The breakup of this amount of Kolkata based centres of MC, MC Brothers and MC Fathers is Rs 637 Cr, Rs. 111 Cr and Rs 1.41 Cr respectively. The submitted records for the public tell that the missionaries have used the larger portion of this fund for social services but there has a significant portion of fund used for purchasing lands and carry-out the religious discourses. These missionaries of charity and missionaries of charity brothers were founded by mother Teresa in 1950 and 1963 whereas missionaries of charity fathers were established in 1984 by Mother Teresa with Fr. Joseph Langford as co-founder.
This huge fund flow has always been questioned for its utilization. Though there has been huge bulk of medicines, milk power boxes, clothes etc. being supplied directly to the missionaries beside monetary donations and Mother who principally used to tell that miniscule expenses are done upon sisters and operations of missionaries. Then where this fund has been utilized? For realty or incurred in proselytization as alleged by formers fellows and mother’s critique.
Susan Shields, a former Missionaries of Charity sister who played a key role in Mother Teresa’s organization at overseas location until she resigned, writes in her book- “Mother Teresa’s House of Illusions” that she was assigned to record donations and write the thank-you letters. This kind of flood of donations for that she used to write receipts for checks of $50,000 and more on a regular basis, was even unable to remember the sum how large it was and whom has sent it. Susan tells that sisters of charity didn’t had any idea about how much money the congregation was amassing. After all, they were taught not to collect anything from it.
She further describes about her miser condition during the stay at missionaries-
“The donations rolled in and were deposited in the bank, but they had no effect on our ascetic lives and very little effect on the lives of the poor we were trying to help. We lived a simple life, bare of all superfluities. We had three sets of clothes, which we mended until the material was too rotten to patch anymore. We washed our own clothes by hand. The never-ending piles of sheets and towels from our night shelter for the homeless we washed by hand, too. Our bathing was accomplished with only one bucket of water. Dental and medical checkups were seen as an unnecessary luxury….. Airlines were requested to fly sisters and air cargo free of charge. Hospitals and doctors were expected to absorb the costs of medical treatment for the sisters or to draw on funds designated for the religious. Workmen were encouraged to labor without payment or at reduced rates. We relied heavily on volunteers who worked long hours in our soup kitchens, shelters, and day camps.”
Another Sister Virgin who has served the missionaries remembers that one year there was about $50 million in a New York bank account. $50 million in one year! — in a predominantly non-Catholic country. How much then, were they collecting in Europe or the world? It is estimated that worldwide they collected at least $100 million per year — and that has been going on for many-many years.
It has been that raising fingers over income and expenses of mother’s organizations in her lifetime. Utilization of money has been quite secret and mysterious as the above memoirs clearly tells about how money was amassed?
These are India’s records only those are telling about such huge amount of foreign funds but one can think how much money her missionaries have collected at her other centres across the world while her motives of social services always being questioned.