A woman whose claimed miracle cure from cancer led to Mother Teresa being thrust towards sainthood has accused Catholic nuns of abandoning her to a life of misery.The angry comments came as the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by the Albanian-born nun in Kolkata in 1950, yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of Mother Teresa’s death.
“I will not go to any church,” 40-year-old Monica Besra said, squatting on the floor of her thatched, mud house in Danogram village, 500km from Kolkata, where Mother Teresa worked.
“I will remember Mother Teresa on her death anniversary at home with my children and husband,” she added.
It was Besra’s alleged miracle cure from a “lumpy” tumour that led to the Vatican clearing the way for Mother Teresa’s beatification in October 2003.
Besra had been diagnosed with a life-threatening tumour by a doctor and was then taken to a hospice run by the Missionaries of Charity.
On September 5, 1998, exactly a year after Mother Teresa’s death, nuns placed a tiny aluminium medallion that had been blessed by Mother Teresa on Besra’s stomach and prayed for her.
The next day, she reported herself cured.
The Vatican investigation into the miracle began in November 1999 and was completed in August 2001.
Usually, the journey from death to beatification to sainthood takes decades if not centuries in the Catholic Church, which has 1.1bn followers worldwide.
“My hut was frequented by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity before the beatification of Mother Teresa,” Besra said.
“They made of lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children’s education,” she claimed, adding that she was also escorted to the Vatican for the beatification ceremony.
“After that, they forgot me,” said Besra, tears welling up in her eyes. With the small piece of family land mortgaged to a village money lender years ago, Besra said she is struggling to survive. “I am now living in penury. My husband is sick. My children have stopped going to school as I have no money. I have to work in the fields to feed my husband and five children,” said Besra, clad in a torn yellow sari.
When she has no work, her children — four sons and a daughter - go to bed hungry. But despite her impoverished situation, Besra’s faith in Mother Teresa — who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 - is unshaken.
Even in her present need, “I find peace when I close my eyes and think of her. I often see her in my dreams,” Besra said.
At Mother House in Kolkata — the global headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity — Mother Teresa’s successor played down the complaints, while acknowledging that Besra was going through “hard times.”
“Nuns of the Charity are in touch with Besra. I talked to her over telephone this morning. She is upset after her daughter flunked the school leaving examination this year,” said Sister Nirmala, superior general of the Missionaries of Charity.
“We know she is having hard times. We are trying to do our best for her,” she said.
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