57. The Saint (Mother Teresa)
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This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. He would, just in conversations, he would say things like, I was really glad when they took you away in the ambulance, Daddy. And I looked at him and I said, well, how do you know they took me away in an ambulance? I asked, you were in a helicopter. He said, Daddy, I saw you from heaven. I didn't see you from the helicopter.

Kevin Malarkey does not remember the accident, but it happened on Sunday, November 14th, 2004. He and his six-year-old son Alex were driving home from church. Kevin says his phone rang and he reached for it as he approached an unfamiliar intersection. Next thing Kevin knew he was outside of his vehicle sitting in the dirt on the side of the road. Another car had t-boned them, he was told. The impact had ejected him from the car, but there was barely a scratch on his body.

Kevin was fine, and so were the occupants of the other vehicle, thank God. But, unfortunately, Kevin's son Alex had not been quite as blessed. Six-year-old Alex Malarkey had been airlifted to a children's hospital 50 miles away in Columbus, Ohio. Alex was not doing well, to say the least. He had suffered what doctors called an internal decapitation, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Alex's skull had detached from his spine. He was in a coma. It would take a miracle for him to survive. Alex's head became reattached on its own. There was no medical intervention. There were two vertebrae that were completely separated. They went to do surgery. They took the last x-ray. The vertebrae were back. Right on cue.

Two months later, Alex woke up, and eventually he began to communicate. According to Alex's parents, their son's head had reattached itself. They had witnessed a truly unbelievable recovery. Though Alex could no longer walk or move, he was a quadriplegic, and probably always would be. There was still a long way to go, but maybe one day their son would be able to walk again, the malarkeys hoped. Not to get ahead of themselves. All things considered, they were just happy Alex was alive.

But he had already made so much progress. Anything was possible. God works in mysterious ways. For some reason I said, are there angels here? And his face just lit up. Funny you should ask, Mr. Malarkey. As a matter of fact, there were angels there. According to Alex at least. You know, the six-year-old boy who had just awakened from a two-month coma induced by traumatic and life-altering injuries.

The angels were right over there, the boy pointed. When he first started talking about it, I thought he had brain damage, Kevin Malarkey told the Sunshine Coast daily. But apparently the more details of the afterlife Alex shared with his father, the more his father must have thought, hey, this kid is making a lot of sense. Because Kevin Malarkey began to document his son's descriptions of a spiritual journey to the other side.

Alex recalled traveling through a bright tunnel after the accident. Five angels with fantastic wings greeted him upon his arrival to the pearly gates. Alex said he had heard the most beautiful music emanating from the clouds. It was perfect, Alex assured. "When I arrived in heaven, I was inside the gate. The gate was really tall, and it was white. It was very shiny, and it looked like it had scales like a fish.

Alex remembered there being rivers and lakes and grass, believe it or not. And there were demons with green skin, long fingernails, nasty noses, and hair made of fire. A fact that should give all of us hope. Alex also claimed he had sat in the lap of Jesus Christ. The Lord and Savior himself assured the six-year-old boy that his visit to the kingdom was only temporary. Jesus' dad, God, was there too, sitting on a throne near a scroll that outlined the end of times.

At which Alex didn't even bother to take a peek. Not a fan of spoilers, I assume. I was in the presence of God, Alex professed. He had a body that was like a human body, but it was a lot bigger. I could only see up to his neck, because like the Bible says, nobody is allowed to see God's face or that the person will die. Seems kind of rude. One time I asked him, I said, could you put what you saw in one sentence? And he said, heaven is what here was supposed to be.

And another time I asked him, did you walk in heaven? He said, I don't know. And I said, why don't you know? And he said, because daddy, when you see heaven, you don't look at yourself. This is beautiful. It was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that Kevin Malarkey was convinced that he should share his son's interdimensional trip with the world. Kevin co-authored a book with Alex called The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven.

It was released six years after the accident. The book's publisher, Tyndale House, promoted it as a true story of an ordinary boy's extraordinary journey. As you see heaven and earth through Alex's eyes, the description read, you'll come away with new insights on miracles, life beyond this world, and the power of a father's love. Evangelicals everywhere ate it up.

