Customer Reviews

Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Of the many biographies of Mother Teresa available to us, to my knowledge only two of them are largely critical in nature. The first, provacatively titled The Missionary Position examines Mother Teresa's faith and practice. Written by Christopher Hitchens, the book received a fair amount of recognition and formed the basis for a television documentary. The book is quite short and contains very little in the way of footnotes and documentation.

The other critical biography is entitled Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict and is written by Aroup Chatterjee. This title is several hundred pages longer than Hitchens' book and contains extensive documentation. Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict claims to reveal "the REAL Teresa (from the back cover)." Like Hitchens, Chatterjee is an atheist and his dislike of Mother Teresa has little to do with a religious bias. Like Hitchens, he has found that the reality of the woman and her work is a far cry from the legend. However, unlike Hitchens, he is a native of Calcutta, the city where Mother Teresa did her work, and the very city which will forever be linked to her.

Before I summarize the book, allow me to make one general statement. The book is long - probably too long. As I have already mentioned, Chatterjee provides extensive documentation and often provides multitudes of examples where only two or three may have sufficed. He sometimes repeats information in subsequent chapters, using the same information to prove two points. This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does call into question the book's organization. In short, the book has some of the problems typical of those that have not been professionally edited. Due to the nature of the book's subject matter, professional publishing was not a possibility, so Chatterjee had to make do largely on his own.

A terse summary of Chatterjee's primary concerns with Mother Teresa appear in the final chapter where he quotes his "Deposition Before the Committee for Beatification/Canonisation of Mother Teresa." Among Chatterjee's concerns are:

* Mother Teresa often said that she picked people up from the streets of Calcutta, but she and her order of nuns did not do this. People requesting such service were told curtly to ring 102 (similar to 911).
* While the order owns several ambulances, these are used primarily to transport nuns to and from places of prayer.
* Mother Teresa said that her order fed 4000, 5000, 7000 or 9000 Caltuttans every day (the number varied). The two or three soup kitchens in Calcutta feed a maximum of only 300 people per day. The kitchens will provide food only to people with "food cards" that are distrubuted predominantly to the Catholic poor.
* While Mother Teresa's order has some presence in many countries throughout the world, the majority of these are for training monks or nuns, not for aiding the poor.
* Mother Teresa's shelters will usually only help children if the parents sign a form of renunciation which signs the rights to the children to her organization.
* Mother Teresa often insists that her natural family clinics prevent unwanted pregnancies, but this number is without any basis in truth.
* Mother Teresa insisted that suffering was beautiful as it evoked Christ's suffering, but when ill she visited exclusive, expensive hospitals.
* The hospice in Calcutta through which Mother Teresa gained such wide recognition is very small (80 beds) and provides little medical care. Needles are reused, all patients are forced to have their heads shaven, visitors are forbidden and painkillers are rarely if ever used. The nurses do not speak the language of the people and are not usually involved in the care of the patients. This duty is assumed by volunteers.
* Mother Teresa often accepted money from suspicious sources, the most notable of which is Charles Keating, America's most notorious thief.

Through his research and involvment in the deposition, Chatterjee came to the realization that canonization is not bestowed on the basis of morality, but on the basis of strict and committed adherence to the tenets of Catholicism. As an atheist, this was exasperating to him.

Chatterjee quotes Mother Teresa as saying, "We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious." Yet Mother Teresa is known as a humanitarian and one who gave her life to the poor. The reality seems far different.

What do we learn from a book like this? We learn that as Christians we must have a consistent witness in our words and our deeds. We also learn the importance of choosing our heroes with the utmost of care. And we learn that many heroes are manufactured - that the legend far exceeds the reality.

Dr. Aroup Chatterjee has presented meticulously researched uimpeachable evidence (photograph, videograph, recorded telephone conversations, etc.) exposing the enormous lie behind the Mother Teresa myth (soon to be declared saint by the Vatican!). MT was more interested in missionary (religious) activity than in charity, and played a big role in promoting the myth that sorrounded her. Amidst the unquestioned acceptance of this "mother of all myths" at least one person has stood up and exposed the lie. The book also illustrates how the media can create extraordinary myths (and equally well shatter lives) leaving truth far behind.

