Re: Mother Teresa

From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Wed May 31 2000 - 04:27:46 MDT


On Tue, May 30, 2000 at 04:43:33PM -0400, Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> So, this interested me enough that I decided to do a little web
> research. Not much; I'm no expert.
>
> First off, I was struck by the claim that she didn't actually do
> anything for those likely to survive her treatment. While I was aware
> of the fact that she administered to the dying, I was also given to
> understand that she would feed the hungry, cure the sick, etc.

If I remember correctly, her order's assets at the time of her death
were on the order of US $250M. She was used to being ferried around in
the executive jets of her friends -- who included some rather dubious
dictators.

One might argue that if one runs a multinational organisation dedicated
to looking after the sick and dying, one ought to be spending a _little_
of that money on medical care. And there's a certain contradiction between
that vow of obedience, chastity and poverty and a quarter of a billion
bucks ...

I'll need to go digging to come up with the exposes I read, and I'd need
to do a bit more digging to verify them, but the picture I have of Teresa
of Calcutta is of a scheming bitch whose life-goal was not merely to
get herself beatified, but to found a holy order that would keep her
name alive for a thousand years.

-- Charlie



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