The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven sold over 1 million copies worldwide. It spent months on the New York Times bestsellers list and ultimately spawned a new genre of heavenly tourism literature that would feature future classics such as the extremely popular Heaven Is For Real. A similar story dictated but not written by three-year-old Colton Burpo after complications from an emergency appendectomy gave him a brief glimpse into the afterlife.

In heaven, Colton claimed he had met the Virgin Mary and saw a rainbow-colored horse. Sounds pretty cool. While some fundamentalists criticized the works of Malarkey and Burpo as being biblically inaccurate, others, including human garbage can Laura Ingraham, latched onto the stories as proof that God exists. Back on the Laura Ingraham Show, this book and the story of this young boy's

back from what he says was heaven after a car accident is stunning. And it really does mirror in many ways the stories of others who have claimed these near-death experiences. And they describe similar circumstances of hovering over accident scenes, of a bright white light, some encounters with God, and stories

And this book, when it came to my attention, you know, you just start reading it, you can't put it down. "The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World." For all you doubters out there, I suggest you listen closely. That's right. Listen closely. None of it is true. Alex Malarkey did not die. He did not go to heaven. He said he went to heaven because he thought it would get him attention.

We know this because in 2015, Alex Malarkey himself, at 18 years old, penned an open letter that was published on a conservative Christian blog that read, Amen.

Look at this, a best-selling book recounting a six-year-old's near-death experience is apparently completely fake according to the boy himself. Alex Malarkey now says he made up the details in the book. It's called The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven. He said he did it because he wanted attention after a horrible car crash. In fact, Alex had expressed concerns about the book on multiple occasions in the five years since it had been published. According to his mother, Beth,

Alex told his pastor that it was a work of fiction and needed to be stopped. That pastor brushed him off and told him not to worry about it because the book was "blessing people". Alex did not write the book his mother later wrote, and it is not blessing him. Alex Malarkey had also posted a comment on a Facebook fan page decrying the boy who came back from heaven. The moderators of the page deleted his comment and blocked him from the group. A good Christian would never let facts get in the way of a good story.

Kevin Malarkey could attest to that. The book was his idea. He wrote it. He signed the contract. He relentlessly promoted it. And he earned $1 million for all of his hard work. But after Alex publicly denounced the story, the publisher pulled Kevin's seminal work from the shelves and he disappeared from public view. Behind closed doors, the Malarkey family was falling apart. In 2018, Kevin and Beth Malarkey divorced.

That same year, Alex, now 21 years old, filed a lawsuit against the book's publisher for defamation and exploitation. The boy who never went to heaven alleged that he and his mother had never seen a dime of the book's profits. The judge dismissed most of the lawsuit's claims because Kevin Malarkey had signed the publishing contract on his son's behalf. In 2019, journalist Ruth Graham was finally able to convince Kevin Malarkey to tell his side of the story for an article published by Slate magazine.

Kevin said that he still believed every word in the book that he wrote with his son, but any untruths that it might have contained were no fault of his own, concluding, "Alex either lied when he was six or when he was 18." Kevin also claimed that all of the money earned from the book was gone. The majority of it was spent on medical expenses and food, he said. Although Kevin did admit to giving $30,000 to his church and losing another sizable chunk investing in a friend's startup company,

Who would have thought Kevin Malarkey could be so easily convinced? Alex Malarkey remains a quadriplegic. He requires around-the-clock care and a diaphragm pacing system that helps him breathe on his own. Also, according to Alex, he and his mother are on the verge of homelessness. But he still has God's love in his heart, even if God has a funny way of showing it.

Although The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven was proven to be a work of religious fiction, there was no denying that Alex's story had inspired many people around the globe. It gave people hope and validation. It was proof that there is something better waiting for all of us. A shiny gift from God at the end of an honest life of perpetual suffering. It's the same promise and bill of goods that's been sold under every steeple, on every swath of land, since man began to paint on cavern walls.

believe it or burn in hell. British writer and self-proclaimed anti-theist Christopher Hitchens did not buy it. Oh well I think mockery of religion is one of the most essential things because to demystify supposedly holy texts that are dictated by God and show that they are man-made what you have to show their internal inconsistencies and absurdities and

Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things Hitchens proclaimed. Indispensable. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, he would often say.

