Mother Teresa’s legacy in Calcutta under cloud as she is elevated to sainthood
As the Vatican declared Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, in the Indian city where she rose to fame, claims of medical negligence and financial mismanagement at her care homes threaten to cloud her legacy.
Yet criticisms of Saint Teresa of Calcutta abound, with doctors and former volunteers recounting grim tales of poor sanitation, medical neglect and forced conversions of the dying.
Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu to Albanian parents in what is now Macedonia, her Missionaries of Charity homes for the dying earned her a Nobel Peace Prize and the sobriquet Saint of the Gutters.
“We feel that Mother Teresa’s elevation to sainthood would be a renewed thrust to [her] charitable works,” Thomas D’Souza, the Archbishop of Calcutta, said.
We feel that Mother Teresa’s elevation to sainthood would be a renewed thrust to [her] charitable works
Like millions of Catholics worldwide, Gautam Lewis is excited to celebrate the canonisation of the woman he calls his “second mother”, who rescued the orphan after he was struck with polio aged two.