Mother Teresa of Calcutta , whose secular name was Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu ( Skopje , 26 of August of 1910 – Calcutta , 5 of September of 1997 ) was one nun Catholic origin Albanian naturalized Indian , who founded the congregation of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcuttain 1950. For more than 45 years, he cared for the poor, the sick, the orphans and the dying, at the same time that he guided the expansion of his congregation, first in India and later in other countries of the world. After her death, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II .
Biographical synthesis
Teresa of Calcutta was born in Skopje , a city located at the crossroads of Balkan history . She was the youngest of the children of Nikola and Drane Bojaxhiu, received at baptism the name Gonxha Agnes, made her first communion at the age of five and a half and received confirmation in November 1916.
The sudden death of her father, when Agnes Gonxha was about eight years old, left the family in great financial straits. Drane raised her children firmly and lovingly, greatly influencing her daughter’s character and vocation. In her religious formation, Gonxha was also assisted by the Jesuit Parish of the Sacred Heart, in which she was very integrated.
Childhood and youth
When she was eighteen years old, encouraged by the desire to become a missionary, Gonxha left her home in September 1928 to enter the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, in Ireland . There she received the name of Sister Maria Teresa (after Saint Teresa of Lisieux). In December, he began his journey to India , arriving in Calcutta on January 6 , 1929.
After making her first vows in May 1931, Sister Teresa was assigned to the Loreto Entally community in the city of Calcutta, where she taught at Saint Mary’s School for Girls. On May 24, 1937, Sister Teresa made her perpetual profession, thus becoming, as she herself put it, the “wife of Jesus” for “all eternity.” From that moment she was called Mother Teresa. In 1944 she became director of the center.
His religious work
On September 10, 1946, during a trip from Calcutta to Darjeeling for her annual retreat, Mother Teresa stated that she received her “inspiration”, her “call within the call”: she decided to found a religious congregation, Missionaries of Charity , dedicated to the service of the poorest. Two years later, on August 17, 1948, she dressed for the first time in the white sari edged with blue and went through the exit doors of her Loreto convent to enter the world of the poor.
After a short course with the Missionary Medical Sisters in the city of Patna , Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta where she found temporary accommodation with the Little Sisters of the Poor. On December 21, 1948, he visited the poor neighborhoods for the first time. She visited families, washed the wounds of some children, took care of a sick old man who was lying in the street and cared for a woman who was dying of hunger and tuberculosis. He wanted to serve Jesus in “the unwanted, the unloved, those that nobody cared about.” After a few months, her former students began to join her, one by one. On October 7, 1950, the new congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was officially established in the Archdiocese of Calcutta. In the early 1960s, Mother Teresa began to send her Sisters to other parts of India . In February 1965, the Decree of Praise granted by Pope Paul VI encouraged Mother Teresa to open a house in Venezuela .
This was quickly followed by foundations in Rome ( Italy ), in Dar es Salaam ( Tanzania ) and, successively, on all continents. Beginning in 1980 and continuing through the 1990s, Mother Teresa opened houses in almost all communist countries, including the former Soviet Union , Albania, and Cuba .
She began to be revered as a merciful friend to the underprivileged, with the help of Malcolm Muggeridge, a reactionary and conservative BBC journalist, who did much to enact her “miracles.” However, Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor but an apologist for poverty.
Foundations made
To better respond to the physical and spiritual needs of the poor, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity Brothers in 1963, in 1976 the contemplative branch of the Sisters, in 1979 the Contemplative Brothers, and in 1984 the Missionaries of Charity Fathers. However, his inspiration was not limited only to those who felt a vocation to religious life.
He created the Co-workers of Mother Teresa and the Co-workers Sick and Suffering, people of different beliefs and nationalities with whom he shared his spirit of prayer, simplicity, sacrifice and his apostolate based on humble works of love. This spirit later inspired the Lay Missionaries of Charity. In response to the requests of many priests, Mother Teresa also started the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests in 1981 as a “little path of holiness” for those priests who wanted to share her charism and spirit.
Awards obtained
During these years of rapid development, the world began to notice Mother Teresa and the work she had started. Numerous awards, beginning with the Indian Padmashri Prize in 1962 and most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, honored his work. At the same time, the media began to follow his activities with increasing interest.
Depression
The whole life and work of Mother Teresa was a testimony of the joy of loving, of the greatness and dignity of every human person, of the value of the little things done with fidelity and love, and of the incomparable value of friendship with God. But, there was another heroic side to this woman that came to light only after her death.
Hidden from all eyes, hidden even from those closest to her, her inner life was marked by the experience of a deep, painful and constant feeling of the absence of God. She herself called her inner experience “darkness.” The depression – which the Spanish saint Juan de la Cruz called the “painful night of the soul” – began more or less when he began his endless and desperate work with the poor and continued until the end of his life.