Christopher Hitchens dedicated his life and work to spreading the gospel of how religion poisons everything. To him, nothing was sacred. Nothing was off-limits, including one of the world's most recognizable and beloved messengers of God. And Albanian nuns' charitable endeavors in India are revealed to be political, fanatical, and fraudulent on this episode of Swindled.

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WNBC-TV Community Affairs, in cooperation with the Paulist Fathers, presents Inquiry. This morning's program, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in the service of the poor. To introduce today's guests, the continuing moderator of Inquiry, Father James Lloyd of the Paulist Fathers.

Nowadays there's lots of talk about the need to get involved and be concerned about other people. And sometimes you think that it's just that, just a lot of talk. Some people don't do anything.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta is someone who does something and has done something. Mother Teresa is the founder of a society called the Missionaries of Charity, working principally in India. And with her today as a fellow guest is a very famous Englishman, Mr. Malcolm Motheridge, who was editor of Punch Magazine, has been a broadcaster at BBC and radio and television, he's been a professor,

In 1969, a world-famous British journalist and television personality named Malcolm Muggeridge traveled to Calcutta to interview his latest subject, an Albanian nun who he had heard was dedicating her entire life to serving the poorest of the poor.

During a train ride in September 1946, Mother Mary Theresa said she had received a call from God to work in the slums. "Come, carry me into the holes of the poor," God told her. "Come be my light." "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them," Mother Theresa later recalled. "It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."

So Teresa left her position as headmistress at an affluent all-girls Catholic school in Calcutta where she had taught for almost 20 years, claiming she could no longer ignore the poverty that surrounded her. In 1950, after completing a basic course in medicine, Mother Teresa took her compassion to the streets and founded the Missionaries of Charity. In 1952, she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the first home for the dying.

It was a place to die with dignity for those who had nothing. The worst cases from the Calcutta streets are brought here. They are men and women who are destitute, who have no family or friends to look after them, who find themselves alone and sick or starving along the pavements of the city on the threshold of death. Mother Teresa wants to provide a place for them to die in dignity and peace.

Mother Teresa had become the saint of the gutter. I'll never forget when I brought a man from the street. He was covered with maggots. His vase was the only place that was clean. And yet that man, when we brought him to our home for the dying, he said just one sentence. I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel. Love and care.

Journalist Malcolm Muggeridge needed to see this home for the dying for himself. He wanted to film on location for a documentary that he was producing about the nun. But when Muggeridge and his crew arrived at the home for the dying, they were disappointed to find that the lighting inside was insufficient for filming. They assumed most of what was shot would be too dark to use.

However, when the crew returned to England to review the footage, to their surprise, all of the scenes inside of the home for the dying were perfectly visible. Ken McMillan, the cameraman on the scene, attributed the results to a new kind of ultra-sensitive film made by Kodak. It was surprising. You could see every detail. And I said, that's amazing. That's extraordinary.

And I was going to go on to say, you know, three cheers for Kodak. I didn't get a chance to say that, though, because Malcolm, sitting in the front row, spun round and said, "It's divine light! It's Mother Teresa! You'll find that it's divine light, old boy!" And three or four days later, I found out I was being phoned by journalists from London newspapers, who were saying things like, "We hear you've just come back from India with Malcolm Munridge, and you were the witness of a miracle."

According to Malcolm Muggeridge, the beautifully lit shots inside of the home for the dying were the result of a miracle. It was divine light from Mother Teresa. According to Muggeridge, there was simply no other explanation. This is precisely what miracles are for, to reveal the inner reality of God's outward creation, he wrote. I am personally persuaded that Ken recorded the first authentic photographic miracle.

Malcolm Muggeridge spread this theory while promoting his film "Something Beautiful for God" and book of the same title. Later in life, the self-described agnostic would convert to Catholicism and Mother Teresa, the miracle gaffer, thanks to Muggeridge's depiction, would become an international celebrity. "Mother Teresa was busy, as usual, saving the world. And I mean that quite literally."

