1: the Missionaries of Charity and ten years after Mother Teresa's death,
Speaker 1: Mary headed to Pennsylvania. She went to a conference marking
Speaker 1: a decade since what they called Mother's entrance into heaven.
Speaker 1: A number of Empsy priests and sisters would be there.
Speaker 1: She might have a chance to talk to them. She
Speaker 1: wanted to be around people who knew her in her
Speaker 1: past life and people who loved Mother. She felt on
Speaker 1: some level that celebrating that previous life might finally let
Speaker 1: her leave it behind. During the conference, Mary attended a mass.
Speaker 1: She slid into a pu near the back. She could
Speaker 1: recognize some of the sisters from behind, their gestures a
Speaker 1: telltale slump the way one leaned in. During prayer, the
Speaker 1: Superior General of the MC Fathers gave the homily. He
Speaker 1: talked about the growth of the MCS, that a thousand
Speaker 1: sisters had joined in the past ten years. Mary thought
Speaker 1: he didn't mention the sisters who left after Mass. She
Speaker 1: watched a documentary about Mother Teresa ate in a room
Speaker 1: where people sold Mother Teresa books, Mother Teresa Dulls, Mother
Speaker 1: Teresa CDs medals. She wondered what Mother would think. The
Speaker 1: next morning, during the final hymn of Mass, she hurried
Speaker 1: to the front of the church. She approached the superior
Speaker 1: general at the time, Sister Nermala. She recognized Mary Donata.
Speaker 1: She said. Mary bowed her head for a blessing, but
Speaker 1: Sister Nimala put her finger under Mary's chin. She shook
Speaker 1: her head as if to say no, no blessing. When
Speaker 1: the other sisters saw Mary, they greeted her with a
Speaker 1: bit more warmth.
Speaker 2: Initially it was like oh ster Dolna, and there was like,
Speaker 2: oh no, can't say that, No Mary, Mary, right Mary.
Speaker 2: It was it was confusing for them because they for them,
Speaker 2: I was always Sister Donata.
Speaker 1: Being called Donata felt good because it felt like she belonged.
Speaker 1: For some reason, she still wanted so badly to belong
Speaker 1: She hoped she could sneak in to have lunch with
Speaker 1: the sisters, even though eating with outsiders is against the rules.
Speaker 2: They ate in one place and I ate in another place,
Speaker 2: and I didn't belong anymore.
Speaker 1: At one point, she looked over the shoulders of a
Speaker 1: huddle of nuns and spotted the person she wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you most, Sister Prema.
Speaker 2: I'd always felt a certain affinities just to Prema. She
Speaker 2: was a very loving person. In fact, the name Prema
Speaker 2: means love.
Speaker 1: When they were stationed together in Rome, Mary says Sister
Speaker 1: Prema even called her her twin because Mary resembled Sister
Speaker 1: Prema's actual sister. Sister Prema eventually went on to become
Speaker 1: the Superior General, the head of the MC's, a position
Speaker 1: she still holds today. Mary called Sister Prema's name, and
Speaker 1: she eventually recognized Mary. She smiled and took both of
Speaker 1: Mary's hands in hers. Sister Donata, she said. At that moment,
Speaker 1: Sister Premo was motioned away. She told Mary find me later.
Speaker 1: After a couple of talks, Mary was leaving the auditorium
Speaker 1: when a sister tapped her on the shoulder, walk with us,
Speaker 1: Sister Prema wants to see you. When Sister Prema finally
Speaker 1: talked to Mary, she told her she wished she could
Speaker 1: invite her to lunch, but Mary knows the rules.
Speaker 2: We were talking and at a certain point she turned
Speaker 2: to me and she said, but you still love the sisters,
Speaker 2: don't you? I said, of course, I love the sisters.
Speaker 1: Had you heard that question from sisters before?
Speaker 2: When I left? The sisters asked me one of them,
Speaker 2: just a couple of days before I left, when everybody
Speaker 2: knew I was going, my sister, will you still love us?
Speaker 2: And I said yes. It's always very touching for me
Speaker 2: because they knew that I loved them, and they knew
Speaker 2: that for them it was that was an important question.