Visit to Cuba
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was in Cuba twice, the first was in transit at the José Martí International Airport in Havana , and the second in 1985, during which she gave the then president Fidel Castro Ruz a sculpted image of Our Lady of the Miraculous in ivory.
On May 6, 2003, a sculpture of the nun was unveiled in the Convent of San Francisco de Asís , Havana, framed in the park created in 1999, which bears the name of the nun and was possibly one of the first of its kind dedicated to the memory of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Death
During the last years of her life, despite increasingly serious health problems, Mother Teresa continued to direct her Institute and respond to the needs of the poor and of the Church. In 1997 the Sisters of Mother Teresa numbered almost 4,000 members and had been established in 610 foundations in 123 countries around the world. In March 1997, Mother Teresa blessed her newly elected successor as superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, successively carrying out a new trip abroad.
After meeting Pope John Paul II for the last time , she returned to Calcutta where she spent the last weeks of her life welcoming people who came to visit her and instructing her Sisters. He died on 5 as September as 1997 , at age 87. The Government of India granted him the honor of celebrating a state funeral and his body was buried in the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity.
Canonization
Less than two years after his death – because of the widespread reputation of Mother Teresa’s holiness and the favors attributed to her – Pope John Paul II allowed the opening of his cause of canonization . On December 20, 2002, the same pope approved the decrees on the heroic virtues and on the miracle obtained through the intercession of Mother Teresa.
Phrases
- Love as you can, love … love until it hurts. If it hurts is a good sign”.
- “I love all religions, but I am in love with mine.”
- Give until it hurts and when it hurts to give even more.
- “Love, to be authentic, must cost us.” «Forgiveness is a decision, not a feeling, because when we forgive we no longer feel the offense, we no longer feel resentment. Forgive, that by forgiving you will have your soul in peace and the one who offended you will have it ».
- “The person who does not live to serve, does not serve to live.”
- “My blood and my origins are Albanian, but I am an Indian citizen. I am a Catholic nun. By profession, I belong to the whole world. By heart, I fully belong to the Heart of Jesus
- “Jesus is my God, Jesus is my husband, Jesus is my life, Jesus is my only love, Jesus is my whole being, Jesus is my everything.”
- “Without our suffering, our task would not differ from social assistance.”
- «I believe that it is very beautiful that the poor accept their destiny, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the poor man, with his suffering, helps the rest of the world a lot.
- “The most beautiful gift that God can give a person is to make him participate in the sufferings of Christ”
- “Do you know that this terrible pain is only the kiss of Jesus?” (to a distraught cancer patient).
JOURNALIST: There is a worldwide epidemic of something called AIDS (‘acquired immunodeficiency syndrome’), which is a disease largely associated with the homosexual community. Some religious leaders have suggested that AIDS is a disease sent by God as punishment for a sinful lifestyle. Do you think that is so?
MOTHER TERESA: It’s the first time I’ve heard this.
JOURNALIST: Well, then let me ask you the question in another way. Is it conceivable that God could create a form of disease against a lifestyle?
MOTHER TERESA: Yes, God could allow it to happen. God would not do it by Himself, but He could allow it, to open the eyes of the people, just as the floods [happened] in the Old Testament. And very often, with suffering, this is when people realize that what they are doing is not right, and that leads them to ask God and others for forgiveness.
critics
Sociological research
Three Canadian researchers ―Serge Larivée and Genevieve Chenard ( University of Montreal ) and Carole Sénéchal ( University of Ottawa ) – collected 502 documents and books on the life and work of Mother Teresa, to carry out their analysis, representing 96% of the literature about the founder of the OMC (Order of the Missionaries of Charity).While searching for documentation on the phenomenon of altruism for an ethics seminar, one of us stumbled upon the life and work of one of the most famous women in the Catholic Church. The description was so ecstatic that it piqued our curiosity and prompted us to continue investigating […] his dubious way of caring for the sick, his questionable political contacts, his suspicious handling of the huge sums of money he received, and his points of Overly dogmatic views concerning, in particular, abortion, contraception and divorce.
In August 2014 they published an analytical study – “Mother Teresa: anything but a saint” – on the work of Mother Teresa in the Canadian journal Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses . The conclusions simply endorsed all the testimonies that journalist Christopher Hitchens contributed in his documentary produced by the BBC in 1994 with the English title Hell’s Angel (‘the angel of hell’).
A Calcutense doctor against
One of the most consistent critics of Mother Teresa was Arup Chatteryí, a physician born in Calcutta but living in London. He wrote the book Mother Teresa: The Final Veredict (‘Mother Teresa, the final verdict’) and was an advisor to the documentary Hell’s Angel (‘the angel of hell’), by the Anglo-American journalist Christopher Hitchens , which in 1994 he exhibited for the first time worldwide the dark side of the nun. Neither in the West nor in India does anyone want to hear about the dark side [of Mother Teresa], because no one wants to know that their icon of compassion, Nobel Peace Prize winner, was a religious fanatic friend of dictators, rich and corrupt. He asked the poor for resignation and helped them die, but without giving them professional care. […]
With that fortune he could have helped the sick to live better. The dying were not given any strong painkiller, even in the most extreme cases, and the care was not professional, they lacked the most basic hygiene, they suffered conditions of torture.