In the decades to follow, volunteers and donations poured into missionaries of charity. By the mid-90s, Teresa's operation had expanded to over 100 different countries, including the United States, Italy, Venezuela, and Austria. She opened hospices, soup kitchens, orphanages, and schools with the continued focus of caring for the destitute. Her life and work were celebrated worldwide. The Angel of Mercy, the Saint of Calcutta,

Each nickname she was given fit perfectly on a magazine cover. Public figures tripped over themselves trying to get a photo op with the nun, who had received practically every humanitarian and civilian award in existence. Teresa's face was even printed on money, which is as close to God as one can get. In 1979, Mother Teresa was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which she humbly accepted in the name of the poor. And I'm very happy

to receive it in the name of the hungry, of the naked, of the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared, throw away of the society, people who have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everybody. In their name, I accept our vote.

It's difficult to imagine Anya Skanya Boyacu envisioned this life for herself growing up in Albania all those years ago. Taking vows to become a nun usually does not lead to worldwide notoriety, but if this was God's plan for her, so it shall be done. After leaving home at the age of 18, Mother Teresa never saw her family again.

Nor would she ever have a family of her own, unless you count the 4,000 sister nuns she oversaw, who had also taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Though not all of them would stick around for the long haul, it's kinda hard to live up to the squeaky clean image of Mother Teresa, especially when, according to some of those who worked closely with her, the reality was anything but. The little woman casts a big shadow,

And if you believe her critics, Mother Teresa and her life's work were the result of a grand public relations campaign to improve the image of the Catholic Church, who had been caught with its pants down on countless occasions. Her mission was to promote the Church's strict doctrine, including its hardline stances on abortion and contraception, all under the guise of helping the poor. British writer Christopher Hitchens took exception.

According to him, Mother Teresa was not a helper of the poor, a protector of the sick, a servant of the suffering, friend to the friendless, or any of the endless number of platitudes she had donned. No, according to Hitchens, Mother Teresa was a quote, "...thieving, fanatical Albanian dwarf, a religious fundamentalist, a political operative, a primitive sermonizer, and an accomplice of worldly secular powers."

Also corrupt, nasty, cynical and cruel. Christopher Hitchens made this determination after meeting Mother Teresa in the early 90s while in Calcutta, where in conversation he claims she basically admitted to as much. I always had a real doubt in my mind as to whether there really was this saintly person. And if you ask people why do they think Mother Teresa is so great, they'll always say, well, isn't it true that she spends her time always helping out the poor of Calcutta?

But if they really push them, they don't know anything about her at all. They just take it on faith, as saints always are taken. So I went to Calcutta, actually for another reason. I thought, "Well, I'm there. I'll go and look her up." And I was rather appalled by what I found. I mean, she was... She showed me around her mission, and she announced that the purpose of the mission was to run a campaign in Calcutta, in Bengal, against abortion and contraception. Now, as it happens, I'm... I have my doubts about abortion. I find I'm very squeamish on the subject, but...

One thing that Calcutta definitely does not need is a campaign waged by an Albanian Catholic missionary against the limitation of the population. And it rather, to me, spoiled the effect of her charitable work, that she was saying, actually, this is not charity, it's religious propaganda. And I think the Vatican policy on population control is calamitous.

According to Christopher Hitchens, without the preconceived notions of awe and reverence, Mother Teresa and the Catholic Church were responsible for "the promulgation of a cult based on death and suffering and subjection," and he referred to the church's ability to sell it as a humanitarian endeavor as "the most single successful con job of the twentieth century." Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.

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I was asked why some of my natural tenderness and poudre and fair-mindedness would... By the way, one mustn't confuse fair-mindedness with objectivity. You know how people often do that in this culture. People say even-handedness is objectivity or fairness is objectivity or putting both sides. There's not. Objectivity is the search for truth even if it leads you to unwelcome conclusions.

It's nothing at all to do with impartiality. But none of these things apply in the case of Mother Teresa because it's a simple matter of record that she was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud. I think probably the most successful confidence trickster of the last century and responsible for innumerable deaths and for untold suffering and misery and proud of it.

