[FONT="]Now what if New York City had not offered to pay for an elevator? Could the Missionaries of Charity plead poverty as an excuse not to build it? Well they could, but it would hardly be credible. Mother Teresa ranked with the best in her ability to manipulate people's guilt to elicit funding. By all accounts she could be very persistent. In an article entitled "Mother Teresa: Where Are Her Millions?" which appeared in German's Stern magazine (September 10, 1998), Walter Wuellenweber notes several examples:
"For purchase or rent of property, the sisters do not need to touch their bank accounts. `Mother always said, we don't spend for that,' remembers Sunita Kumar, one the richest women in Calcutta and supposedly Mother T's closest associate outside the order. `If Mother needed a house, she went straight to the owner, whether it was the State or a private person, and worked on him for so long that she eventually got it free.'...
"Mother Teresa saw it as her God given right never to have to pay anyone for anything. Once she bought food for her nuns in London for GB £500. When she was told she'd have to pay at the till, the diminutive seemingly harmless nun showed her Balkan temper and shouted, `This is for the work of God!' She raged so loud and so long that eventually a businessman waiting in the queue paid up on her behalf."
So the question remains: If Mother Teresa was so good at raising funds and did in fact raise millions, why is there no money for clean needles in hospices? Where does the money go? As one man said after asking Mother for help in building housing for 4,000 of Calcutta's homeless and failing even to receive a response, "I don't understand why you educated people in the West have made this woman into such a goddess! I went to her place three times. She did not even listen to what I had to say. Everyone on earth knows that the sisters have a lot of money. But no one knows what they do with it!"
It seems no one can answer that question completely. But Wuellenweber continues:
"The fortune of this famous charitable organisation is controlled from Rome, - from an account at the Vatican bank. And what happens with monies at the Vatican Bank is so secret that even God is not allowed to know about it. One thing is sure however - Mother's outlets in poor countries do not benefit from largesse of the rich countries. The official biographer of Mother Teresa, Kathryn Spink, writes, `As soon as the sisters became established in a certain country, Mother normally withdrew all financial support.' Branches in very needy countries therefore only receive start-up assistance. Most of the money remains in the Vatican Bank."
Wherever the money did end up, most of it never went to the poor whom Mother Teresa was supposed to be serving. In her Free Inquiry article Susan Shields states: "The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help." Reporter Donal MacIntyre, writing in the New Statesman (London; August 22, 2005), describes conditions in Mother Teresa's orphanage that were not only squalid but sometimes even cruel:
"I worked undercover for a week in Mother Teresa's flagship home for disabled boys and girls to record Mother Teresa's Legacy, a special report for Five News broadcast earlier this month. I winced at the rough handling by some of the full-time staff and Missionary sisters. I saw children with their mouths gagged open to be given medicine, their hands flaying in distress, visible testimony to the pain they were in. Tiny babies were bound with cloths at feeding time. Rough hands wrenched heads into position for feeding. Some of the children retched and coughed as rushed staff crammed food into their mouths. Boys and girls were abandoned on open toilets for up to 20 minutes at a time. Slumped, untended, some dribbling, some sleeping, they were a pathetic sight. Their treatment was an affront to their dignity, and dangerously unhygienic.
"Volunteers (from Italy, Sweden, the United States and the UK) did their best to cradle and wash the children who had soiled themselves. But there were no nappies, and only cold water. Soap and disinfectant were in short supply. Workers washed down beds with dirty water and dirty cloths. Food was prepared on the floor in the corridor. A senior member of staff mixed medicine with her hands. Some did their best to give love and affection - at least some of the time. But, for the most part, the care the children received was inept, unprofessional and, in some cases, rough and dangerous. `They seem to be warehousing people rather than caring for them,' commented the former operations director of Mencap Martin Gallagher, after viewing our undercover footage."
This is the best care that millions of charity dollars could afford? No money even for soap and diapers?
Mother Teresa's entire attitude towards money seems rather odd. Apparently it is virtuous to give, as long as the giving is to the Catholic Church (and never even reaches the poor) and regardless of how the funds given were obtained. Charles Keating, a sort of Bernie Madoff of the 80's, donated 1.25 million dollars to Mother Teresa in return for the respectability of being associated with her. When Keating was tried in 1992 Mother Teresa wrote to the court asking clemency for him. ..in her letter to the judge,….she says that Keating "has always been kind and generous to God's poor" and asks the judge "to do what Jesus would do."
One of the prosecutors wrote back to Mother Teresa explaining (just in case she did not know) that among those whom Keating defrauded may also be counted some of "the least of these" whom Mother claims to serve, including "a poor carpenter who did not speak English and had his life savings stolen by Mr. Keating's fraud" . He continued: "No church, no charity, no organization should allow itself to be used as salve for the conscience of the criminal." He urged Mother Teresa to do the right thing: "Ask yourself what Jesus would do if he were given the fruits of a crime; what Jesus would do if he were in possession of money that had been stolen; what Jesus would do if he were being exploited by a thief to ease his conscience? I submit that Jesus would promptly and unhesitatingly return the stolen property to its rightful owners. You should do the same. You have been given money by Mr. Keating that he has been convicted of stealing by fraud. Do not permit him the `indulgence' he desires. Do not keep the money. Return it to those who worked for it and earned it! If you contact me I will put you in direct contact with the rightful owners of the property now in your possession."
Mother Teresa never replied.
So what can we make of all this? It is a shame that whatever good Mother Teresa may have done has been tainted by her exploitation of the very same people she made a show of helping. Perhaps we need to choose our saints a little more carefully.
The cynical use of the poor to promote either oneself or one's church only gives ammunition to those who already find religion loathsome.
"So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward" (Matthew 6:2).
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