Society

The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa

Published 22 August 2005

The nun adored by the Vatican ran a network of care homes where cruelty and neglect are routine. Donal MacIntyre gained secret access and witnessed at first hand the suffering of "rescued" orphans

The dormitory held about 30 beds rammed in so close that there was hardly a breath of air between the bare metal frames. Apart from shrines and salutations to "Our Great Mother", the white walls were bare. The torch swept across the faces of children sleeping, screaming, laughing and sobbing, finally resting on the hunched figure of a boy in a white vest. Distressed, he rocked back and forth, his ankle tethered to his cot like a goat in a farmyard. This was the Daya Dan orphanage for children aged six months to 12 years, one of Mother Teresa's flagship homes in Kolkata. It was 7.30 in the evening, and outside the monsoon rains fell unremittingly.

Earlier in the day, young international volunteers had giggled as one told how a young boy had peed on her while strapped to a bed. I had already been told of an older disturbed woman tied to a tree at another Missionaries of Charity home. At the orphanage, few of the volunteers batted an eyelid at disabled children being tied up. They were too intoxicated with the myth of Mother Teresa and drunk on their own philanthropy to see that such treatment of children was inhumane and degrading.

Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 in Kolkata, answering her own calling to "serve the poorest of the poor". In 1969, a documentary about her work with the poor catapulted her to global celebrity. International awards fol-lowed, including the Nobel Peace Prize and a Congressional Gold Medal. But when, in her Nobel acceptance speech, she described abortion as "the greatest destroyer of peace today" she started to provoke controversy. She died on 5 September 1997, her name attached to some 60 centres worldwide, and India honoured her with a state funeral. Her seven homes for the poor and destitute of Kolkata, however, are her lasting monument.

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.

I first learned of the plight of the Kolkata children from two international aid workers, both qualified nurses and committed Catholics. They came to me after working as volunteers for the Missionaries of Charity last Christmas. Both made the comparison with images that emerged from Romanian orphanages in the early 1990s after television news teams first gained access.

"I was shocked. I could only work there [Daya Dan] for three days. It was simply too distressing. . . We had seen the same things in Romania but couldn't believe it was happening in a Mother Teresa home," one told me. In January, she and her colleague had written to Sister Nirmala, the new Mother Superior, to voice their concerns. They wrote, they told me, out of "compassion and not complaint", but received no response. Like me, they had been brought up in Catholic schools to believe that Mother Teresa was the holiest of all women, second only to the Virgin Mary. Our faith was unwavering, as was that of the international media for about 50 years. Even when the sister in charge of the Missionaries of Charity's Mahatma Gandhi Welfare Centre in Kolkata was prosecuted and found guilty of burning a young girl of seven with a hot knife in 2000, criticism remained muted.

The most significant challenge to the reputation of Mother Teresa came from Christopher Hitchens in 1995 in his book The Missionary Position. "Only the absence of scrutiny has allowed her to pass unchallenged as a force for pure goodness, and it is high time that this suspension of our critical faculties was itself suspended," he wrote, questioning whether the poor in her homes were denied basic treatment in the belief that suffering brought them closer to God. Hitchens's lonely voice also raised the issue of the order's finances, which in 1995 (and still in July 2005 when we were filming) seemed never to reach Kolkata's poorest.

Susan Shields, formerly a senior nun with the order, recalled that one year there was roughly $50m in the bank account held by the New York office alone. Much of the money, she complained, sat in banks while workers in the homes were obliged to reuse blunt needles. The order has stopped reusing needles, but the poor care remains pervasive. One nurse told me of a case earlier this year where staff knew a patient had typhoid but made no effort to protect volunteers or other patients. "The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens - it is God's will."

The Kolkata police force and the city's social welfare department have promised to investigate the incidents in the Daya Dan home when they have seen and verified the distressing footage we secretly filmed. Dr Aroup Chatterjee, a London-based Kolkata-born doctor, believes that if Daya Dan were any other care home in India, "the authorities would close it down. The Indian government is in thrall to the legacy of Mother Teresa and is terrified of her reputation and status. There are many better homes than this in Kolkata," he told us.

