Mother Teresa - Saint or A Delusional Christian Missionary ?

 Mother Teresa officially became a saint today after Roman Catholic Church canonised her today at Vatican City 19 years after her death. In the wake of this event anyone would like to know who Mother Teresa really was. Mostly she is depicted as an ideal nurse who looks after poor and needy without expecting anything in return but do we really know who she was? Lets try to put things in perspective.

Mother Teresa received a calling to work with the poor in the slums of Calcutta. There are significant number of controversies surrounding her life. In 1952 her Missionaries of Charity organisation started her Kalighat Home for the Dying – a place where people could come to die in dignity and comfort. She wanted to make it possible for ‘people who lived like animals to die like angels – loved and wanted’. 

In reality Mother Teresa had no formal medical or nursing training, she got into the field because some voice told her to. In fact when qualified doctors visited the home, however they found that the medical care provided was very poor. Most of the volunteers had no medical knowledge and yet had to make medical decisions because there were no doctors available. There was no distinction made between those who were suffering from curable and incurable illnesses so people who might have survived had they been given access to treatment were left to die. Needles were re-used so many times that they became blunt and they were not sterilised between uses. In 1981 when the state of care in her facilities was challenged she said ‘There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.

Mother Teresa's primary and only goal was to spread christianity. Helping the needy was a facade. In her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech she said she helped 36,000 people in Calcutta but the facts suggest her charity only helped 5,700 people. There are many discrepancies in the organisation's finances and she seemed to accept donations from almost anyone. The amount of money she received was more than enough to care for the dying in the most sanitary and scientific way but she was more interested in the suffering.

Mother Teresa spent most of her times travelling to various places like USA, Japan and Ireland pushing for her agenda of anti-divorce and anti-abortion. She was hardly found in Calcutta. The most startling thing is Teresa who believed in sufferings as a way to be in touch with Jesus, spend her old age days in a modern, high class facility where she got the first class treatment.

In spite of all these facts, the intention of this article isn't to defame Mother Teresa or her practices. It is entirely possible and highly likely that she thought she was doing good to the humanity by preaching Christian values and baptising dying adults. However, in the end all that counts is the objective goodness that has been harnessed. Now it is for all of us to decide who Mother Teresa really was.