Speaker 2: I think it wasn't always obvious that people in authority
Speaker 2: and the missionaries of charity actually really cared for their
Speaker 2: fellow sisters. It was a sorrow and a disappointment to
Speaker 2: Mother Teresa as well. But the sisters had had felt
Speaker 2: that for me. Otherwise they would never have asked that question,
Speaker 2: do you still love us? And that it was still
Speaker 2: important to them after so much time was very touching
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed Mary for hours over many months. She says,
Speaker 1: looking back at her story is strange. It's been a
Speaker 1: long time, almost twenty five years since she left. She
Speaker 1: leads a totally different life now. She married Luke. She
Speaker 1: taught creative writing and Italian. She officiates weddings as a humanist,
Speaker 1: non religious celebrant. She wrote a book. She helped create
Speaker 1: a community and platform for female writers. In their free time,
Speaker 1: she and Luke watch movies, go to film festivals. They bike,
Speaker 1: they read, they garden, they talk. She says when she
Speaker 1: looks back at that young woman in a sary, that
Speaker 1: Mary is a different person.
Speaker 2: I do remember once when I was cleaning my office,
Speaker 2: I saw this box at the top of my bookcase,
Speaker 2: and I didn't remember what was inside it. You know
Speaker 2: what's in that box? Why am I keeping that box
Speaker 2: way up there?
Speaker 1: She took down the box and opened it, and she
Speaker 1: saw all of these things from her time as a
Speaker 1: missionary of charity. There's a scapular, which is a small
Speaker 1: wearable token that depicts Mother Mary holding Jesus. There was
Speaker 1: a rosary made by an MC sister from seeds Miraculous metals,
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa's hair in a plastic case, and then there
Speaker 1: was a cross the size of her hand with an
Speaker 1: iron Jesus on it. The crucifix Mother Teresa wedged between
Speaker 1: Mary's sorry and belt during her vows when Jesus became
Speaker 1: Mary's spouse. She thought she'd wear this cross until she died.
Speaker 2: And when I saw this cross, and I hadn't seen
Speaker 2: a crucifix for a long time, it struck me in
Speaker 2: such a completely different way than it had before. And
Speaker 2: it's like, this is a man being tortured to death,
Speaker 2: and it struck me as a kind of a tragic thing.
Speaker 1: For a while, Mary wrestled with her relationship with Mother Teresa.
Speaker 1: It felt complicated. In therapy, she did the empty chair
Speaker 1: exercise to talk to her, so.
Speaker 2: You like, pretend there's a person in the chair in
Speaker 2: front of you and you talk to them. I did
Speaker 2: that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But nothing felt like closure. When she left the Missionaries
Speaker 1: of Charity, Mary received a lot of letters from sisters
Speaker 1: telling her to come back. In one of them, a
Speaker 1: sister included notes from a talk that an empty father
Speaker 1: gave after Mother Teresa died. The pages are crinkled now.
Speaker 1: The typewritten notes are cramped and tight up against the margins,
Speaker 1: not to waste paper the empty way. In this rough transcript,
Speaker 1: Priest described Mother Teresa at the end of her life
Speaker 1: in the months leading up to her.
Speaker 2: Death, and in these notes it said that Mother was
Speaker 2: walking the halls of mother house saying, no one loves Mother.
Speaker 2: In her own house. We loved her, but she didn't
Speaker 2: feel that all those rules that kept us so far
Speaker 2: from each other, and that we're never supposed to reveal
Speaker 2: ourselves really to each other. It's just all these wonderful
Speaker 2: women living in their own little cages of loneliness, and Mother,
Speaker 2: at the end of her life, whom all the world
Speaker 2: loved and admired, is walking the halls saying, no one
Speaker 2: loves me. I don't think that you have to be
Speaker 2: lonely to serve God.