Nearly eight years after her death, Mother Teresa is fast on the way to sainthood. The great aura of myth that surrounds her is built on her great deeds helping the poor and the destitute of Kolkata, birthplace of her order, the Missionaries of Charity. Rarely has one individual so convinced public opinion of the holiness of her cause. Her reward is accelerated canonisation.

But her homes are a disgrace to so-called Christian care and, indeed, civilised values of any kind. I witnessed barbaric treatment of the most vulnerable.

The Missionaries of Charity have said that they welcome constructive criticism, and that the children we saw were tied for their own safety and for "educational purposes". Sister Nirmala even welcomed our film: "Our hopes continue to be simply to provide immediate and effective service to the poorest of the poor as long as they have no one to help them . . . May God bless you and your efforts to promote the dignity of human life, especially for those who are underprivileged."

For too long Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity have been blessing critics, rather than addressing justified and damning condemnations of the serious failings in their care practices.

Donal MacIntyre is a reporter and documentary-maker for Channel 5 Television

Post this article to

20 comments from readers

Ergo
31 August 2007 at 07:45

It is possible that these children were treated as well as was possible under the circumstances but Christopher Hitchens and others have opened the possibility that there was something very wrong about it all. I tend to be suspicious of "saints", especially people who almost ask to be so considered, and Mother Theresa seemed to me to be one of these. It has been pretty well documented that she believed suffering was good in itself, an unhealthy positon her church also seems to endorse. In any case, no person living or dead should be beyond critcism and the kind of effusive adulation associated with her and promoted by her church (and others) always seemed self-serving and a little mad.

lc0644
31 August 2007 at 08:07

Typical of the hypocrisy that one has come to expect from religion!

Anyone who can baldly state that abortion is "the greatest destroyer of peace today" has got their priorities very, very wrong. Let's go poll the survivors of Rwanda and Darfur as to whether they'd agree with that sentiment....it speaks of someone who is so blinded by dogma that they lose basic common sense and compassion. That's the same mentality that breeds Tomas de Torquemada

shantidas43
01 September 2007 at 17:27

I am sure that there are better institutions of primary care for orphans and the dying in India that these missionaries places, nonetheless as anybody that knows India can testify, there are also tens of millions of youn and old that are living totally and unredeemably in squalor. What is best? to hope for better care facilities in a hopeful future or do something with the elements that are available.Comparing unfavourably missionary institutions with those of Romania,that I don't know nothing about, only reinfornces the idea that Westerners cannot overcome their own smugness.

Tam Earl-Aine
01 September 2007 at 18:51

I don't believe for one moment that Donal MacIntrye's primary concern is to attack the Church and I am willing to support his initiatives to help the children he obviously cares so much about. Please let us know how those of us who wish to can help him as he ministers to the thousands of children who suffer in India.

nurstim
04 September 2007 at 21:29

The Church does not teach that suffering in itself is good or should be sought. I have no reason to disbelieve Donal MacIntyre's reporting though I would say such lack of care is due to a falling away from Mother Teresa's vision rather than living up to it. It also seems to me that the best that these places can offer is still far better than the fate they would otherwise face. It also seems to be missed that Mother Teresa was a prophet. She made the world take notice in the hope that others with resources would do something concrete about it (not merely ctiticise her efforts without getting their own hands dirty).

Douglas Chalmers
05 September 2007 at 19:07

Quote Christopher Hitchens in 1995 in his book The Missionary Position. "Only the absence of scrutiny has allowed her to pass unchallenged as a force for pure goodness...."

Well, Christopher Hitchens has had his share of problems too with his tobacco addiction, etc . He and I were both born in 1949, a good year for breeding iconoclasm, antitheism, anti-monarchism and acerbic wit but these things, along with atheism, can also have their negative aspects.