Aroup Chatterjee
Chatteryí has estimated that the donations received by the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, have exceeded tens of millions of dollars. Dr. Chatteryí believes that Mother Teresa of Calcutta dedicated her life to expanding a fundamentalist Catholicism that no longer exists, and that proclaims the cult of suffering.
Mother Teresa also led the Vatican’s worldwide crusade against abortion and contraceptives. In his 1979 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he made an absurd statement, which has no basis in reality: “The greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child.”
Although Mother Teresa only helped believers get closer to their god, whoever he was, she privately claimed that she had converted more than 29,000 Indians who died at her center to Catholicism. In a video, Mother Teresa explains that she baptized them “so that Saint Peter would allow them to enter Heaven : it is very nice to see people die with such joy.”
Another of the critics of Mother Teresa is the American Hemley González, who in 2008 traveled to India as a volunteerI was going to travel to India and decided to do social work. The mark of Mother Teresa is so strong that even without being religious, it was the first thing that occurred to me. I realized that it was a systematic violation of human rights and a financial scandal. […]
I saw how the needles were only washed with water to be used again and that the sick were given expired medicines. We volunteers had no preparation. One even fed a paralyzed man who choked and died. I was at the cremation of 12 people, some of whom I think may have survived. […]
Missionaries are not friends of the poor, but promoters of poverty. Missionaries could do much more with everything they receive. […]
NGOs are required to be transparent and professional. Why not the Missionaries of Charity? 20 years after the death of Mother Teresa, these nuns do more harm than help.
Hemley González
Terrible attention to the poor
The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in homes for the dying was similarly criticized by the medical press. Prestigious medical journals have reported that ―despite generous funding from Teresa’s foundation― these centers are characterized by their precariousness, neglect of basic hygiene standards, overcrowding, ignorance of modern medical protocols and by personnel with low or no qualification.Dr. Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet medical journal(from London), after a visit to the Calcutta centers in 1994, found that patients were not diagnosed with illnesses or given efficient analgesics. He described the medical care as “haphazard, with volunteers without medical knowledge having to make decisions about patient care due to a lack of doctors.” He noted that his order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, which is why people who could survive ran the risk of dying from infections or lack of treatment. He made reference to the lack of doctors, systematic treatments and analgesia. Dr Mary Loudon of the British Medical Journal, reported that hypodermic needles were reused, that there were poor living conditions, including the use of cold water for cleaning refugees, and a poor approach to illness and suffering, as the use of various items indicated for modern medical care as well as routine diagnosis.
These nauseating infirmaries were not meant to cure the poor. Many entered these centers with minor problems and came out dead. These were places where the poor were brought to die, unable to pay for anything else outside of the rottenness of Indian capitalism.
They also received their respective dose of Catholic proselytism . The Mother Teresa clinics did not even ease the pain of the dying. For Mother Teresa pain is a heavenly reward.
But Teresa herself did not practice what she preached. She received her medical treatment in expensive private clinics in California (USA) and Rome (Italy).
Mother Teresa, belonging to the extreme right of the Catholic hierarchy, strongly opposed abortion, homosexual marriage and divorce. In his speech after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, he famously referred to abortion as “the greatest threat to world peace.” It seems like the only time she really cared about life was when she was in the womb. After that people were encouraged to die in misery and suffering. Receiving an award from the World Health Organization, he referred to AIDS as “just retribution for inappropriate sexual behavior.”
Friend of murderers and dictators
Mother Teresa’s philosophy, which called on the poor to passively accept their fate, was extremely helpful for the rich and powerful to keep the oppressed in chains. What could be better than teaching the exploited to embrace their lot with the hope of a better life in the hereafter, without questioning earthly injustice, and without demanding adequate treatment when they fell ill, but only to seek charity in care centers that Was it in poor condition and overcrowded?
In 1983 a factory of the American company Union Carbide located in the city of Bhopal (India) exploded, causing terrible deaths and injuries in many others. This was clearly caused by the company’s policy of saving money with security measures. Mother Teresa’s comment was: “This could have been an accident, it’s like a fire that could break out anywhere. That is why it is important to forgive. Forgiveness offers us a clean heart and people will be a hundred times better after giving it. So instead of organizing to fight the American company Union Carbide, the victims of this terrible crime of capitalism had to simply accept their fate.
