Why Mother Teresa was considered a saint and then called an "angel from hell"

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Saint Teresa of Calcutta, or better known as Mother Teresa, is the founder of the women's Catholic monastic congregation of missionary sisters who served all the poor and sick. She was not like other people who dream of material wealth. Since childhood, Mother Teresa did not think about her needs, but wanted to help everyone who needed her help. This nun even won the Nobel Peace Prize. But is she really that holy and merciful? And why do so many call her the Vatican assassin?

The path from the girl Agnes to Saint Teresa

Mother Teresa, real name Agnes Gonje Boyajiu, was born on August 26, 1910 in the city of Skopje, the capital of northern Macedonia. In addition to Agnes, her Catholic family also had a brother and sister. The parents were wealthy enough, and they constantly helped someone. From an early age, the girl learned mercy and kindness from her parents, and soon realized that she likes to help everyone in need.

Their peaceful and measured life was destroyed by the First World War, when the girl was only four years old. After the death of her father in 1919, her mother became the only breadwinner in the family. The woman worked tirelessly to provide for her three children and six orphans, whom she took in after the war. Little by little, life began to improve. Having matured a little, Agnia began to attend church services and pray a lot.

When Agnes was twelve years old, she caught the eye of a newspaper with an article about Indian missionaries, and since then the girl dreamed of being in their ranks. This dream did not fade over the years, and at the age of eighteen she left for Paris, where she was interviewed in the monastic order of the Sisters of Loreto. In a new life, the girl was escorted to the station by all her relatives. Parting was hard, especially for mom, because they never saw her again. Since then, they communicated only through letters.

From Paris, she went to Ireland, where she studied English, because without him she was not accepted into the Indian mission, since then India was a colony of Britain. And a few months later she found herself in the east of India in the city of Calcutta, which became her second home. At twenty-one, the girl took monastic vows, taking the name Teresa, in honor of a canonized nun who was famous for her mercy.

Faced with poverty, she could not sit comfortably in the school at the monastery

The city of Loreto was plunged into poverty, and the convent school where Teresa taught was a paradise where everyone was clean and well fed. Girls from wealthy families studied there, who fell madly in love with their mentor and affectionately called her mother. But Teresa could not afford to live in the well-being and tranquility of this school, because here she could not participate in the fate of the poor and sick people. And it was for this that she was so eager to get here, leaving her relatives.

At twenty-seven, becoming a nun, she received the name Mother Teresa. The girl almost immediately began teaching history and geography at the school of St. Mary, where she worked for about twenty years. But with the outbreak of World War II, conditions in the city became even worse, the inhabitants suffered from terrible hunger. And she began to help the poor people of Calcutta, seeking to save them from starvation, having received permission from the leaders of the order to do charity work.

She made the decision to leave the walls of the school and live where she is needed. She fed, washed, healed all the poor and sick who met on her way. And two years later, she created her own monastic women's congregation of sisters-missionaries of love. And everything was done for free, because they made a vow that forbade taking any reward for help.

Each year their community grew larger and larger. Now Mother Teresa was in charge of the creation of hospices, shelters, schools for the poor and seriously ill people, regardless of their religion and nationality. All this was done with the help of patrons and donations from ordinary people.

Over time, the activities of their congregation spread throughout the world, which still operate today, numbering about four hundred chapters and seven hundred houses of mercy in more than a hundred countries around the world. They are located mainly in disadvantaged areas or affected by natural disasters.

The name of Mother Teresa became known in all corners of the Earth, and the woman herself became the owner of various prestigious prizes and awards. The most significant of these was the 1979 Nobel Prize "For activities to help a suffering person."

The death of mother Teresa was perceived by millions of people as personal grief

The first time her health seriously deteriorated in 1983, when she was admitted to the hospital with a heart attack. Until the end of her life, the heart worried about Mother Teresa, accompanied by other ailments: pneumonia, malaria and broken ribs.

The nun was not afraid of death, she was always ready to meet God. When her health began to deteriorate even more, she surrendered her powers as a leader, leaving for treatment in a California clinic. But this treatment did not save her, as the body was badly worn out. In 1997, her heart broke down, and mother Teresa passed away. Mourning has been declared in India.

A couple of hours after cardiac arrest, her body was embalmed and placed in a chapel under her order for a day. Then her coffin was transported for a whole week to the Cathedral of St. Thomas, where a whole crowd of ordinary people and high-ranking officials who wanted to say goodbye to the nun were already waiting for them. The funeral ceremony took place at the stadium and was broadcast live on television screens around the world.