Sadly, it is not just the "squalid truth behind the legacy" of one individual but of many and in many such organisations whether founded by religious orders or semi-religious ones such as the Salvation Army. It is often not the workers but the administrators who come into power in successive generations who destroy the reputation for good work by their own egotism.

One must ask with Mother Teresa whether she was eventually suffering some degree of dementia and whether she was really an administrator in the first place? If people can't follow the example, then who can one depend on in running such an organisation? What is worse, though, is when a leader's authority is effectively usurped or subsumed by incompetents.

Perhaps we should also remember that this is a criticism yet again of a situation somewhere in Asia and of different races, cultures and reliigions. Are we not just re-inforcing our own feelings of white superiority through negative criticism without doing anyhthing ourselves? First, we should sweep our own doorsteps if we wish to see all of the doorsteps in the street clean.

danbrett
06 September 2007 at 13:40

I have a home in Kokata and am a regular resident of the city. Many Kolkatans are frustrated with the idolisation of Mother Teresa, pointing out that philanthropy is an inherent part of Bengali culture. Middle-class Hindus give donations to the poor and run open kitchens on pujas. There are plenty of good orphanages and the work of the Ramakrishna Mission has achieved far more in terms of improving the lives of the poor than Mother Teresa. Sadly, these missions and charities are not on the lips of every white man, giving the impression that only the white man can save the Indian poor.

I once visited Mother Teresa's Hospital for the Destitute and Dying. The dying are literally put on display at the foyer, lying on wooden benches and tended by young white Catholics. I met the nun who had taken over from Teresa; she was a religious fundamentalist who criticised me (she thought I was a Christian) for marrying a Hindu. There is an anti-Hindu and even anti-Indian attitude among the nuns. Their goal is to convert and make money.

It is not unique to this mission. I've read manuals for Catholic missionaries on how to convert tribal people in Jharkhand - the Catholics' objective is to get them to denounce their ancient "false gods", give up their hunting and gathering traditions, wear Western clothes and move away from their remote villages to urban slums. It is a pernicious form of cultural imperialism that has little to do with genuine social change and everything to do with a greedy, hierarchical church abusing its authority in India.

parnassus
06 September 2007 at 17:54

Mother Teresa has been criticised by Evangelical Protestant fundamentalists for saying that her mission was to encourage people to be 'the best Hindus they could be, the best Muslims they could be, the best Buddhists they could be'. They claimed that this wasn't evangelistic enough and that she was going contrary to the spirit of the Bible. And yet other people accuse Mother Teresa of being out to convert everybody.

People take a lot of pleasure in stripping down public icons in the hope of revealing something nasty, which is possibly why there are so many contradictory criticisms of Mother Teresa. I have only this to add: there are over 5,000 Missionaries of Charity now, plus an unknown number of volunteers. There is no guarantee that becoming a religious sister will make you kind, gentle, or holy. When you are dealing with such significant numbers of people, there is a lot of potential for things to go horribly wrong in places.

This doesn't mean that Mother Teresa was the callous opportunist that some people try to label her as. For one thing, if all she was interested in was making money then she wouldn't have become a nun as a teenager. It's also important to remember that she was working with the poor of Calcutta for nineteen years before she was 'discovered' and made famous. A woman just out to make a fabulous sum of money is unlikely to have the patience for that.

She had her faults, like everyone else. But I think she had integrity and a genuine desire to do what was right.

As for her 'dark night of the soul' being the result of her reason rebelling against her faith, that doesn't make any sense at all. Anyone who reads Mother Teresa's theological insights will see that she had very clear and profound ideas on an intellectual level. Her pain was entirely emotional, and this is where atheists like Hitchens get confused - they will insist on labelling faith as a feeling, and vice versa.

Ergo
06 September 2007 at 22:27

I don't agree with Hitchens' position on a number of topics, but hey, he doesn't promote himself as a saint, doesn't command anywhere near the attention or has the status of Mother Theresa and is entitled to his

opinions and arguments. If the Catholic church doesn't think suffering is good in itself it has a funny way of showing it by insisting that women's essential role in life is that of nurturer and back-seat taker. Sure, self-sacrifice when it isn't pathological is good

but is a contradiction when you have no choice.