Mother Teresa made a name for herself as a selfless angel of the poor. At least in the Western world. Aroup Chatterjee, a native Calcuttan, in his meticulously researched book, dares to offer a different viewpoint. With all of the money that Mother Teresa received, evidently very little of it actually went to the poor of Calcutta. Most of the money was used in the upkeep of Nuns and Brothers and the training of priests around the world. First and foremost, Mother Teresa's mission was to spread Catholicism and her strong anti-abortion beliefs. When an author wanted to write a book on her, she told him:

"We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious." That pretty much sums it up.

Beyond the story of Mother Teresa, there are insights into everyday life in Calcutta. The author is quick to point out that the image of Calcutta that Mother Teresa presented to the world is not an accurate portrayal of that city.

A fascinating read.

I titled my review consciously - the common meaning applies to the book. Wonder why it is unavailable now on Amazon.

The other interpretation applies to the subject. She, or to be precise her work, was the stuff of fantasy - literally.

Read it if you can: you can order it directly from the publisher at www.meteorbooks.com.

There's a forewarning though: if you are a devoted acolyte and would rather not face uncomfortable facts, stay away.

Dr. Chaterjee, a Calcutta native, has gone to great lengths to expose Mother Teresa for what she was: a faithful servant of the Catholic Church whose work to help the poor in Calcutta was hugely exaggerated by herself and by the Western media. This substantial book is fairly well-documented, often painstakingly by himself, in videotapes, voice recordings, and photographs. As the Mother freely admitted herself, her primary goals were religious, not humanitarian in nature. I think there can be little doubt but that she was a scheming woman who intentionally misled the world press and public in order to obtain funds, which were used primarily to build religious orders, promote an anti-birth-control agenda, and go mysteriously to the Vatican Bank, and use only a tiny fraction for show to help Calcutta's poor. She shamelessly defended anyone who sent her large enough sums of cash: the Duvaliers, Charles Keating, and so on. Yet these gifts went mostly to help support her nunneries/religious institutions and Catholic families, and even minor expenditures towards the comforts of her residents were denied (such as inexpensive pain medications). Even the corporate gift of ambulances were used almost exclusively to shuttle the nuns around town.
While this book has enough documentation to prove the essential truth of its message, I would be remiss in presenting this as a perfectly-written or documented book. For example, on some occasions his documentation consists of phrases such as "it's widely known," or "anyone will tell you." On page 106, he writes "I have seen shiploads of [towels, underwear, aluminium mugs, gifts] arriving at Calcutta port as donations to the Missionaries of Charity"....."These are sold off to the local shops. Also a vast amount of clothes destined for the poor find their way to the Calcutta street markets--any street trader will tell you." At other times he impugns thoughts into Mother Teresa's head. For example, when he describes her speech to President Reagan in which she said "Because of your suffering and pain, you will now understand the suffering and pain of the world." He then states "By 'suffering and pain,' she meant abortion, not the suffering of poverty and disease." While perhaps quite true, it would have been more appropriate to state "she PROBABLY meant...".
It's unfortunate that Dr. Chaterjee is one of the few people to truly investigate the facts behind Mother Teresa. Even an ardent fan of hers cannot honestly praise her unless he's read this book and reconciled the facts it contains. Despite its imperfections, this is probably the only book which objectively examines the truth behind Mother Teresa's facade. I would go so far as to say one cannot have any meaningful understanding of her work without reading this book. One can praise Mother Teresa for her faithless devotion to the Catholic Church if one likes, but not for her honesty, her caring attitude towards Calcutta's poor, or her lack of hypocrisy.

This is an impressive book, conceived out of deep regard for Calcutta and its inhabitants, and an overwhelming sadness that, in the eyes of the world, the author Aroup Chatterjee's vibrant home city and its culture "have become synonymous with the worst of human suffering and degradation". This dishonest stereotype was perpetuated in the service of the extraordinarily stubborn mythology of Mother Teresa, and created by Malcolm Muggeridge, a man who famously hated Calcutta. The author has amassed much oral and recorded audio and visual evidence, to support this indictment of Teresa's Missionaries of Charity.

Some readers will feel the book might have been better edited; Khushwant Singh has written that a date is incorrect, and so concludes that all other evidence, however well documented, is automatically suspect; some readers object to the occasional use of hearsay evidence; some simply choose to ignore all his evidence on the grounds that his conclusions disagree with their preconceived ideas. Some critics assert that Dr. Chatterjee's atheism negates his testimony (his Roman Catholic wife would disagree: brought up "in Ireland on Teresa mythology, [she] felt angry and cheated when she went to Calcutta and saw how the reality compared with the fairy tale"). I'd argue that it's actually impossible to reconcile most of Teresa's philosophy and practice with the Church's teaching; the only thing they seem to agree on is birth control.