In 1994, a documentary highlighting criticisms of Mother Teresa aired on Channel 4 in the UK. It was called Hell's Angel and it was hosted by Christopher Hitchens. Needless to say, it was not as merciful to the Angel of Mercy as Malcolm Muggeridge's preceding work. In the film, Hitchens alleged that Mother Teresa's intention was not to help people.

He told CBS, quote, It was by talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she wasn't working to alleviate poverty. She was working to expand the number of Catholics. She said, I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it for Christ. I do it for the church. It's not untypical with people like her. She's a seller of indulgences to the very rich, while a preacher of resignation and submission to the poor, who she's helped to fleece. So it's a pretty long bill of indictment.

This allegation centered on Teresa's seemingly disingenuous treatment of the people she claimed to care about the most. Hitchens has pointed out how the nun has spent her entire life in overpopulated India of all places, opposing the only known cure for an impoverished population, which is quote, "...the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."

Mother Teresa, who routinely referred to abortion as the greatest destroyer of peace, was a friend of poverty, Hitchens said, not a friend of the poor. Her rigid beliefs were only exacerbating the issue. If you can give women control over their rate of reproduction and come back to that village in 10 years' time, everything will be better right away. It's the only thing that works. If you can throw in a handful of seeds and a bit of credit...

as well and generally try and funnel it through the mothers and the wives it will be enormously better right away but nothing else works if you don't do it people die all the time very horribly and they have appalling diseases like polio that they can spread to other people well mother Teresa spent her entire life saying that that solution was impermissible she waged her entire life making sure that didn't happen

So I wish there was a hell to which she could go, because she has a lot of death on her conscience, and a lot of misery, and stupidity, and ignorance, and dirt, and filth, and disease as well. Too harsh? Check this out. Mother Teresa also believed that the poor and the sick should suffer like Christ on the cross. Her home for the dying was not to be confused for a hospice. There were 50 to 60 women patients in one room, 50 to 60 men in the other.

They slept on small pallets merely inches away from one another. There was no heat in the building and the water was unbearably cold. All chairs had been removed. No visitors allowed. No pain medications were offered either. Even as the screams of people with terminal cancer echoed through the hallway, there was a sign above the morgue that read, "I am going to heaven today." Most of the patients could not wait to be wheeled through that door.

Christopher Hitchens includes an anecdote in his book, "The Missionary Position," about a man with cancer who was experiencing excruciating pain. Mother Teresa reassured him, "You are suffering like Christ on the cross, so Jesus must be kissing you." "Then please," the man replied, "tell him to stop." An early Missionaries of Charity volunteer named Mary Loudon also described a time when a 15-year-old boy with a very treatable kidney ailment was denied medical care.

All the boy needed was antibiotics or a minor operation. Mary asked a fellow volunteer why the sisters would not simply take him to a hospital. That volunteer replied, "They don't do it. They won't do it. If they do it for one, they do it for everybody. No exceptions." Mary Loudon also claimed that Teresa's organization was taught to reuse hypodermic needles until they were dull after merely rinsing them in the cold water.

During her time there, Mary reportedly asked one of the sisters why they were not sterilizing, and the nun replied, quote, There's no point. There's no time. Dr. Arup Chatterjee, a London-based physician who was raised in Calcutta, confirms this to be true.

The people there don't even have proper beds. I mean, they're made to lie on these hammocks called pallets. They're not allowed to get up. And during Mother Teresa's lifetime, there was an official policy. Can you imagine? An official policy to reuse needles over and over again. And this was when AIDS for HIV first came out. Dr. Chatterjee published his own book, Critical of Teresa, in 2003 called The Final Verdict.

His research consisted of more than 100 interviews with former nuns and volunteers who shed light on the shambolic condition of the facilities. Chatterjee also pointed out that Mother Teresa has admitted to deceitfully baptizing those on their deathbeds by offering them a ticket to heaven while patting their heads with a wet cloth. We call baptism "tickets for the minister." We ask the person, "Do you want a blessing?"

by which your sins will be forgiven and you will see God. And they have never refused. So 29,000 have died in that one house from the time we began the work in 1952. So that is one of our first works of our tender love and care. But it's so beautiful to see the people die with so much joy.

