"What do you believe, that I am Mother Teresa of Calcutta?" it was a kind of phrase made in Spain to respond ironically to those who asked you for more favors than the account, alluding directly to the collective image of that wiry and smiling nun who seemed to solve the problems of the evicted and forgotten around the world without asking for anything in return. Back then she was not yet an official saint but she was far from being the controversial figure she is today. Now, a three-episode documentary miniseries airing on SkyShowtime reaffirms the idea that the Nobel Peace Prize winner wasn't everything the church would have believed.

Mother Teresa: For God's sake? It tries to delve into the life of one of the most recognized figures in contemporary history, exposing a truth more complex than the idealized image of the religious. During three episodes, her life is explored to try to evaluate her reputation as a saint and confront her displays of kindness with her evangelist goals through testimonies from people close to her, scholars and skeptics of her good reputation. Many of them don't appear out of nowhere. For years, Mother Teresa has been accused of being a fraud who preyed on the most vulnerable or covering up the worst excesses of the Catholic Church while appearing more fascinated by poverty and pain than helping people escape them.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910, Mother Teresa lost her father when she was eight years old, and her family was plunged into poverty, which brought her closer to the church until she decided to become a nun at age 12. Before the age of 20 she moved to Calcutta to be a teacher and there she witnessed the misery caused by the Bengal famine of 1943, being shocked by the dozens of corpses that were left lying in the streets. Three years later she claimed that Jesus spoke to her on a train and ordered her to leave the convent and help the poor so, after receiving permission to start her own order, she created the Missionaries of Charity.

Dressed in a simple white cotton habit with a blue border, she began to show her compassion by running soup kitchens, dispensaries, mobile clinics, counseling programs for children and families, and eventually opening orphanages and schools around the world. The documentary contains statements that narrate how his personal charm was key in the performance of his mission. Navin Chawla, a civil servant who became her close friend, recounts how she asked a regional deputy governor for land to care for people with leprosy until he cried, getting him to give him more than twice as much as expected.

They had the money to run a decent hospital for the poor, but they never did.

Jack Preger

In 1969 a BBC documentary team began investigating her work, elevating the nun's role in breathtaking places that most people ignored or avoided, causing her to become an overnight celebrity. Her figure was growing at the same time as the donations and in 1979 she won the Nobel Peace Prize, but not without having critical voices that argued that the adulation of women was unjustified. One of the most insistent was that of Dr. Aroup Chatterjee who informed The New York Times and other media about the grim reality of missionary-run hospitals.

According to Dr. Chatterjee, he found in them a "cult of suffering," with children screaming in agony as missionaries tied them to their beds, dying patients crying in misery while being given no relief other than aspirin to reduce pain, or facilities where a patient was tolerated having to defecate in front of others. In addition, a report published in the Washington Post revealed that patients who died in the hospital were forced to convert to Christianity before dying. In 1994, Christopher Hitchens and journalist Tariq Ali released a documentary called Hell's Angels that showed the reality of Teresa's organizations.

The series also features statements from British doctor Jack Preger, who worked with the charity and found out how "nuns did not provide adequate care. The needles were used over and over again without sterilization. One woman with burns was denied painkillers; I smuggled him a few. They had the money to run a decent hospital for the poor, but they never did. They said, 'We will pray for pain relief' without providing treatment." This leads to the murkier part of Mother Teresa's doctrine, when she "comforted" the poor with theories that spoke of pain being important and necessary or that love. To be real, it has to hurt.

The hospitals run by the Missionaries of Charity not only had a problem of hygiene and medical care but a cult of pain integral to their philosophy. According to the words of the saint "our vocation is not necessarily to heal. It is to transmit the love of God to every human being in whom we see Christ suffering... suffering shared with the passion of Christ is something wonderful", something that corroborates Mary Johnson, who worked alongside Mother Teresa for 20 years, and speaks of a spirituality connected to Jesus on the cross, his sacrifice of pain and a value linked to suffering as redemption of the world.

Last year, a podcast titled The Turning: The Sisters Who Left was launched, bringing to light more gruesome details of life within the enclosed walls of Charity. From nuns instructed to whide themselves and wear barbed wire chains to scandalous ceremonies and secret rituals, including shaving new recruits and burning their hair while chanting, forbidding sisters to have friendships or indulging in "luxuries" such as cleaning and showering. But all this happened behind the walls, while in the 80s, his profile was at the top.

Documentary casts doubt on how much he knew about child abuse scandals in the Church

The nun demanded a ceasefire in Beirut in 1982 to save some orphans, and surprisingly it took effect. Three years later, he freed prisoners dying of AIDS in a New York prison and their presence could intercede in larger conflicts. Meanwhile, his organization received more than 100 million euros a year, most of which was paid to the Vatican bank. In that decade the American religious right of Ronald Reagan was consolidated and Teresa was a great support to campaign against the "pure murder" of abortion, being a visible head of the movements of the most conservative branch of the church.

In her last decade of life, Mother Teresa was called upon to help save the institution from its growing scandals of child abuse by priests. The documentary casts doubt on how much he knew about each case, but reveals how his intervention, when the Rev. Donald McGuire was suspected, was devastating. The elderly woman wrote a letter to authorities highlighting her "trust" in him, allowing McGuire to continue abusing hundreds of children for another decade, before finally being locked up. His involvement in the scandal was silenced, but his legacy was already tainted.

Today, even after the death of the nun, the Missionaries of Charity have experienced several scandals, including a complaint of human trafficking that was exposed in 2018 by the authorities. Mother Teresa: For God's sake? It exposes a look with pros and cons on the person, but also offers a reflection on how some figures like her or some NGOs are a key component of society to serve as a balm in consciences, the idea of charity and prayer to justify social inequalities and the misery of the masses to validate the idea that there is always someone who will help the victims of the distribution unfair, but also to know the evangelical spirit that sometimes hides behind the values of love and care.

According to The Trust Project criteria

Learn more