Question

how did Mother Teresa help the poors

Answer 1

Mother Teresa’s concern was not with the poor and sick, but with finding ways to convert people to the Catholic faith. Her dictum, often repeated, was, “We are not nurses, we are not doctors, we are not teachers, we are not social workers. We are religious, we are religious, we are religious.” However, in order to attract the donations she needed to undertake her missionary work, and in order to gain privileged access to potential converts, Mother Teresa realised she needed to be seen to work for the poor and the sick.

She set up a small hospice for the dying in Calcutta and ensured that it received wide publicity. In Calcutta, she also set up soup kitchens to provide free food. Aroup Chatterjee, in his deposition before the committee for beatification of Mother Teresa in February 1998, stated that poor people must possess 'food cards' to obtain rations in at least one soup kitchen operated by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. These cards were not easy to obtain, but nearly all Christians in a particular slum had food cards, but hardly any of the poor from the other religions had them. The kitchens supplied food at such a rate as to ensure that long queues formed outside, creating the impression that larger numbers of the poor were being fed than was apparently the case.



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