In 2013, three Canadian researchers published a paper that agreed with the criticisms of Hitchens and Chatterjee and referred to Mother Teresa as "anything but a saint". In the early 90s, Dr. Robin Fox of the Lancet Medical Journal described the care provided to the patients at the Home for the Dying as "hap-hazard" at best. In more recent years, a former volunteer named Himley Gonzalez has been the most outspoken.

In addition to the previously mentioned atrocities, Gonzalez says he witnessed a paralyzed man choked to death after an untrained volunteer fed him incorrectly. Another time he saw minor surgery being performed without anesthesia.

It was a scene out of a World War II concentration camp, he told CNN. It felt like a museum of poverty. Every article of clothing was washed by hand. The food was donated.

Truthfully, hardly a dollar was spent to accommodate the residents of Mother Teresa's House of Horrors, even though the organization had accepted more than $100 million in donations before 1980, enough to build and operate a technologically advanced modern medical facility, just like the one Mother Teresa checked herself into when she began having health issues in the 90s. I guess suffering like Christ is only fun when it's other people.

Just another contradiction that can be seen in her actions if you look close enough. One day, Teresa was in Ireland, publicly supporting a ban on divorce and remarriage. The next, she was describing to the ladies' home journal how pleased she was that her friend Princess Diana got out of hers. "Rules for thee, not for me."

Speaking of Princess Diana, she was quite a generous donor to the missionaries of charity. So were the Reagans and the Clintons and Yasser Arafat. So was Robert Maxwell, the suspected spy and fraudster who mysteriously fell out of his yacht in 1991. There's a photograph of Mother Teresa and Maxwell just hanging out inside of his London flat three months before his death.

Theresa also accepted money from Michelle Duvalier and her husband, Jean-Claude Baby Doc, the right-wing dictator of Haiti that stole millions from the penniless population and allowed the torture and murder of untold thousands of people. Mother Theresa told Madame President Duvalier that the country "vibrates with your life work" and that she had never seen poor people be so familiar with their head of state as they were with her.

Those poor people were hoping to become even more familiar with the Duvalier family, but they ultimately fled for their lives to the French Riviera. And there was also Charles Keating, the evangelical moral crusader, famous for getting Playboy magazine banned from the newsstand near his office, and for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal. Charles Keating gave Mother Teresa $1.25 million and the use of his private jet.

In return, Teresa gave Keating a custom-made crucifix, some useful PR, and a character witness letter to Judge Lance Ito when Keating was eventually arrested. Part of the letter read, quote,

The Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles wrote back to Mother Teresa, explaining that the money Keating gifted to her had been stolen from other people and suggested that the moral and ethical act would be to return it. Mother Teresa never replied.

The other people you see getting on and off these jets advertise the fact that they're scumbags and grinders in the faces of the poor. She does it by saying, I'm doing this to do the poor a favor. And then she says, poverty is a gift from God. Suffering is a gift from God. Leprosy is a gift from God. The death of your child is because God loves the child and expects people to sit still for it. Well, not this reviewer. Catholic Church must have had big plans for that money. Covering up rampant pedophilia can't come cheap.

But what those plans were exactly, nobody will ever know. Missionaries of Charity, although operating in more than 100 countries, has no financial oversight or transparency requirements. That's just another one of those exemptions you get, like not paying taxes, when you have God on your side. Most assume the money was stuffed in Vatican-controlled bank accounts around the world, while the nuns and residents took freezing showers and ate donated bread, like Mother Teresa says.

God always provides. However, we do know what Mother Teresa and the Catholic Church did not do with the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars that had been donated to her over the years. They did not offer any monetary aid to the victims of the disastrous floods that had devastated Calcutta. Instead, Teresa sent her thoughts and prayers and little medallions of the Virgin Mary. Collector's edition, I hope.

If not, it was still more than the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy received from her. When an American corporation's exploitative business practices were revealed to be responsible for the leak that killed thousands and thousands of people, Mother Teresa offered the residents of Bhopal some advice. Forgive. Forgive. But surely, Mother Teresa's efforts, especially in India, resulted in a net positive for the world, right?