The Church's views on artificial birth-control seems a little punitive and disproportionate when it can be tied directly to the suffering and death of millions in Africa and elsewhere. "Natural" birth control is also contradicted by the idea of husband as "head or

boss" of the family. Mother Theresa said publicly that were she in charge, all women who had abortions would be jailed. Nice, - and Christian. For that reason I am willing to believe that she might have been a little unnecessarily parsimonious when it came to

providing a few modest creature comforts, for dying aids patients for instance. I understand she did actually say that suffering was good, and that conforms to her reported behavior. At a slightly different angle, why are some so begrudging of the attention directed to the former Princess Diana and

as opposed to Mother Theresa? Aren't saints supposed to do their good works in obscurity? We may be fairly certain Diana will never be "pronounced" a saint - not by the church anyway.

danbrett
07 September 2007 at 00:55

Just one point to note. Teresa was a great friend of Nikolai Ceaucescu, who did so much for the poor kids of Romania. Perhaps he taught her how to chain them to their beds.

parnassus: I don't think that all public figures should be derided just for the sake of it. Yes, everyone is fallible, everyone has their vices. But it is one thing to be a self-destructive but brilliant singer such as Amy Winehouse, and it is quite another to be responsible for the institutionalised abuse of vulnerable children. So, I will always place Amy Winehouse well above Mother Teresa, particularly in terms of personal morality Teresa's abusive treatment of children is well-known in Kolkata and there are Indian Hindu and secular organisations that serve a far wider number of people than Teresa's missionaries.

Park Street in Kolkata (the city's equivalent of Oxford Street) was renamed Mother Teresa Sarani after her death. Unlike Ho Chi Minh Sarani (renamed in honour of the Vietnamese leader), absolutely no Kolkatan, no official and no business based on the street will use the new name. They don't like her and for good reasons. But corruption in the Communist-run state government and vested interests in the Catholic Church ensured that she could continue her "work" beyond public scrutiny.

Pierre
11 September 2007 at 14:40

Religious sects that discriminate against women should have their charitable statue removed.

gnuneo
19 September 2007 at 22:49

corruption at the core spreads outward.

cajunthinker
06 October 2007 at 00:30

I am amazed at the contradictory criticisms of Teresa. It must be noted that a study of the sacrifices made in her personal life were momentous and could not be undertaken for the many years that she lived in such a way except someone with a very deep and, perhaps, divinely inspired faith.

One who studies Catholic mystical writings will see that what Teresa was writing about was the lack of a mystical connection with God after communications regarding her vocation. Such "dark night" experiences always accompany mystical union, often for many years. The continued life of sacrifice, mortification and penance despite the "dark night" for decades tends to underscore her deep faith, not the opposite.

bob
23 January 2008 at 02:57

Parnassus: the idea that if Mother Teresa wasn't a saint, in the popular sense of the word, she was a callous opportunist, is too simple. Plainly, she was intensely committed to what she did, but it seem fairly plain also that she was interested in poverty as a theological rather than a social problem, and in some sense enjoyed and even promoted it. She probably never really wanted all the money that poured in and clearly didn't put any thought into using it effectively to make life better. She wanted to wade through those who were suffering and dying, pressing wet cloths to their foreheads and whispering words of comfort about Jesus, and had little or no interest in doing what she could to make sure that fewer people ever got to that point. The hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in were an obstacle to this renunciation of the flesh, being aimed at addressing an entirely different conception of poverty and its meaning, and it seems that she largely preferred to ignore it, or allow it to find its way into the general budget of the Vatican.

Is this compatible with saintliness? Certainly in its religious sense, it is. She promoted the faith, renounced the world, helped the suffering. But Orwell's thoughts on saintliness are pertinent here: it is an inhuman ambition that makes humanity into a religious abstraction: "if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This ... marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable." Mother Teresa was a religious. She worked in the worldview and theology of the Catholic church, serving its ends, not those of the people she acted upon, while collecting money at a mad rate from well-meaning people who thought that she was something like a social worker or an ordinary charity, not someone who believed that suffering was a beautiful part of God's plan, to be selflessly joined with, not briskly and pragmatically attacked.

