Pope Francis Misfires Again: Canonization Elevates Mother Teresa to Sainthood
Dispatches from
STEPHEN LENDMAN
S he’s more myth than “saint of the gutters” for allegedly helping the poorest of the poor. More on her unsaintly legacy below.
The New York Times highlighted Pope Francis deplorably calling her a “witness to mercy in our time,” adding she “deserves” sainthood.
Mother Theresa: As colossal a fraud as the corruption elevating her to sainthood. Sadly, another proof that Francis’s pontificate’s early promise of anti-systemic criticism has dissolved in a puff of craven conformity.
The Times perpetuated her myth, falsely claiming she spent “a lifetime working with the poor and the sick, and with orphans, lepers and AIDS patients, first in the slums of Kolkata, India, and then in many other countries.”
Canonizing her 19 years after her 1997 death was remarkably fast, especially for someone so unworthy – the person, her persona and deeds far different from mythology about her.
Instead of helping the poor and needy, she fostered what Aroup Chatterjee called a “cult of suffering,” how things operated in Missionaries of Charity homes she ran – deplorable conditions substituting for noble work.
Her so-called hospitals were human warehouses. Hunger and malnutrition were widespread. Sick and dying patients got little medical care from untrained nuns and other personnel – poor food and mistreatment instead under deplorable unsanitary conditions, conducive to serious illnesses and diseases.
Most often she hobnobbed with the world’s rich, famous and infamous, accepting large donations from dubious sources, including notorious tyrants.
She was more sinner than saint, she and her staff dispensing inhumane and degrading treatment, while jet-setting in luxury, indulging in undeserved celebrity.
Instead of feeding thousands in Calcutta as claimed, it was scores at most. Enrollment at her school was less than 100, not the 5,000 she touted.
None of her alleged 102 family assistance centers in Calcutta existed. Her public persona was one thing, reality entirely different – elevating her to sainthood the latest example of deplorable Vatican policy.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE
Mommie Dearest
REPUBL.ISHED BY SLATE.
We commend the Slate editors for reposting this highly timely piece by C. Hitchens, one of the good things he did even after turning to the right. —PG
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
I think it was Macaulay who said that the Roman Catholic Church deserved great credit for, and owed its longevity to, its ability to handle and contain fanaticism. This rather oblique compliment belongs to a more serious age. What is so striking about the “beatification” of the woman who styled herself “Mother” Teresa is the abject surrender, on the part of the church, to the forces of showbiz, superstition, and populism.
It’s the sheer tawdriness that strikes the eye first of all. It used to be that a person could not even be nominated for “beatification,” the first step to “sainthood,” until five years after his or her death. This was to guard against local or popular enthusiasm in the promotion of dubious characters. The pope nominated MT a year after her death in 1997. It also used to be that an apparatus of inquiry was set in train, including the scrutiny of an advocatus diaboli or “devil’s advocate,” to test any extraordinary claims. The pope has abolished this office and has created more instant saints than all his predecessors combined as far back as the 16th century. During the deliberations over the Second Vatican Council, under the stewardship of Pope John XXIII, MT was to the fore in opposing all suggestions of reform. What was needed, she maintained, was more work and more faith, not doctrinal revision. Her position was ultra-reactionary and fundamentalist even in orthodox Catholic terms. Believers are indeed enjoined to abhor and eschew abortion, but they are not required to affirm that abortion is “the greatest destroyer of peace,” as MT fantastically asserted to a dumbfounded audience when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.* Believers are likewise enjoined to abhor and eschew divorce, but they are not required to insist that a ban on divorce and remarriage be a part of the state constitution, as MT demanded in a referendum in Ireland (which her side narrowly lost) in 1996. Later in that same year, she told Ladies Home Journal that she was pleased by the divorce of her friend Princess Diana, because the marriage had so obviously been an unhappy one … This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility? Francis has either fallen for the fraud or decided the fight against the forces of global tradition and corruption was not worth his remaining years. Photo by Abode of Chaos The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for “the poorest of the poor.” People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the “Missionaries of Charity,” but they had no audience for their story. George Orwell’s admonition in his essay on Gandhi—that saints should always be presumed guilty until proved innocent—was drowned in a Niagara of soft-hearted, soft-headed, and uninquiring propaganda. One of the curses of India, as of other poor countries, is the quack medicine man, who fleeces the sufferer by promises of miraculous healing. Sunday was a great day for these parasites, who saw their crummy methods endorsed by his holiness and given a more or less free ride in the international press. Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions. Correction, Oct. 21, 2003: This piece originally claimed that in her Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Mother Teresa called abortion and contraception the greatest threats to world peace. In that speech Mother Teresa did call abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace.” But she did not much discuss contraception, except to praise “natural” family planning. The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. =SUBSCRIBE TODAY! NOTHING TO LOSE, EVERYTHING TO GAIN.=
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