[chris]

Mother Teresa, a revered Roman Catholic nun and missionary known worldwide for her charitable work with the poor and sick, died on September 5, 1997, in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India. Born as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire and now the capital of North Macedonia, she was 87 years old at the time of her death. Mother Teresa's death marked the end of a life dedicated to serving the most destitute and ill, a mission that earned her global recognition, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.

Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, in 1950. The congregation, which began in Kolkata, grew to include over 4,000 sisters running orphanages, hospices, and charity centers worldwide, providing care to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying. She became an international symbol of charitable work, and her efforts brought her numerous awards and honors.

Her health had been declining for several years before her death, with heart, lung, and kidney problems. Despite her health issues, she continued her work almost until the end of her life.

[Rusty666]

[Faline]

Good add

[Soar]

Slightly different angles.

[Spiffyfable]

She may have been a Great Person that helped many people.... but she was also a Great Gangster that made the Catholic Church a ton of money (literally)

[Jere]

[Cyclon]

[Spitfire Dynamo]

Teresa cloaked a reactionary right-wing political outlook in false protestations of innocence and naivete. Although she insisted on several occasions that her mission was resolutely apolitical, Teresa's true interests were anything but. Like the right-wing conservative Catholic she was, she traveled the world to lobby against the legality of abortion, contraception, and even divorce.

When the International Health Organization honored Teresa in 1989, she spoke at length against abortion and contraception and called AIDS a "just retribution for improper sexual conduct". Similarly, when Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she proclaimed in her acceptance speech that abortion was the greatest threat to peace in the world. In 1992, she appeared at an open-air Mass in Ireland and said, "Let us promise Our Lady who loves Ireland so much that we will never allow in this country a single abortion. And no contraceptives." She also campaigned in Ireland to oppose the successful 1995 referendum to legalize divorce in that predominantly Catholic country.

The connection between overpopulation and poverty seemed never to occur to Teresa, who said on another occasion that she was not concerned about it because "God always provides". (The very existence of her mission would seem to cast doubt on that.) In upholding the irrational dogmas of Catholicism, she failed to recognize - or perhaps chose to disregard - the obvious conclusion that inadequate access to family planning services was and is one of the greatest causes of human destitution.

Teresa's free clinics provided care that was at best rudimentary and haphazard and at worst unsanitary and dangerous, despite the enormous amounts of donations she received. Multiple volunteers at Teresa's clinics, such as Mary Loudon and Susan Shields, have testified to the inadequate care provided to the dying. Despite routinely receiving millions of dollars in donations, Teresa deliberately kept her clinics barren.

Volunteers such as Loudon, and Western doctors such as Robin Fox of the Lancet, wrote about what they found in Teresa's clinics. No tests were performed to determine the patients' ailments. No modern medical equipment was available. Even people dying of cancer, suffering terrible agony, were given no painkillers other than aspirin. Needles were rinsed and reused, without proper sterilization. No one was ever sent to the hospital, even people in clear need of emergency surgery or other treatment.

Again, it is important to note that these conditions were not the unavoidable result of triage. Teresa's organization routinely received multimillion-dollar donations which were squirreled away in bank accounts, while volunteers were told to beg donors for more money and plead extreme poverty and desperate need. The money she received could easily have built half a dozen fully equipped modern hospitals and clinics, but was never used for that purpose. No, this negligent and rudimentary care was deliberate - about which, see the next point. However, despite her praise for poverty, Teresa hypocritically sought out the most advanced care possible in the Western world when she herself was in need of it.

Teresa considered converting the sick and the poor to be a higher priority than providing for their actual needs, and believed that human suffering was beneficial and even "beautiful". The following quote from Teresa says it all:


"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

On another occasion, Teresa told a terminal cancer patient, who was dying in extreme pain, that he should consider himself fortunate: "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you." (She freely related his reply, which she seemed not to realize was meant as a putdown: "Then please tell him to stop kissing me.")

[felixhelix420]

She looks better dead. Is that weird to anybody else?

[Dynamo47]

Spitfire, I enjoyed reading your post but she truly was a woman who did help people and was fully deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Back then the Nobel Prize was truly a distinguished honor. People like Mother Theresa and Desmond Tutu were truly people who made a difference. When Obama was awarded it, the cheapened the award for all future recipients. Unlike those formerly mentioned, there were pages and pages of their notable accomplishments.