Speaker 1: There are so many images of Mother Teresa and Mary's memory,
Speaker 1: her toughness, her sharp eyes, Mother's firm hand on her
Speaker 1: head for a blessing, when Mother pressed a crucifix against
Speaker 1: her lips when she was just an aspirant, when they
Speaker 1: traveled to Sweden together and shared a room with two
Speaker 1: twin beds, Mother hitting the desk in their last conversation
Speaker 1: as she pleaded with Mary to talk to mother, tell Mother,
Speaker 1: explain to Mother why she wanted to leave, how Mary
Speaker 1: refused Mother's disappointment. Mary dreamt about Mother Teresa for a
Speaker 1: few years after she left the MC's. Those dreams weren't nightmares,
Speaker 1: they were calm. The last one she remembers, Mary was
Speaker 1: lying in her own bed. Mother Teresa walked in and
Speaker 1: without saying anything, she went to the bed and lay
Speaker 1: down next to Mary in this sweet way. They were
Speaker 1: side by side, just close to each other.
Speaker 2: I don't remember that she said anything, but there was
Speaker 2: this feeling that she understood me. She wasn't mad at
Speaker 2: me anymore.
Speaker 1: One thing that's helped Mary talk about her past is
Speaker 1: something her husband, Luke said. He told her just remember
Speaker 1: it's a love story. I agree. But love comes in
Speaker 1: many forms, and some aren't healthy. I've learned that in
Speaker 1: my own life, and I've learned it from this story.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think about all of the hurt I've heard
Speaker 1: about from these former missionaries of Charity sisters who gave
Speaker 1: everything of themselves and suffered in the process. Love to
Speaker 1: be real has to hurt. Mother Teresa used to say,
Speaker 1: maybe love hurts, but it's usually a side effect, not
Speaker 1: a goal. I don't think sacrificing people for the sake
Speaker 1: of a mission is right, no matter how much love
Speaker 1: they feel. I'm grateful to the former sisters who shared
Speaker 1: their stories, but it hasn't been easy for them. Hurt
Speaker 1: was part of the telling too, but they shared their
Speaker 1: stories because it felt worth it. I think it's worth
Speaker 1: it to look at why we put people on pedestals
Speaker 1: and what can happen when we assume someone in power
Speaker 1: is perfect. You could say a series like this is
Speaker 1: digging up old dirt, and maybe it is, but you
Speaker 1: can also hear it as a story from people who
Speaker 1: are just as important as Mother Teresa, just as human
Speaker 1: and just as valuable, who should also be heard. It's
Speaker 1: not easy to figure out exactly what's right when beliefs
Speaker 1: and God are involved, but it's worth talking about. It's
Speaker 1: worth listening to you if you ask me, that's love.
Speaker 1: The Turning is written by Alan 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 producer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. So many thanks to
Speaker 1: all of the people who helped with this project, including
Speaker 1: Liz Mack, Emily Kwang, Jazmina Aguilera, Morgan Gibbons, Daniel Giemett,
Speaker 1: Ann Bryce Strikant, Joshi Ivan Suarez, Susan Bryer, Susan Fields,
Speaker 1: Jay Bostik, Elizabeth Gavitt, Chevy Such, Dave, Jacob Silber, Gretchen Gavitt,
Speaker 1: and Andrew Lesser and the whole wonderful team at Rococo
Speaker 1: Punch at iHeartRadio for their support. Special thanks to the
Speaker 1: team at Type Investigations and Catherine Joyce, Amy Gaines, Sarah Olander,
Speaker 1: Maron Frishkoff, Bethan Macaluso, Mangesh Hatiker, Christine Ragassa, Jen Powers,
Speaker 1: Travis Dunlap, Andrew Kenward, Brianna Hill, Simon Pullman, Sarah Gates,
Speaker 1: Alison Kantor, Nikki Etoor, Holly Dcam, Dan Conaway, and consulting
Speaker 1: producer Mary Johnson. Her memoir and A Quenchable Thirst provided
Speaker 1: inspiration for this series. Our executive producers are Jessica Albert
Speaker 1: and John Ferrati at Rococo Punch and Katrina Norvell at iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Matt Reid. For photos and
Speaker 1: more details on this series, follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Rococo Punch. You can reach out via email too The
Speaker 1: Turning at Rococo Punch dot Com, him Erica Lance. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.