Not necessarily, says Bakash Ranjan Bhattacharya, a former mayor of Calcutta. Teresa had, quote, no significant impact on the poor of this city. He said she glorified illness instead of treating it and misrepresented the city as a whole. Quote, no doubt there was poverty in Calcutta, but it was never a city of lepers and beggars. She was responsible for creating a negative image of this city. As a Calcuttan, I feel totally disgusted by it.

So if all of these things were true, how did Mother Teresa get away with it for so long? How are people so shielded from the truth? Why is Mother Teresa so celebrated around the globe, especially in the West? Christopher Hitchens had a theory that he included in an article for Slate. Quote, "...the rich world has a poor conscience, and many people like to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for the poorest of the poor."

People do not like to admit that they have been gold or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and the lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions. Many volunteers who went to Calcutta came back abruptly disillusioned by the stern ideology and poverty-loving practice of the missionaries of charity, but they had no audience for their story.

Now let's just repeat that very grave news that's just come in. Mother Teresa, the tireless worker for the poor and underprivileged, has died. Mother Teresa's health issues began in 1983. She had a heart attack in Rome while visiting Pope John Paul II. Six years later, she suffered another heart attack and received an artificial pacemaker. In 1991, Teresa caught pneumonia in Mexico and was hospitalized.

In 96, she fell and broke her collarbone before contracting malaria. That same year, she had another case of heart failure, which required surgery. God bless the miracle of modern medicine. Teresa was able to recover and live a long, blessed life, thanks to the doctors and scientists who tended to her. There are some people out there who would have just dumped her body on a dirty cot and waited for her to die. Suffer like Christ, they would have told her.

However, Mother Teresa was reportedly never the same after the last surgery. She was bedridden and totally restless, according to Archbishop Henry de Souza. The doctor could not understand it, he said. She was pulling all of her wires out. So Archbishop de Souza says he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on the frail old lady because he was worried that she might be under attack by the devil. And apparently it worked.

D'Souza says Teresa slept very well and was totally calm. She lived another 10 months, long enough to see her 87th birthday, before dying on September 5th, 1997, five days after Princess Diana was killed in a car accident. Even before her death, Mother Teresa was well on her way to sainthood. But on average, it takes the Catholic Church 180 years to complete the canonization process.

That's because eligibility for sainthood requires proof of at least two posthumous miracles. But Mother Teresa was not like previous candidates. She must have rolled up her sleeves and started working as soon as she got to heaven and saw that rainbow-colored horse.

I have been cured by Mother Teresa's blessings, not because of doctors' treatments, she says. I saw a spark of light emerge from Mother's photo and reflect on my tumor, she tells us. Later, a pendant given to her by one of Mother Teresa's missionaries was placed on that tumor.

When I woke up at 5 a.m., I saw there was a photograph of Mother Teresa behind me. I told sister that the big tumor in my stomach is no longer there. Then I showed everyone where the tumor was and the locket. In 2002, an Indian woman named Monica Besra claimed her stomach cancer was cured by placing a locket containing Mother Teresa's photograph onto the tumor. A beam of light shot out and the cancer disappeared.

Miracle number one in the books. Never mind the fact that the doctor who treated Monica Besra disputed her account. It was not a miracle, he told the New York Times. She took medicines for nine months to a year. The doctor also revealed that the woman did not have a tumor on her stomach like she had claimed. It was a cyst caused by tuberculosis. Monica Besra's husband agreed with the doctor.

He told Time magazine that all the Mother Teresa talk was "much ado about nothing". My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle. Monica Besser's medical records could prove that her ailments were relieved with medicine. Unfortunately, those records disappeared when the missionaries of charity and the Catholic Church performed their due diligence before officially recognizing the miracle.

Nevertheless, in 2003, just six years after her death, Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI. It was a major step towards sainthood. Mother Teresa was bestowed the name Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. One could now pray to her if so inclined. Teresa was now officially an intermediary between earthly prayers and God's ears, an entire life of servitude just for a promotion to middle management.