I've seen no criticism substantial enough to refute the case, well made by the author, that a grave injustice has been perpetrated on the poor of Calcutta, and of the other cities around the world where the order has made itself at home, and (not to put too fine a point on it) blagged its sisters and brothers a living (albeit a living which tends to injure the personalities of many of those sisters). His case is corroborated by other authoritative sources.

Many millions, if not billions, of dollars have been collected in Mother Teresa's name over the years, ostensibly for the relief of the poor; such vast sums could have fed and rehoused hundreds of thousands, or built hospitals and schools throughout the Indian subcontinent. There has been little to show for this cash other than a few hundred (at most, per facility) hard-won bowls of soup a day, and the most basic of shelter and care for a comparatively small number of sick and orphaned. This is a betrayal, not only of the disadvantaged whose needs were not met, but also of the good faith of well-intentioned donors.

Those donors apparently didn't realise that the money was largely used to fund Teresa's constant crusade against contraception and abortion, in clinics, parliaments and courthouses around the world, this despite the fact that one proven remedy for poverty is the empowerment of women, and their emancipation from perpetual childbearing and its consequences; even her admirer Khushwant Singh has admitted that her "views on artificial contraception and crusade against abortion made little sense in a country where the population has crossed permissible limits", and that "Teresa's admirers, chiefly journalists and film-makers, vastly exaggerated the poverty and squalor of Calcutta in order to glorify her image as the saint of the gutters". And the juxtaposition of misfortune and saintliness, in entertainment and news, is a media money-spinner. Win-win!

This book is not an 'ad hominem' attack; its purpose is not to prove some minor imperfections in Mother Teresa's character, but to document how so many of the assumed acts of charity for which she accepted donations, and for which she continues to be celebrated, simply did not happen. This continues since her death; the so-called "miracle" for which the Catholic Church had her beatified, ie the healing of Monica Besra's "cancerous tumour" through the agency of a picture of Teresa, cannot have happened, since Ms. Besra never had anything more than a benign tubercular cyst, cured through conventional treatment; her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, and her own father, would willingly testify to this, if the Vatican were willing to interview them. The Church has strict rules on how one qualifies for sainthood; should it not stick religiously to those rules? Dr. Chatterjee has been accused of attempting to prevent the Church from recognising her as a saint; in fact, his declared view is that "She subscribed to a religious point of view and it is up to the clergy of that religion to decide what to do with her. I myself am not against her becoming a saint."

I knew a deeply religious Catholic woman who volunteered to work with the order in the early 80s, and was horrified to see how so little help was given to the needy, and how funds, medicines and goods donated for that purpose were sold, used for the sisters' benefit, discarded, or left to gather dust in cupboards and corners, forgotten and unused (not deliberately stored; storing things showed "lack of trust in Divine Providence"). I worked in a London hospital where sisters from her order occasionally received treatment (Teresa preferred American clinics when she was sick herself), while the unfortunates in their care, in Calcutta as in other cities throughout the world, received little more than the odd paracetamol (acetaminophen) and a bed (sometimes shared) to die in. Dr. Chatterjee's book provides much more evidence of the hypocrisy evident in the order's practices.

In 1994, Lancet editor Robert Fox visited their facility for the dying, and was shocked to find maladministration in diagnosis and treatment practices, a failure to isolate TB patients, and refusal to use strong analgesics for intractable pain. Many volunteers have told how syringes were washed in luke-warm water before being used again; medicines and mosquito nets lay unused in cupboards; diagnostic tests were not performed; patients died needlessly from septicaemia as a direct result of the sisters' poor hygiene, and of readily curable infections for want of a short course of antibiotics (which in some instances the sisters already had in their possession); patients requiring life-saving surgery were refused transfer to hospital. Ambulances donated for the collection of the sick were used as taxis for the sisters; the sick were told to use Corporation ambulances.

Parents were forced to formally renounce their children before the order would accept them; dying Hindus and Muslims were "baptised" without their knowledge or consent.

Susan Shields, who was a member of the order from 1980-89, wrote in the Free Enquirer [...] that the "sisters reused needles until they became blunt. Seeing the pain caused by the blunt needles, some of the volunteers offered to procure more needles, but the sisters refused."