Demons living in angelic guise

In 2016, Mother Teresa was canonized. Many still consider her a model of philanthropy and compassion. But is everything so smooth in this story? Was Mother Teresa really that holy and unselfish? There are people who criticize and dispute many points in her life, finding provocations and incriminating evidence. The public learned about the dark side of Mother Teresa in 1994, after the release of the documentary "Angel from Hell", where they told all the ins and outs about the nun.

Worldwide fame and veneration for Mother Teresa began in 1969 with the release of the BBC documentary Something Beautiful for God, not so much because of the good reviews about the nun, but more because of the "miracle" that happened on the set of this report … The journalist claimed that there was no light during the shooting in the House for the Dying, but this did not prevent the filming of the material, because the Light of God appeared out of nowhere. Although the cinematographer said that it was just the first time he used the new films for filming in the dark, people liked the version of the wonderful light more than the improved quality of night film.

A former employee of one of the Homes for the Dying spoke frankly about what was really going on there. According to her, the conditions were terrible, complete unsanitary conditions, terrible food, lack of medicine. There are only cots and old beds from the furniture. In one room women died painfully, in another - men. Here people were counting on professional medical care, but there was no one to treat them, because almost all the staff were ordinary volunteers who believed in the sacred work of Mother Teresa, but knew nothing about medicine.

Medicines are a different story altogether. They were mainly treated with aspirin and other cheap medicines. There were not enough droppers for everyone, and they used the same needles, simply rinsing them in cold water, without even bothering to disinfect, citing lack of time. Because of this unsanitary conditions, diseases were transmitted from one patient to another. There were frequent cases when a person fell with one disease, and over time acquired others in addition. Either the disease began to progress, and where it was possible to save a person with banal antibiotics, an operation was now required.

The worst thing is that Mother Teresa forbade any pain relievers. She explained this by the fact that through pain the poor accept their share, suffering like Jesus, and torment is the kiss of the son of God. Because of this, many patients died not from the disease itself, but from painful shock. For Mother Teresa, the great salvation of a person was not to cure him, but to convert him to the Catholic faith, relieving him of the torments of this life, by transitioning to a better world. Thus, she converted many to her faith, convincing that only Catholicism would save them. And, if a person recovered, then she told everyone that he was saved by the power of faith and Jesus himself. If a person died, then they simply kept silent about it.

An interesting fact was that when the nun herself was sick, she was not treated in her own institutions, but flew on personal planes to California, to one of the expensive clinics. While traveling, she always stayed in the most expensive and comfortable apartments, although she urged everyone to live modestly and not stand out. She literally raised poverty into a cult, although she herself loved luxury and comfort.

There were still many contradictions in this mysterious woman. For example, Mother Teresa has always been against abortion and contraception, but when it was beneficial to her, she forgot about it. She demanded that all forms of contraception be banned, despite the fact that many of them prevent AIDS from spreading. She argued that such a disease overtakes only those who adhere to inappropriate sexual behavior. But when the Prime Minister and also her friend began to forcibly sterilize all the poor, the nun absolutely supported her. But she later denounced a fourteen-year-old rape victim who had an abortion.

The same goes for her demands to ban divorce worldwide. However, when her friend, Princess Diana, decided to divorce Prince Charles, Mother Teresa fully supported her, saying that if love was gone, then you need to get a divorce.

But the most interesting question remains where she put all the money, because donations for her mission flocked from all over the world. There were also dozens of different prizes, including the Nobel, for large sums of money. It is believed that with the funds that were stored in her accounts, it was easy to build modern clinics with new equipment, and not those terrible hospices. But when asked by journalists, where did the money go and what the money was spent on, she told them that it is better to let them talk to God than to ask questions.

She is also credited with friendship with all kinds of the criminal world. She received her main funds from various swindlers and politicians-dictators who profit from the common people. So the nun did not care about the origin of the donations.

For example, in 1981, Mother Teresa visited Haiti, where Jean-Claude Duvalier ruled, who inherited power in one of the poorest countries on the planet after the death of his father-dictator. Traditionally, corruption, political assassinations, numerous diseases and high mortality rates flourished there. But after receiving a half million dollars from the ruling dictator, the nun said publicly that nowhere in the world is there such a close connection between politicians and the poor.

For a long time, her foundation was not controlled, as it was a charitable organization. But in 1998, everyone was surprised that in the ranking of financial aid from organizations in Calcutta, the order headed by Mother Teresa was not even among the first two hundred. And in 1991, a German publishing house published information that out of the total amount of donations for the treatment of sick people, the nun's fund allocates about 7%, and the rest of the money, according to conservative estimates, about three billion dollars, is still in the accounts of the Vatican Bank.