Surprisingly, during Mother Teresa's beatification process, the church contacted one of the nuns' loudest critics, Christopher Hitchens, to play the role of devil's advocate. Hitchens had been called upon by the Vatican to present evidence against her holiness, a job he readily accepted. He told CBS, "...somebody in the world had to represent the devil pro bono, and I was perfectly happy for that to be me." Miracles do not occur, okay?

Dead people do not cure living people of disease. It doesn't happen. It's a scandal. There's no tooth fairy either. I mean, there's no Santa Claus. I have to keep on breaking this stuff to people and every time they say, well, are you sure? And I say, yes, absolutely I am. Dr. Arup Chatterjee was also asked to present evidence opposing Teresa's ascension to sainthood. But neither his nor Hitchens' criticisms would make a difference.

Twelve years later, in December 2015, Pope Francis recognized Mother Teresa's second miracle.

Some doctors disagreed with him, but after his experience, Zhao is certain of something. Mother Teresa helped his patient. Since a medical explanation for miracles does not exist, it is something that was described as an extraordinary event. She helped him with his treatment and recovery. The medicine was Mother Teresa. Both Zhao and his miracle patient, Marcilo Haddad Andino, were invited to the canonization of Mother Teresa by none other than Pope Francis.

Back in 2008, a Brazilian man with a head full of tumors was miraculously cured just moments before he was set to undergo surgery. Apparently not even his own doctor could explain it, so it must have been God, the all-powerful, all-loving, supreme being in the sky, who apparently has the ability to directly cure any illness or affliction that might arise in his human pets, but just chooses not to most of the time.

Mother Teresa was declared a saint in September 2016, 19 years after her death. Meanwhile, the Missionaries of Charity empire she left behind continues to expand. There are more than 750 centers in 139 countries, staffed by more than 5,000 nuns. Its funding sources and finances remain shrouded in secrecy, but the charity does claim it has made vast improvements in hygiene since the departure of Saint Teresa.

However, in 2018, Missionaries of Charity was back under the microscope when a nun and a staff member were arrested for selling babies to childless couples for as little as 600 US dollars. Others paid more than twice that price, but depended on how much they could afford or how much they were willing to haggle. A spokes nun for the Missionaries of Charity expressed shock over the charges to the BBC, quote,

We are shocked to know what has happened in our home. It is completely against our moral conviction. We are carefully looking into this matter. We will take all necessary precautions that it never happens again, if it has happened.

According to the Calcutta police, it has happened a lot. Between 2015 and 2018, 450 pregnant women were admitted in various homes run by the Missionaries of Charity. But there are only records for 170 childbirths and no information about the remaining 280.

Also during the investigation it was discovered that in the past decade, Missionaries of Charity has spent 9.27 billion rupees on purposes other than those specified in donations, which is illegal according to Indian law.

Authorities presume the illegal adoptions began more recently, in 2015, as a result of the Indian government changing the rules to more easily allow single, divorced, and separated couples to adopt children, a sentiment that the Catholic Church vehemently opposed. Those babies were better off without a parent, claims the church, which most would find hard to believe. Mother Teresa herself might not have even believed it.

Private letters released after her death revealed that the Saint of Calcutta experienced periods of darkness and doubt for over 50 years. Heaven means nothing. To me, it looks like an empty place, she wrote in a 1957 letter to the Archbishop of Calcutta.

Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Reverend Michael Van Der Peet three months before she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. "As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.

"Where is my faith? Even deep down, right in there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. My God, how painful is this unknown pain? I have no faith. I dare not utter the words and thoughts that crowd in my heart and make me suffer untold agony." Christopher Hitchens was not surprised by Teresa's lack of faith. Maybe she had always been aware that she was nothing more than a marketing tool for the church. Only God truly knows.

Christopher Hitchens died and went to heaven on December 15th, 2011. There's no word yet on his eligibility for sainthood. "She really wished it was true. She tried to live her life as if it was true. She failed, and she was encouraged by cynical old men to carry on doing so because she was a great marketing tool for her church. And I think that they should answer for what they did to her and what they've been doing to us. I think it's been fraud and exploitation yet again."

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