So, maybe she was a saint, but not at all the sort of saint that people generally think of when they use the word. She was a Real Catholic Saint which, it turns out, is maybe not such a nice thing.

sargael
11 March 2008 at 12:42

Good heavens! Mother Teresa has at least the merit of having done what it would taken lives for these foul-mouthed miscrants and calumniators to do. It's sickening that atheists, secularists and what other bizarre individuals dare assess the charitable works of a nun when not a single atheist organisation has yet run succesful kitchen soups. Sickening and decadent, that's it.

mandywinn
01 April 2008 at 17:55

Anger and agression often accompany oranized religion and patrons. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions have provisions in their doctrine supporting physical and emotional pain as righteous. Mother Teresa endorsed her life's work on the doctrine of pain; something right out of the dark ages.

Now that we are in a new millenia can't we forget all that awful dark attitude of suffering as beautiful? There is nothing beautiful about making people suffer, watching people suffer, causing people to suffer needlessly, nor act as if one is nearer to God because they suffer. All that twisted perverted dogma from middle eastern religions is so very yesterday.

Because the world has technology, global communication, and expanding educational resources there is no reason to embrace those dark religions of the past and their deeply flawed philosophies. There is nothing beautiful about anger, agression, violence, dehumanizing conditions when in fact there are ample resources to stop all of it. Once people stop believing in religion people can then move towards God in a meaningful life by helping rather than "believing" in invisible beings, twisted personal views of history, and political agenedas.

One can still believe in God, love Jesus, and every other super human philosopher without having to practice a religion, especially those dirty old religions of the past. Let it all go and move toward the light of the world. Be nice, work hard, pay it forward, and stop practicing religion. Good God!

edwardcullen
29 April 2008 at 22:58

I personally have worked in daya dan orphanage and while conditions there certainly aren't ideal the cruelty and callousness tat donal macintyre describes was never present while i was there. Each child was looked after to the best of the facilities available.I saw no child chained to a wall or anything else. There were bars at the edges of their beds as there is in most cots in western homes also; to protect the children. There were singsongs and each child got shown love and affection by the volunteers. The orphanage itself was brightly decorated and as clean as possible with over 20 children living there. Perhaps there are better homes in Calcutta but daya dan is far from being the worst. In a place where there are limited facilities i believe that the nuns and volunteers are doing as best a job as they can and to criticise them for this is wrong. Maybe Mother Theresa wasn't as wonderful as everyone believes but the work that she inspired in Calcutta is remarkable, with people from all over the world trying their hardest to improve life, just a small bit, for these children.

Goddess3
13 May 2008 at 16:05

Why are the good ones always attacked, soiled and even sometimes murdered? Because love, devotion and light always awakens the pathological jealousy and anger of the empty, fearful and controlling people. Narcissists HATE full, giving, loving people.

B-Ward
22 June 2008 at 11:31

Why is it nobody is bothering to address the issue at heart? fact is no charity should ever be above scrutiny and should not be immune from being inspected. Having worked for a real life charity that had the best of intentions ,however, they were anything but properly run. In the end it took the police to deal with it. So really stop with the talk of airy fairy religious dogma and actually deal with the issue at heart!- children at risk.

adamsmorgan
02 July 2008 at 22:30

I suggest walking a mile in her shoes first (how about 40 yeras?), then criticizing her. Go to a poor city by yourself and start an orphanage. Give up everything. Work at it all your life until you die. Then watch people criticize you. Jeesh! Christopher Hitches lives here in Washington. He's a pompous Englishman who makes his living off Americans, just like Andrew Sullivan. He should return to the U.K. and attack its ridiculous monarchy, frilly hats and crowns and all, and its class system.

We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.