“When Reverend Donald McGuire was suspected of abuse, she wrote a letter to the authorities insisting on her ‘confidence and trust’ in him. It left him free to abuse hundreds of boys for another decade.”
A new three-part Sky documentary has revealed how Mother Teresa helped the Church in covering up the cases of sexual abuse of children.
At a time when the Church was facing massive criticism for sexual abuse of children, it was Mother Teresa who helped them in overcoming the crisis by engaging in ‘image management’.
Mary Johnson, who had worked with Mother Teresa for over two decades, revealed in the documentary that she had the power to change the story and was called upon by the church multiple times whenever any sex scandal hit the church.
“They would send her to towns where scandals were being unearthed…She could change the story,” Mary said.
“How much did she know? It’s impossible to say but, as revealed in the show, when Reverend Donald McGuire was suspected of abuse, she wrote a letter to the authorities insisting on her ‘confidence and trust’ in him. It left him free to abuse hundreds of boys for another decade,” Daily Mail reported.
Her role in the scandal and the story of how she helped the church in time of crisis was hushed up.
British doctor Jack Preger, who had worked with her charity, revealed how shocked he was by what he saw. “The nuns weren’t delivering proper care,” he says.
“Needles were used over and over unsterilised. One woman with burns was refused painkillers, I smuggled some in for her.”
“They had the money to run a decent hospital for poor people, but they never did. They said, ‘We will pray for the alleviation of pain without providing treatment.’”
“The Missionaries of Charity Sisters (Mother Teresa’s Sisters or the Sisters of Mother Teresa, as many call us) is a religious community in the Catholic Church, founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta (now St. Teresa of Calcutta) in 1950 in Calcutta, India.” This is how the website of her organisation describes itself.
Multiple misdeeds of her organisation have been reported in the past.
In an interview to the New York Times (NYT) in 2016, London-based physician Dr. Aroup Chatterjee explained his encounters with the misdeeds of her organisation.
“Because Calcuttans think that Mother Teresa is Western and she’s a Western icon, she’s very progressive,” he said. “And they do not associate her with miracles and mumbo jumbo and black magic just as they do not associate her with opposition to contraception and abortion”, Dr. Chatterjee told the NYT.
He chronicled his experiences in the book titled “Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict”, published in 2003.
In December last year, the Missionaries of Charity was booked for conversion in Gujarat. An FIR was registered in the case. Quoting the FIR, The Indian Express had written “Between February 10, 2021, and December 9, 2021, the institution has been involved in activities to hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus intentionally and with bitterness… The girls inside the Home for Girls are being lured to adopt Christianity by making them wear the cross around their neck and also placing the Bible on the table of the storeroom used by the girls, in order to compel them to read the Bible… It is an attempted crime to force religious conversion upon the girls.”
Explaining the philosophy of Mother Teresa, Mary Johnson said, “Her spirituality was connected to Jesus on the cross. He gave his life in pain and she believed that to give of oneself with suffering was the greatest value. The idea was that suffering redeemed the world…She thought being poor was good because Jesus was poor. It’s schizophrenic.”