Ms. Shields explains Teresa's teachings, which are fundamental to her religious congregation, and "strangle efforts to alleviate misery": "[1] that the Holy Spirit was guiding Mother... as long as a sister obeys she is doing God's will... [2] that the sisters have leverage over God by choosing to suffer... He then dispenses more graces to humanity... [3] that any attachment to human beings, even the poor being served, supposedly interferes with love of God and must be vigilantly avoided or immediately uprooted. The efforts to prevent any attachments cause continual chaos and confusion... Once a sister has accepted these fallacies she will do almost anything. She can allow her health to be destroyed, neglect those she vowed to serve, and switch off her feelings and independent thought. She can turn a blind eye to suffering, inform on her fellow sisters, tell lies with ease, and ignore public laws and regulations." With the sisters' capacity for self-love reduced to tatters, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" takes on a sinister meaning. In 2005, Donal MacIntyre worked for a week at their flagship home for disabled children, and provided film footage of care which was sometimes loving, but invariably inept, unprofessional and unhygienic, and in some cases rough and dangerous.

Archbishop Zimowski specifically addressed the use of painkillers in end-of-life care in a speech he gave last year, placing it first in the context of the gift of suffering: "The suffering according to Christian teaching... especially during the last moments of life, has a special place in God's saving plan; it is in fact a sharing in Christ's passion... Therefore, one must not be surprised if some Christians prefer to moderate their use of painkillers, in order to... associate themselves in a conscious way with the sufferings of Christ crucified. Nevertheless it would be imprudent to impose a heroic way of acting as a general rule. On the contrary, human and Christian prudence suggest for the majority of sick people the use of medicines capable of alleviating or suppressing pain, even though these may cause as a secondary effect semi- consciousness and reduced lucidity. As for those who are not in a state to express themselves, one can reasonably presume that they wish to take these painkillers, and have them administered according to the doctor's advice."

As for witholding life-saving treatments, he went on: "By euthanasia, therefore, is understood an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated... [it] constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator."

That's all pretty unambiguous. The order's actions fell far short of this standard of care; nor could Teresa's apologists reasonably argue that the Archbishop's is a new position; it's absolutely consistent with that of Pius XII in 1957, which she should have been familiar with, given that end-of-life care was her chosen field. So how the Catholic Church reconciles its veneration of Teresa with the practices at her house for the dying, God only knows.

As for rehousing the homeless: requests that the order contribute to such schemes were steadfastly ignored or rejected, and yet Teresa was happy to attend press events at the completion of such projects (press attention frequently being hard to come by without her presence), and content to receive the publicity arising from the mistaken belief that her order had contributed. Ironically, many buildings have been donated to the order over the years, in many cities worldwide, or sold to it for negligable sums ($1 apiece for two in New York city!); often Teresa had "worked on" the owner, for as long as need be, according to her associate and biographer (and spokesperson for her order) Sunita Kumar.

Ms. Kumar also told how "Mother Teresa saw it as her God-given right never to have to pay anyone for anything. Once she bought food for her nuns in London for £500. When she was told she'd have to pay at the till, [she] shouted, `This is for the work of God!' She raged so loud and so long that eventually a businessman waiting in the queue paid up on her behalf." Small wonder, then, that so many millions of dollars, donated to her order, lay unused in Church bank accounts even at her death, contradicting those "thousands of letters to donors, telling them that their entire gift would be used to bring God's loving compassion to the poorest of the poor" (Susan Shields).

Teresa and her sisters explicitly held that to spend money to care for the poor, to address the root causes of poverty and disease, or to use diagnostic procedures and medicines the order could well afford, would "tend towards materialism" and so contravene their vow of poverty. Yet the people in their care had taken no such vow, the money and goods had been given expressly for their earthly welfare, and the fear of materialism evidently didn't apply when Teresa and her sisters needed medical attention! If only N.T. Wright had been around, to give her a nudge: "God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world. We are in orbit around God and his purposes, not the other way around."

Witnesses to the order's practices have found precious little audience for their evidence. As Christopher Hitchens has observed: "Ever since [Muggeridge's film] Something Beautiful for God, the critic of Mother Teresa in small things, as well as great ones, has had to operate against an enormous weight of received opinion, a weight made no easier to shift by the fact that it is made up quite literally of illusion." Those of us who have been duped into handing over money, or granting her positive publicity, have a vested interest in maintaining the myth; where donating money is the full extent of our contribution, we need to feel our offerings were not in vain, and that our nominated agents of charity are conscientiously performing acts of charity on our behalf. "In the gradual manufacture of an illusion, the conjuror is only the instrument of the audience."

