Seeing this thin and gentle old man, you may not be able to react for a moment to what kind of person she is.
But I say her name, and you'll know for sure: Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa. She was probably the most famous person in the entire 20th century, the most virtuous, Catholic stamped saint in the minds of countless people.
According to the Catholic Statutes. A person needs to perform two miracles after death before the pope canonize him or her as a saint.
Miracles
In 2016, Mother Teresa was canonized by the current Pope Francis and became St. Teresa of Calcutta.
She performed two miracles on September 5, 1998, on the first anniversary of her death, in a Missionary for Charity (a charity founded by Mother Teresa) in West Bengal, India, where Monica Besra, a 35-year-old woman with a stomach tumor, claimed that a pendant with a portrait of Teresa had cured her tumor.
Monica Besra
The second was in 2008 when a Brazilian man's brain tumor was treated. Medical experts in the Catholic Church confirmed that the miracle could not be explained scientifically, attributing it to a divine intervention by God on earth.
Two miracles, combined with years of selfless devotion, have made Mother Teresa a symbol of the saint in the eyes of many, with countless admirers and followers around the world.
2016 Consecration of Mother Teresa
And mother Teresa's house of benevolence has become today the most prestigious charitable organization in the world, expanding to 133 countries, 4,500 nuns, and tens of thousands of volunteers...
House of Humanity's signature blue and white nuns
However, Mother Teresa and the House of Mercy organization have been widely questioned in recent years, and have even been linked to human trafficking...
Mother Teresa, born in 1910 in Skopje (present-day Macedonia), on the Balkan border of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, was an Albanian.
Her birth is not well known, as is her original Albanian name, Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu.
Her better known name, Teresa, is her religious name. Compared to her native Albania, people prefer to say that she is Teresa of India, a nun of Calcutta...
Kolkata, India
In 1950, Mother Teresa founded missionary for charity in Calcutta, India, to help the poorest people there: refugees, the mentally ill, abandoned children, the terminally ill, and the homeless elderly.
They run schools for the children of the poor and offer free food to the homeless...
Volunteers help patients shave at The House of Mercy
All of this has a very traditional Catholic style—the Church believes that by doing good deeds one can redeem oneself, to wash oneself away from the sins it has committed, and thus to guarantee oneself to heaven after death.
At that time, the House of Charity was not much different from other church organizations, and could only be called medium in size.
The turning point came in 1969.
That year, BBC reporter Malcolm Muggeridge, carrying a camera, found Mother Teresa's almshouse in Calcutta and filmed something Beautiful For God, a religious documentary that would later make Mother Teresa a household name.
The film uses the latest color film from Kodak Film Factory, and the final picture quality of the film is clear and the color is full, which makes many people believe that this is a miracle in the history of television...
After the documentary aired, it became a hit, and countless people were touched by Mother Teresa's selfless dedication in Calcutta.
Since then, Mother Teresa of Calcutta has become a symbol, a sign of boundless love.
Statue of Mother Teresa in Calcutta
Her story was written into books and films; her charitable organizations began to receive large donations, and the House of Mercy welcomed volunteers from all over the world.
In 1980, the Indian government awarded her India's highest honor, the Order of the National Treasures of India. In 1983, the British government awarded her the Order of Merit of Merit.
In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
However, after all this aura of honor, more and more people began to question Mother Teresa and her benevolent family, were they really so selfless and selfless that they were really saving the world?
A Facebook page against House of Humanity made by a former volunteer of House of Humanity
Many volunteers arrived in Kolkata and found that the medical and health conditions at the House of Mercy Were staggering: the nuns had no formal medical education, did not distinguish between patients with different diseases, did not prescribe the right medicine, and refused to use modern medical equipment.
What they do is bring everyone together and never isolate infected patients.
House of Mercy, 2000s
Almshouses provide only food and shelter, waiting for their symptoms to improve naturally or to die of illness. Volunteers at an almshouse once found a child suffering from malaria.
It was a disease that could be treated in ordinary hospitals, but the nuns refused to take him to the hospital.
In the eyes of the nuns, God would decide the life and death of all people, and the efforts of mortals were useless. This is the idea that Mother Teresa once preached: "It is very good for the poor to accept their destiny and to experience suffering like Christ who suffered, and it is more helpful for the world for the poor to suffer." ”
Mother Teresa, who preached god's decision to live or die, spent a fortune in her later years to treat her illness in the best hospital.
In addition to the extremely amateur medical level, Mahkota has a bigger problem: where the donations go.
After Mother Teresa became famous, the House of Mercy received millions of donations every year. But these donations were not used to improve the conditions of the almshouse, and House for Humanity never published its accounts like other charitable organizations.
There is speculation that the money eventually went back to the Vatican's vaults.
The teachings preached by Mother Teresa are also considered by many to be inconsistent with modern social values. She called on the poor in the third world not to use contraception, believing that abortion was the greatest enemy of world peace;
The British journalist Hitchens once said of Mother Teresa: "She is not a friend of the poor, but an accomplice of the poor... She never cares about eradicating poverty from its roots, she only gives the poor a little mercy when they are dying..."
Christopher Hitchens
And just recently, the Mahal errica has also exposed the scandal of child abduction!
Indian police said they had recovered four abducted children
India's child welfare department said a nun from House of Mercy was selling babies to childless couples for between $550 and $1,450. When they stepped in to investigate, they found that there were about 280 babies born from unknown sources in Mahabharata, and the almshouse was unable to provide any legal records.
Indian police have recovered 4 children who were sold and have begun a thorough investigation of The House of Mercy. Some Indian lawmakers indignantly said that if houses of benevolence were found guilty, Mother Teresa's Order of National Treasures in India should be revoked. This matter has attracted a lot of media attention, and many people have begun to discuss whether the House of Mercy has deteriorated after Mother Teresa left...
Indian police investigate at House of Mercy
If Mother Teresa's words and deeds are judged by Catholic standards, she is indeed the "perfect saint," as she herself puts it: her purpose is not to serve the common good, but to preach; she dedicates her life to God and the Church, not to the poor.
She is a Christian first and a philanthropist second.
Her story is all too much in line with the appetite of the mass media: philanthropists from the West who help the poor in far-flung India, satisfying the moral vanity and romantic fantasies of the elite. (Although Mother Teresa was from Albania, she was not strictly a Westerner.) ）
But in any case, her words and deeds have made the world's attention to poverty, inspired tens of thousands of people to devote themselves to charity, and indeed her legacy to the world...
Funeral of Mother Teresa
In the 2016 canonization of Mother Teresa, in addition to the attendance of many heads of state and dignitaries, the Church also recruited more than 1,500 tramps from all over the city of Rome, and after the ceremony, they were distributed food to commemorate Mother Teresa.
Monica Besra, an Indian woman who miraculously recovered from miracles at the beginning of the article, still lives in poverty.
After Monica returned from a ceremony in Rome, the nuns of the House of Mercy never visited her home again.
But Monica told reporters her faith in Mother Teresa remained unshaken, "I can often see her in my dreams"