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edhopper

(33,591 posts)
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 09:24 AM Mar 2013

Huffpost:Mother Teresa Humanitarian Image A 'Myth,'

A new study by Canadian academics says Mother Teresa was a product of hype who housed the poor and sick in shoddy conditions, despite her access to a fortune.

The Times of India, reporting on the controversial essay, wrote that the authors asserted Mother Teresa saw beauty in the downtrodden's suffering and was far more willing to pray for them than provide practical medical care. Meanwhile, researchers say, the Vatican engaged in a PR ploy as it threw aside concerns about her suspicious financial dealings and contacts to forgo the five-year waiting period to beatify her.

One of the researchers, Serge Larivee of the University of Montreal's department of psychoeducation, told the school's website, “Given the parsimonious management of Mother Teresa's works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

The research paper claims that the celebrated nun had 517 missions in 100 countries at the time of her death, but that the majority of patients were not cared for properly and many were left to die, according to the university website. In addition, the Vatican is said to have ignored a doctor's assertions when it concluded that a Mother Teresa miracle healed a woman who had tuberculosis and an ovarian cyst.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/mother-teresa-myth_n_2805697.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

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kelliekat44

(7,759 posts)
2. I remember this. I always thought she was more PR than practice. A lot or folks
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 09:47 AM
Mar 2013

claim work for the poor but use the resources given for their own pleasures. In reality, those who seriously work for the poor and disadvantage work with little recognition and freely give from their own resources without asking money from others. People who really want to help do so without fanfare. Doctors give free care and medicines, teachers spend extra time with the children in need and often buy school supplies with their own funds, volunteers go to nursing homes and read and just spend time, neighbors volunteer rides to grocery stores and doctors, and families virtually adopt a poor family in their vicinity...and no one even talks about it. The wealth of the Christian religious organization world-wide (including the Catholic Church) ought to have resulted in more visible improvement of the poor they say they serve. But look at the cathedrals, the Vatican, the churches, the religious compounds...

 

Ron Obvious

(6,261 posts)
6. It's been known...
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 10:11 AM
Mar 2013

As others have already said, there's nothing new here to anyone who's read Hitchens.

I'll never forget watching television with my late mother when we saw a bit with Mother Theresa in it. This was at the height of the Mother Theresa hype and the piece was downright worshipful in tone.

My mother said to me: "I know I'm absolutely terrible to say this, and she's such a good woman and all, but she strikes me as such a ghoul"...

Yep, nothing wrong with your instincts, mom!

TlalocW

(15,384 posts)
7. Learned about this from Penn & Teller's Bullshit
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 11:44 AM
Mar 2013

Which relied heavily on Hitchens who was featured heavily in the episode.

TlalocW

Brickbat

(19,339 posts)
8. I've never understood why people celebrated her. Her "patients" were left to suffer because she
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 11:46 AM
Mar 2013

had a twisted idea that suffering gave glory to God. Bizarre, cultish, pathological.

 

smirkymonkey

(63,221 posts)
9. Knew all about this years ago from Christopher Hitchens.
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 08:58 PM
Mar 2013

She was actually a horrible, corrupt person. Whenever someone refers to her as the paragon of virtue, I just want to puke.

jsr

(7,712 posts)
10. “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot
Wed Mar 6, 2013, 09:27 PM
Mar 2013

to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

Fucking twisted.

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