Not surprisingly, Mother Teresa befriended one of the world’s wildest dictators and received lavish donations from all manner of mobsters and oligarchs. In 1981, she traveled to Haiti to be awarded the Legion of Honor, by the corrupt and brutal dictator Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier . During her visit, Teresa remarked that she “had never seen poor people appear so familiar with their head of state.” This head of state, so familiar with his people, would be overthrown five years later in a popular insurrection.
She also received donations, titles and ovations from the stature of Ronald Reagan, who at that time was carrying out practices of complicity in the murders of socialist Catholic priests in El Salvador or Guatemala . When Mother Teresa visited Guatemala in 1979, the dictatorship was carrying out a savage counterinsurgency campaign against communist guerrillas and genocide against the indigenous population. When questioned about his visit, his only comment was that “everything seemed quiet in the places we went. I don’t get involved in that kind of politics.
Teresa also received huge donations from gangsters and thieves like Nixon’s financial archconservative and adviser: Charles Keating, who was involved in a major fraud scandal. Teresa interceded on his behalf before the trial judge in California, referring to this con artist as “kind and generous to the poor of God,” and preached to the judge about the virtues of forgiveness. The prosecutor in the case decided to send Mother Teresa a letter asking her to return the money Keating had donated to her, but she never received a reply.
Mother Teresa’s charity was notoriously opaque. Journalists’ requests for access to the organization’s ledgers continue to be consistently denied. One can only wonder where the money from this charity (the 10th richest in India) is going: it is surely not going to improve its dilapidated clinics.
According to the Catholic website Aciprensa, every time Mother Teresa traveled to Rome, she gave huge donations in dollars to Pope John Paul II.
The church hierarchy and the ruling class
Why are apologists for poverty and exploitation, like Mother Teresa, canonized, while true Christians fighters for justice and equality, like Hugo Chávez (against whom the Catholic Church maintained a permanent conflict and continually conspired in his against), or Archbishop Óscar Romero (assassinated by Ronald Reagan mercenaries ) or Jean-Bertrand Aristide (whose government the Vatican did not recognize), are they despised or rejected by the Church authorities?
The attempt by Pope Francis to paint Mother Teresa – who was a sadistic religious fundamentalist – as a defender of social justice is cynical and hypocritical. But, again, Pope Francis himself has a dark past fighting the leftist priests of Liberation Theology and complicity with the vicious dictatorship of Videla in Argentina. Francis’s demagoguery only reflects the seething pressure from below, as the Catholic base is exposed to the current wave of radicalization and revolutionary ferment, and loses faith in the corrupt authorities of the Church.
Hypocrisy favorable to the rich
In 1996, the Republic of Ireland held a referendum on one issue: whether its Constitutionit should continue to prohibit divorce. Most political parties in an increasingly secular country urged voters to pass a legislative amendment. They were doing it for two excellent reasons. It was no longer considered correct for the Roman Catholic Church to prescribe its morals to all citizens and, evidently, it was impossible even to aspire to a definitive reunification of Ireland when the great Protestant minority of the north continually rejected the possibility of a religious regime being implanted . Mother Teresa took a plane from Calcutta to support the negative vote campaign alongside the Church and its hard-line supporters. In other words, an Irish woman married to an abusive and incestuous drunk should never hope for anything better than to start over; While,Protestants could choose between accepting the blessings of Rome or staying on the sidelines. It did not even suggest the possibility of Catholics fulfilling the commandments of their Church without imposing them on all other citizens. And this happened in the British Isles and in the last decade of the 20th century. The referendum finally reformed theConstitution , although by the narrowest of the majorities. (That same year Mother Teresa gave an interview in which she said she hoped her friend Princess Diana would be happier once she was rid of what was evidently an unfortunate marriage; but we should not be so surprised to discover the Church applying harsher criteria to the poor and offering indulgences to the rich).
Christopher Hitchens, in his book God is not good
Medieval theology
The rationalist Debasis Bhattacharya points out that Mother Teresa held a strange medieval theology: allowing the poor to suffer would allow them to receive forgiveness from God, who would have punished each one with their illness. However, every time Mother Teresa fell ill (in India, in Mexico), she went to modern and expensive private health services in California. For example, in 1991 – at the age of 81 – he fell ill with pneumonia during a stay in Mexico, for which he traveled by plane and attended a private clinic in the city of Los Angeles ( California ).
The first miracle that Pope John Paul II recognized – the cure of a cancerous tumor for Mónica Besra – was a designed lie: “That tumor was not due to cancer, but due to tuberculosis . Besra was cured because tuberculosis was diagnosed and she was treated in a hospital.
One of the curses of India and other poor countries is the belief in witch doctors, who cajole those who suffer by offering them miraculous cures. Humanity and religions ignore the golden rule of logic: that an extraordinary claim requires not ordinary evidence but extraordinary evidence, and that what is claimed without evidence can also be rejected without evidence.