. . Mother Teresa, one of the wickedest people who ever lived.

I know this is a VERY late response, Steve, but I'm a newcomer to this thread, and I wanted to read the whole thing lest I repeat what someone else has said.

But they haven't, so I'll ask: What in the world would make you say a thing like that?

Dave Oesterreich

I know it sounds a shocking thing to say, Dave, but I've rattled on about it in other threads. I think I posted both the following bits on mudcat, but I could be wrong. There's some overlap 'twixt the two posts for which I apologise but I'm way too knackered to edit them into one sensible post, so here goes.

Mother Teresa taught that suffering and poverty were Godly virtues, not injustices to be opposed. Conditions in her orphanages and her Homes for the Dying were dreadful. There was gross neglect, physical abuse and the espousing of wacky (to say the least) "medical" practices that often left sick people in unnecessary agony, denying them even basic painkiller relief, with the claim that suffering brought people closer to Jesus. She denied medical training to the nuns working in her homes, claiming instead that God would empower the ignorant and weak. She forbade her sisters to read newspapers and secular literature. Her financial dealings were dodgy to say the least and she received donations from exceptionally shady sources. For example, she accepted donations from Papa Doc and praised him. She diverted donations away from needy people in favour of new convents and missionary work. She capriciously refused help to sick people who didn't exactly comply with her arbitrary qualifying criteria. All in all, an evil bastard if ever there was one. No doubt she'll soon be sainted by the Catholic church.



Mother Teresa was the very opposite of ignorant. It would be more accurate to say that she promoted ignorance. She knew exactly what she was doing when she accepted the adulation (and money) of dictators and fraudsters. She ran horrid institutions that were unhygienic, staffed by unqualified people and filled with neglect and unnecessary suffering and shabby medical practice, whilst at the same time channelling huge money into opening new convents and promoting missionary work. She claimed that abortion was the biggest threat to world peace and she condemned all notions of family planning and contraception, a great way of keeping millions of women in poverty. Her constant message was that the poor were good for the world and that poverty was good for the poor and that they should never fight it. Instead of encouraging the people of Bhopal to fight for justice, she instructed the stricken families to simply forgive Union Carbide. Not at all ignorant, but the deliberate arch-promoter of ignorance. Mother Teresa was the extreme fundamentalist arm of The Vatican and she was supreme when it came to doing the Pope's dirty work.