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Topics: World News, Film and TV, Documentaries
Anish Vij
A new documentary claims that Mother Teresa had a much darker side.
The three-part Sky documentary titled Mother Teresa: For The Love Of God claims that the Nobel Peace Prize winner was not all that she seemed.
You can check the trailer out below:
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In her early years, Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun of Albanian-Indian descent, went on a mission to help those badly affected by the Bengal famine of 1943, the Daily Mail reports.
"I was to leave the convent and help the poor," she later wrote. "It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."
After moving to Calcutta, now Kolkata, she got permission from the church to start the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation.
The congregation ran soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, children's and family counselling programmes, and eventually began opening orphanages and schools.
After a 1969 BBC documentary of her work was shown to the world, Mother Teresa became an overnight celebrity as she was greeted by the liked of Princess Diana and President Ronald Reagan.
Despite being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she still had her critics.
Her stance on the the growing scandal of child abuse by priests was controversial after Reverend Donald McGuire was suspected of abuse, she wrote a letter to the authorities highlighting her 'confidence and trust' in him.
This allowed McGuire to abuse hundreds of boys for another decade, before eventually being put away.
Also, at its peak, her organisation was receiving millions of dollars in donations, however, most of it was being paid into the Vatican bank.
British doctor Jack Preger worked with her charity, and was shocked by what he saw.
"The nuns weren't delivering proper care," he says in the documentary.
"Needles were used over and over unsterilised. One woman with burns was refused painkillers – I smuggled some in for her.
"They had the money to run a decent hospital for poor people, but they never did. They said, 'We will pray for the alleviation of pain' without providing treatment."
Not to mention that suffering was an integral part of her work and nuns were instructed to whip themselves and wear wire chains with spikes on.
Mary Johnson, who worked with Mother Teresa for 20 years, says in the programme: "Her spirituality was connected to Jesus on the cross.
"He gave his life in pain and she believed that to give of oneself with suffering was the greatest value. The idea was that suffering redeemed the world."
The official synopsis for the doc reads: "Delving into the life of one of the most recognised people in contemporary history, Mother Theresa, revealing the extraordinary truth behind the enigmatic, controversial, and complex figure."
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