In 1946, Sister Teresa heard God's voice in the darkness of a third-class train compartment: "Come be My light."For the next fifty years, she would build a global empire of charity while experiencing only divine silence. When young Sister Teresa walks into Calcutta's slums, she believes she's answering a holy calling. But as her Missionaries of Charity grows from a single woman's mission into a worldwide phenomenon, a darker pattern emerges.
In her homes for the dying, pain medication sits locked away while patients writhe in agony-their suffering deemed "beautiful." Children with disabilities are tied to chairs for twelve hours a day. Treatable diseases become death sentences, transformed into tickets to paradise. Through interwoven narratives-a doctor forced to watch his patients die while antibiotics gather dust, an Irish nun who flees when she can no longer participate in "holy neglect, " a bureaucrat who buries evidence of medical violations-this meticulously researched novel exposes the disturbing gap between Mother Teresa's public image and the reality within her facilities.
Based on suppressed testimonies and decades of documented evidence, The Two Teresas asks the questions no one dared voice while she lived: What if charity requires poverty to justify its existence? What if good intentions, crystallized into dogma, become a special kind of cruelty? And what if the woman the world called a living saint spent fifty years performing a faith she no longer felt?A haunting exploration of how suffering became sacred, how neglect became mercy, and how one woman's dark night of the soul was transformed into light for millions who never knew she lived in darkness."A masterpiece of moral complexity...
This novel will forever change how you think about sainthood, charity, and the terrible distance between intention and impact."
In 1946, Sister Teresa heard God's voice in the darkness of a third-class train compartment: "Come be My light."For the next fifty years, she would build a global empire of charity while experiencing only divine silence. When young Sister Teresa walks into Calcutta's slums, she believes she's answering a holy calling. But as her Missionaries of Charity grows from a single woman's mission into a worldwide phenomenon, a darker pattern emerges.
In her homes for the dying, pain medication sits locked away while patients writhe in agony-their suffering deemed "beautiful." Children with disabilities are tied to chairs for twelve hours a day. Treatable diseases become death sentences, transformed into tickets to paradise. Through interwoven narratives-a doctor forced to watch his patients die while antibiotics gather dust, an Irish nun who flees when she can no longer participate in "holy neglect, " a bureaucrat who buries evidence of medical violations-this meticulously researched novel exposes the disturbing gap between Mother Teresa's public image and the reality within her facilities.
Based on suppressed testimonies and decades of documented evidence, The Two Teresas asks the questions no one dared voice while she lived: What if charity requires poverty to justify its existence? What if good intentions, crystallized into dogma, become a special kind of cruelty? And what if the woman the world called a living saint spent fifty years performing a faith she no longer felt?A haunting exploration of how suffering became sacred, how neglect became mercy, and how one woman's dark night of the soul was transformed into light for millions who never knew she lived in darkness."A masterpiece of moral complexity...
This novel will forever change how you think about sainthood, charity, and the terrible distance between intention and impact."