Sisters of Charity

Merchant

I love how getting a girlfriend is always thought to provide some positive benefit to an otherwise uninspired life. Such suggestions are usually made by people who don't have girlfriends . . . ;>)

ammadas

Hello
One thing you can do is go out and buy the book,From here to nirvana it has all kinds of info the sisters and voluntering there including what to expect and also #s and addresses.The book contains tons of info about most ashrams in India.

lotus blossom

Sunday July 31, 09:31 PM

Mother Teresa charity says ties children for safety

By Krittivas Mukherjee

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A charity founded by Mother Teresa said on Sunday disabled children at one of its homes in India were restrained for their own safety, after a British television reporter filmed children tied to their beds.

Britain's Five News, in a programme to be broadcast on Monday, said it had uncovered "serious shortcomings" at a care centre run by the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta.

It secretly filmed many of the 59 children -- aged six months to 12 years -- living at the Daya Dan shelter tied by their ankles to their cots at night, restrained while being fed and left for up to 20 minutes on the toilet by their carers.

full story:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/050731/137/5zjp6.html

__________________
Not all who wander are lost

unicycle

Dear Kiki,

I am going to Kolkata at the beginin of November 2005 and i want to work with the sister of Charity. I have two months free and a lot of experience with caring for leprosy patients as I have already spent 6 months in a leprosy hospital in Andhra Pradesh last year. I was told that it wasn't possible to contact the Sisters from outside India and that it is better to wait until I get to Kolkata. What can yoiu suggest?

Many thanks Janique www.memres.lycos.fr/kathipudi

rockyS

Off recently the sister of charity has been getting a lot of negative publication with regard to bad treatement to children and sexual abuse ,besides the sister of charity there are a few other small organizations that do some really good work for children and the helpless.

Prof. Lionel Aranha

You mean't the Missioneries of Charity?
Sisters of Charity is another organisation.
The dodgy stories are baseless.
I am the independent Auditor for the sisters of Charity and I haven't come across anything remotely dodgy.

satyakichanda

I am quite shocked that anybody could be so malicious, as to cast aspersions on the Missionaries of Charity. It is strictly under the Archdiocese of Calcutta and is as stringently regulated as are all Roman Catholic institutions in India.Any Calcuttan would have a stroke if anyone were to even murmer anything against the amazing work done by the sisters

shanthi

I guess now, there are a few of us waiting, rockyS, for you to come back to us with whom you were actually talking about and from where your information has been gathered. I for one, would be interested to know where your information has come from! So lets be having you now, eh?

lotus blossom

i am reviving this thread to post a link to a couple of videos on youtube on mother teresa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q1m-...elated&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmAEPrALVjM

i've always heard that mother teresa was not the saint that she is made out to be, but these guys really dig up some dirt on her, and present it a rather, dirty way (lots of, imo, gratuitous swearing.)

i'll also take this opportunity to say that i spent several weeks with a (dutch) woman in benares who had worked at the mother teresa home for widows in calcutta, for, i think, 2.5 months. this woman, though feisty, was 63 years old, yet worked 12-14 hours a day, mostly washing bedding. she described the conditions of the place, as well as the treatment of the women by the nuns, as horrid and unbelievable. she wrote a lot about it on a blog, though in dutch, so i cannot read it. she was also able to take some rather covert photos, so at some point (at the encouragement of many) she may report on it. it sounded like quite the farce, that needs to be reported on.

ddevadatta

A farse made out to be legitimate. Look at the players. I wonder if you have also seen the ones on Ghandhi and others. The gift of stupid journalism.

__________________
Ayurvedic cure for an Indian headache

federica

In 2003 I met a French nurse who worked as a volunteer for mother Teresa in Kolkata. At that time she was still alive, so it was in the 1990ies. She never mentioned a single word about horrible conditions there, and she was a very down-to-earth person, also not talking of mother Teresa as a Saint...

I think most of the people who run charities get critized after sometime (some in a very harsh way), and as the missionaries of charity got so much support, they got so much public attention.

We have this saying: where there is much light, there is much shade...

lotus blossom

yes, the woman i met is also an RN, so was volunteering in different places in india. sadly, things must've changed since your friend was there, but it may also be related to how much time she was there. the woman i met said that the volunteers stayed only a few days because they didn't know what they were getting into when they signed on, which was primarily, washing bedding. she said one of the issues was that there was no sense of unity there, no compassion or affection, and a whole lotta fighting. she was shocked to find abusive nuns maltreating the women, and at the end before she left, she did speak out. how she stayed that long working such long days doing hard labor while seeing what she saw is beyond me. but she is a strong woman. i hope she considers publishing her experience, both there and in varanasi where she volunteered at a clinic in the slums.

federica

This is something that is still shocking for me, how "religious" people sometimes act so far away from their own beliefs... often without realizing it.

Your friend was brave to speak out, and even if it makes only little change, it is still worth.

The psychology of helping is not easy, and many people turn into nightmares for others just because they are somehow burnt out (I am talking of abusive nuns now). Some helpers are so obsessed of the thought that they have to do something good that they don't realize anymore how much anger they have already developped inside. And instead of pampering oneself for sometime (rather difficult for a nun) they use their aggression against the patients...

I could write more about this topic, but it is more general, not only related to the Sisters of Charity where I don't have personal experience.

lotus blossom

we, my friend and i, discussed the possibility that some of the nuns may have become so to avoid, for example, an abusive arranged marriage. or they may have escaped an unhealthy home situation. she did not get the sense that they were nuns of the cloth, so to speak. it would make sense that if they were abusive towards others they were likely victims of it themselves.

yes, this courageous woman, who became a good friend, is pretty amazing. it is important that we all find the voice to speak out about that which we know is wrong. if enough of us do that, change will happen.

thanks for the dialogue.

curly wurly

hey all of you,
i'm going to colcatta in the summer for 5 months to help the missionaries of charity, though i don't really know how my parents can send me the money to stay or what exactly expects me there. is there a border between poor and rich and crossing it is not possible for volunteers?what should my greatest fear be? can anyone help?