Teresa could not refute, though she occasionally tried to deflect, such criticisms; for the most part she refused to acknowledge them, although she occasionally changed her itineraries as a result. This was not a case of "turning the other cheek", for she was notably litigious where she felt she had a case. Her order has maintained that same tradition since her death.

Mother Teresa may have loved the poor, but she loved poverty more. She professed that "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." In a filmed interview she spoke of how she had told a patient suffering unbearable pain from terminal cancer: "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you." She related his reply: "Then please tell him to stop kissing me." According to Paul (Romans 4) "The words '[Abraham's faith] was credited to him [as righteousness]' were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." By what authority, then, did Teresa require that the poor also suffer, even as they pleaded for their suffering to cease?

Such offensive, and doctrinally ignorant, philosophies as that of hers, which makes a virtue of the poor's avoidable suffering, have been promoted for far too long, to justify and perpetuate inequality, and to salve the consciences of the more fortunate amongst us. She accepted money from dictators and thieves (the Duvaliers, Enver Hoxha, Charles Keating), and heaped praise on them for their charity. As Hitchens observed, "This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor." Luke 18:14 quotes Jesus: "everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

Humbling oneself is a matter of free will; we don't recommend ourselves to God by humbling or maltreating others, in open defiance to all charity or loving kindness (however we construe 'agápe'). "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty" (1 Corinthians 1:27), not to let the mighty off the hook!

Teresa and her sisters have, in part, fulfilled their vow of poverty vicariously, through the privations of their unfortunate charges, remaining staunchly passive, offering only pious aphorisms and professions of love, where a little action on their part could have saved much anguish and many lives; the powerful, and those of us who enjoy a measure of financial security, purchase a veneer of righteousness at the expense of the sufferings of the poor, since our donations would have done more good in the hands of agencies which tackle the root causes of poverty; it's as if the Council of Trent had never happened.

Teresa herself gave the lie to the common view of her as one who worked tirelessly for the poor; it was not from modesty that she declared: "We are misunderstood, we are misrepresented, we are misreported. We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious."

As a religious person, she would hold that faith is prerequisite to salvation; but if she knew her Scripture, and her Catholic Doctrine, she should more truthfully have borne witness to the Doctrine, confirmed by Trent, that we are not justified by faith alone: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10) By reason of the gift of grace, we are absolutely commanded by God to do good works, so far as it lies within our power to do so; and with all those millions (or, indeed, billions) of dollars at her command, she was empowered to do a great deal more than she did. Empowered by undeniable charisma, great wealth and worldly influence to offer healing to the sick, and accommodation to the homeless, she omitted to do so: she offered professions of love, yet refused to perform the works of love. Nobody need doubt her faith, nor that of her sisters, but it's incorrect to assume that the existence of faith proves the existence of good works, or that good works need only tend to the soul, while ignoring the body.

Had Teresa never read James 2:14-26? because, lest anyone misinterpret Paul, James gets very specific: "What good is it... if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead... Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds... You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that--and shudder... a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone... faith without deeds is dead."

She died too soon to read the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), signed by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, which states: "We confess together that good works... follow justification and are its fruits. When the justified live in Christ and act in the grace they receive, they bring forth, in biblical terms, good fruit. Since Christians struggle against sin their entire lives, this consequence of justification is also for them an obligation they must fulfill. Thus both Jesus and the apostolic Scriptures admonish Christians to bring forth the works of love." Works for which the Holy Spirit deserves sole credit, since they were worked in his power.

As Paul reminded the Corinthians, loving kindness (charity) is the greatest of the gifts of grace. George Whitefield preached on 1 Corinthians: "As sanctification is a progressive work, beware of thinking you have already attained... Nothing is more valuable and commendable, and yet, not one duty is less practiced, than that of charity. We often pretend concern and pity for the misery and distress of our fellow-creatures, but yet we seldom commiserate their condition so much as to relieve them according to our abilities; but unless we assist them with what they may stand in need of, for the body, as well as for the soul, all our wishes are no more than words of no value or regard."

