Word: teresa
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...succor to the dying but also ask if they want "tickets to heaven," surreptitiously baptizing lifelong Hindus and Muslims for Jesus. The sisters deny these accusations; in India such conversions would be met with outrage, and the charge is widely disbelieved. But such acts would be in keeping with Teresa's fervent devotion to the cause of Christ...
Recently she came under attack from those who believe, as George Orwell once wrote about Mahatma Gandhi, that all saints should be judged guilty until proved innocent. In 1994 Britain's Channel 4 broadcast a revisionist look at Teresa that was harshly titled Hell's Angel. Written by Pakistani-born leftist Tariq Ali and British columnist Christopher Hitchens, the program claimed that the Missionaries of Charity accepted donations from some unsavory individuals, including Haiti's former autocrat Jean-Claude Duvalier. In return, Mother Teresa and her sisters delivered effusive encomiums in favor of the rich and infamous eager...
...order's Home for the Dying in Calcutta also attracted criticism. Unlike in modern hospices in the West, the dying at the mission home are not provided with pain-killing drugs. In November 1996 a German volunteer questioned one of Teresa's nuns. "I have heard you don't give any medicines," he said. The nun replied, "This is not a treatment center. This is a place where the dying can die with dignity...
...decades Mother Teresa was elected head of the order with only one dissenting vote: her own. But in the fall of 1996, she nearly succumbed to heart disease, and the sisters realized it was time to elect a successor. In March, 123 representative nuns gathered to pray for wisdom and chose a Hindu Brahmin convert named Sister Nirmala, whom one called a compassionate "carbon copy" of their revered leader...
...woman who has taken Teresa's place demurs, saying, "I'm not Mother Teresa; I'm Sister Nirmala. Please don't call me Mother." This 64-year-old, 4-ft. 10-in. nun, who sometimes refers to distances by the number of Rosaries she can pray while traveling them, did not make her Christian conversion until age 17. She was moved to a new faith by the terrible religious carnage that attended the Indian partition in 1947 and by observing Mother Teresa in Calcutta, years later, attending to its refugees. "It was inspiration at first sight," says Nirmala, who became...