Mother Teresa was recently declared a saint by Pope Francis, something that has made waves for the polarizing effect she has had in American media.

While some think her canonization was an easy decision, others point to the reports of her forcing conversions, providing sub-par medical care, having relationships with dictators and mismanaging funds as reasons to deny her sainthood.

The Daily Orange spoke with Margaret Thompson, an associate professor of history and political science, and Susan Wadley, an anthropology professor, about Mother Teresa’s new status. Thompson is an expert in religion and history, while Wadley is an expert in South Asian studies.

The Daily Orange: What makes a saint?

Margaret Thompson: I think that a saint is supposed to represent a form of holiness that can be emulated, that can be an example for other people.

Susan Wadley: Nothing, I don’t believe in saints. I don’t believe in miracles and I don’t believe in saints.

The D.O.: How do you feel about the Pope declaring Mother Teresa a saint?

M.T.: Unsurprised. I feel that it was a fairly obvious kind of thing.

The D.O.: There are many polarized opinions about this declaration of sainthood. How would you explain that?

S.W.: I do research in India and I know a lot of people that do research in India, in Kolkata, and the people that know Kolkata believe the reports that are highly critical of the way she operated. So that’s my take on it, that it’s all kind of a sham.
That she really relished the poverty in the people in the places that she ran, did not provide good medical care and did not do anything to alleviate people’s poverty.

The D.O.: Do you believe the reports that Mother Teresa forced conversion, had relations with dictators and gave inadequate medical care in her years of work?

M.T.: Yes. In a way, it was easy for dictatorial regimes to help her because she wasn’t challenging the injustices of what they were doing in their countries. But she was kind of cleaning up their messes. And I’m not saying that she was intentionally bolstering and holding up unjust regimes, I’m not making that case. But what I am saying is that was not where she focused her attention. And many people thought with the kind of international forum that she had, why didn’t she use it to address some of these issues?

The D.O.: Do you believe in the other reports on Mother Teresa that she forced conversion and had relationships with dictators as well?

S.W.: Well, she got money from dictators, that’s clear. What kind of relationships she had with them, I have no idea.
And there’s a big issue in India with missionaries. People are afraid of missionaries and they’re very wary of them. Many people so-called convert and then convert back. … The people of the community where I worked that were Christian in the 1920s, they’re all Hindu now. I don’t know that I believe in the idea of forced conversion because I think people can only convert if you believe it as a person.

The D.O.: Informed by your work in India, what was Mother Teresa doing if not helping these people she claimed to be helping?

S.W.: Well, she was providing a place to sleep at night that wasn’t the street. And maybe she was providing some food but she wasn’t providing them medical care of any high quality. Despite the millions and millions of dollars put into these places where the poor went, they were barely better than the streets that they might have been coming from.

The D.O.: Does Mother Teresa embody the white (wo)man’s burden?

S.W.: Is she an example of the “India’s poor and we should save it”? Yeah. I mean, that’s an attitude that the British took in by the mid-1700s. That it was a very backward place and we need to go there and she was certainly a part of that Orientalist point of view toward South Asia.

M.T.: She had probably one of the most diverse memberships in her religious congregations of any religious congregation in the world, in terms of lots of members who are themselves not white and European. I mean, if she had founded a community of sisters that were all white, all European, that were going into South Asia and Africa and other parts of the world to tell people what’s good for them, that would be a very different story, but that’s not what her community is. It has attracted people from all over the world, so in some ways it exemplifies a universality that is not all that common in religious communities.

The D.O.: Do you think that Mother Teresa should or shouldn’t be a saint?

M.T.: That’s not for me to say. I’m not sure I believe in it, the formal canonization of people. It’s very time consuming. I know communities of sisters in the world that try very deliberately not to see the canonization of their founders because they think that the money and the time and the energy and the resources could be better spent helping the poor and this and that. So I don’t know.

Published on September 12, 2016 at 10:59 pm

Contact: mpmoor02@syr.edu