If you were a destitute, dying Indian woman, how would it feel to be taken into a charitable institution at the cost of having your head shaved? How would you like to be confined to a narrow cot, forbidden to get up and take a few steps, facing the rest of your life without a single look at the sky?
If you were a responsible medical professional, what would you think of a home for the dying where patients contagious from TB were kept an easy sneeze and cough away from debilitated patients ripe for TB infection? Could you stand by and watch hypodermic needles being washed in non-sterile water for re-use? How would you feel about observing a cancer patient writhing in agony, denied easily available pain-killers for the sake of a religion absolutely alien to him?
Dr. Aroup Chatterjee lifts the lid off the public relation triumph which is "Mother" Teresa of Calcutta. A native of Calcutta, he is understandably also disgusted at the hatchet job done on his home city's reputation in order to elevate a European missionary worldwide. He explains the racism behind the myth: a European woman must take care of dark-skinned Asians, who are uncivilized and incapable of humane works themselves. Chatterjee also gives the lie to all of the assumptions which feed into the "Mother" Teresa myth, noting the local Hindu charities which do heroic work for the people of Calcutta and his city's long and exceedingly rich cultural and literary history.
This book should be a best-seller. It exposes the lies surrounding "Mother" Teresa while bending over backwards to be fair to her and her supporters.

This is a meticulously researched book which, along with Christopher Hitchen's far slender book on the same subject, opened my eyes into the manufactured mythology of the Mother Teresa mystique. Growing up in India, I had swallowed the story that was uncritically broadcast in the Indian media even though there had to have been many journalists who knew for a fact that parts of it were blatantly false. It took a medical doctor to ferret out the inconsistencies in the myth that any trained journalist could have uncovered in a matter of weeks; which speaks deafeningly to the dismal and shoddy quality of investigative journalism in India, and in Calcutta in particular. Sadly, despite Dr. Chatterjee's deeply-felt crusade to shine the light of truth on the myth of Mother Teresa, it has taken on its own life and even the posthumous revelations of Ms. Teresa's doubts over her faith will not derail this runaway train into which the Church has vested enormously.

It would also make a superb case study for how myths are manufactured, and in particular the motivations of all the parties involved; especially the curious role of Indians who have willingly helped to perpetuate a story that by all objective analysis casts them in very poor light. In this regard I must personally admit to a small sense of schadenfreude at how Calcutta, the intellectual capital of Bengali arch-snobbery, was so badly besmirched (admittedly unfairly as Dr. Chatterjee's central thesis for his heartfelt book demonstrates) by one of the city's most (world-)famous resident. Calcutta today is synonymous with abject poverty and some of the worst excesses of human depravity thanks to Mother Teresa and her film-making acolytes; a portrayal that was largely fictional and fabricated to tap into billions of dollars of charity from gullible laypersons and governments alike. While Dr. Chatterjee obviously rebelled against this unfair characterization of his beloved city and has expended a great deal of energy and effort to set the record straight, the majority of his Bengali brethren (and for that matter most Indians) appear to have preferentially embraced the flip-side of this sordid script; the Western attention, the association with glamorous dilettantes who made Calcutta a necessary pilgrimage stop for do-good celebrity-hood, and the reflected glory of the Mother Teresa myth however insidiously harmful it actually was.

Even Dr. Chatterjee, a confirmed atheist, evidences considerable disdain for Hinduism in his book even as he meticulously tabulates the unsung and unheralded charity quietly practiced by millions of Hindus (in stark contrast to Mother Teresa's hypocritical and parasitic photo-op visitations to sites of disaster in India). However, this doesn't detract much from this important contribution to modern India's social history, and I wish that large numbers of my country wo/men will buy and read this book in order to have their eyes opened, as mine were from reading Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict.

I have read this, and it was very well researched. I was a fan of hers at one time, until this book opened my eyes and led me to other research. If you research a public figure and they are not worthy of praise, then it's a good idea to expose them. One 1 star reviwer says, ""I also bet that he couldn't say something nice about Mother Teresa if his life depended on it."" Actually, he is much kinder towards her than I would be. Mr. Chatterjee gives her the benefit of the doubt at many turns.

Electronic French Engineer Student, now married with children, I have been in Calcutta when I was young (around 25 years old) in 1985 a long month but I don't recognized at all what the author says in his book.
I have been welcomed by the sixters and even allowed to pray in their private chaptel. I have visited several centers at Calcutta and see the sixters truly helping the poors abandonned by the society.
The living of the sixter as very poor: few food, no be, no chair ... and no private room.
In the Teresa Centers of course, the tourists with their cameras to take "souvenir" were not welcome what is very normal. In France no tourist is allowed to visit the hospital to take photos and souvenirs.
I agree Mother Teresa to not give back the money distribute to the poors.
All I can verify by my experience, is false in this book.
Instead of bad criticism, what has this author brought to the poors?