...continued...
STERN asked the Missionaries of Charity numerous times for information about location of the donations, both in writing as well in person during a visit to Mother Teresa's house in Calcutta. The order has never answered.
"You should visit the House in New York, then you'll understand what happens to donations," sayssays Eva Kolodziej. The Polish lady was a Missionary of Charity for 5 years. "In the cellar of the homeless shelter there are valuable books, jewellery and gold. What happens to them? -- The sisters receive them with smiles, and keep them. Most of these lie around uselessly forever."
The millions that are donated to the order have a similar fate. Susan Shields (formerly Sr Virgin) says, "The money was not misused, but the largest part of it wasn't used at all. When there was a famine in Ethiopia, many cheques arrived marked 'for the hungry in Ethiopia'. Once I asked the sister who was in charge of accounts if I should add up all those very many cheques and send the total to Ethiopia. The sister answered, 'No, we don't send money to Africa.' But I continued to make receipts to the donors, 'For Ethiopia'."
By the accounts of former sisters, the finances are a one way street. "We were always told, the fact that we receive more than other orders, shows that God loves Mother Teresa more. ," says Susan Shields. Donations and hefty bank balances are a measure of God's love. Taking is holier than giving.
The sufferers are the ones for whom the donations were originally intended. The nuns run a soup kitchen in New York's Bronx. Or, to put in straight, they have it run for them, since volunteer helpers organise everything, including food. The sisters might distribute it. Once, Shields remembers, the helpers made an organisational mistake, so they could not deliver bread with their meals. The sisters asked their superior if they could buy the bread. "Out of the question -- we are a poor organisation." came the reply. "In the end, the poor did not get their bread," says Shields. Shields has experienced countless such incidents. One girl from communion class did not appear for her first communion because her mothet could not buy her a white communion dress. So she had to wait another year; but as that particular Sunday approached, she had the same problem again. Shields (Sr Virgin) asked the superior if the order could buy the girl a white dress. Again, she was turned down -- gruffly. The girl never had her first communion.
Because of the tightfistedness of the rich order, the "poorest of the poor" -- orphans in India -- suffer the most. The nuns run a home in Delhi, in which the orphans wait to be adopted by, in many cases, by foreigners. As usual, the costs of running the home are borne not by the order, but by the future adoptive parents. In Germany the organisation called Pro Infante has the monopoly of mediation role for these children. The head, Carla Wiedeking, a personal friend of Mother Teresa's, wrote a letter to Donors, Supporters and Friends which ran:
"On my September vist I had to witness 2 or 3 children lying in the same cot, in totally overcrowded rooms with not a square inch of playing space. The behavioural problems arising as a result cannot be overlooked." Mrs Wiedeking appeals to the generosity of supporters in view of her powerlessness in the face of the children's great needs. Powerlessness?! In an organisation with a billion-fortune, which has 3 times as much money available to it as UNICEF is able to spend in all of India? The Missionaries of Charity has have the means to buy cots and build orphanages, -- with playgrounds. And they have enoungh money not only for a handful orphans in Delhi but for many thousand orphans who struggle for survival in the streets of Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta.
Saving, in Mother Teresa's philosophy, was a central value in itself. All very well, but as her poor organisation quickly grew into a rich one, what did she do with her pictures, jewels, inherited houses, cheques or suitcases full of money? If she wished to she could now cater to people not by obsessively indulging in saving, but instead through well thought-out spending. But the Nobel Prize winner did not want an efficient organisation that helped people efficiently. Full of pride, she called the Missionaries of Charity the "most disorganised organisation in the world". Computers, typewriters, photocopiers are not allowed. Even when they are donated, they are not allowed to be installed. For book-keeping the sisters use school notebooks, in which they write in cramped pencilled figures. Until they are full. Then everything is erased and the notebook used again. All in order to save.
For a sustainable charitable system, it would have been sensible to train the nuns to become nurses, teachers or managers. But a Missionary of Charity nun is never trained for anything further.
Fueklled by her desire for un-professionalism, Mother Teresa decisions from year to year became even more bizarre. Once, says Susan Shields, the order bought am empty building from the City of New York in order to look after AIDS patients. Purchase price: 1 dollar. But since handicapped people would also be using the house, NY City management insisted on the installation of a lift (elevator). The offer of the lift was declined: to Mother they were a sign of wealth. Finally the nuns gave the building back to the City of New York.
While the Missionaries of Charity have already witheld help from the starving in Ethiopia or the orphans in India -- despite having received donations in their names -- there are others who are being actively harmed by the organisation's ideology of disorganisation. In 1994, Robin Fox, editor of the prestigious medical journal Lancet, in a commentary on the catastrophic conditions prevailing in Mother Teresa's homes, shocked the professional world by saying that any systematic operation was foreign to the running of the homes in India: TB patients were not isolated, and syringes were washed in lukewarm water before being used again. Even patients in unbearable pain were refused strong painkillers, not because the order did not have them, but on principle. "The most beautiful gift for a person is that he can participate in the suffering of Christ," said Mother Teresa. Once she had tried to comfort a screaming sufferer, "You are suffering, that means Jesus is kissing you." The sufferer screamed back, furious, "Then tell your Jesus to stop kissing me."
The English doctor Jack Preger once worked in the home for the dying. He says, "If one wants to give love, understanding and care, one uses sterile needles. This is probably the richest order in the world. Many of the dying there do not have to be dying in a strictly medical sense." The British newspaper Guardian described the hospice as an "organised form of neglectful assistance".
It seems that the medical care of the orphans is hardly any better. In 1991 the head of Pro Infante in Germany sent a newsletter to adoptive parents:"Please check the validity of the vaccinations of your children. We assume that in some case they have been vaccinated with expired vaccines, or with vaccines that had been rendered useless by improper strotage conditions." All this points to one thing, something that Mother Teresa reiterated very frequently in her speeches and addresses -- that she far more concerened with life after death than the mortal life.
Mother Teresa's business was : Money for a good conscience. The donors benefitted the most from this. The poor hardly. Whosoever believed that Mother Teresa wanted to cahnge the world, eliminate suffering or fight poverty, simply wanted to believe it for their own sakes. Such people did not listen to her. To be poor, to suffer was a goal, almost an ambition or an achievement for her and she imposed this goal upon those under her wings; her actual ordained goal was the hereafter.
With growing fame, the founder of the order became somewhat conscious of the misconceptioons on which the Mother Teresa phenomenon was based. She wrote a few words and hung them outside Mother House:
"Tell them we are not here for work, we are here for Jesus. We are religious above all else. We are not social workers, not teachers, not doctors. We are nuns."
One question then remains: For what, in that case, do nuns need so much money? |
