Mother Teresa will become officially recognized as a Saint later this year. From what most people know about Mother Teresa, this is positive news. Religious organizations have celebrated the image of Mother Teresa for years and much of the public sees her sainthood as long-deserved. Critics, however, are working to bring a different image of Mother Teresa to light.

Much of Mother Teresa's charity work was done in India, where the majority of people are Hindu and Muslim. The head of the Hindu nationalist group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, recently stated that "Mother Teresa's work had ulterior [motives], which was to convert the person who was being served to Christianity." She has been accused of baptizing the dying without their permission, going as far as to tell the nuns working with her to pretend that they are simply wiping the sick person with a damp rag.

The criticism goes beyond the questionable conversions that Mother Teresa has taken part in. The medical care that she supposedly provided to the dying has also faced outcry. According to observers, such as reporter Robin Fox, the hospice facilities had few doctors and provided little more than a place to die in. The nuns that attended the ill had little to no medical knowledge, meaning that tuberculosis patients were not isolated and that almost nothing was adequately sterilized. No pain management was provided for the ill, as Mother Teresa saw pain as beautiful and important. She believed that suffering would allow the dying person to eventually go to heaven after death.

One might think that Mother Teresa and her organizations were simply doing the best that they could under the circumstances that they had. However, donations poured into Mother Teresa's hands from people under the misconception that it would relieve suffering. Donations were instead put toward opening new hospice facilities rather than improving those that were already open. The lack of funds for individual facilities meant that many had to be turned away.

This naturally leads to people asking where donations actually go. The answer, unfortunately, is that no one knows. Mother Teresa herself had called her organization the "most disorganized organization in the world" on account of its lack of financial upkeep. Indian law requires charities to report their finances, but their demands have been ignored. Many of the buildings and materials used by Mother Teresa were donated, meaning that, yet again, no donations were put to use. Some say that the bulk of donations would go to the Vatican and not the poor themselves, but again there is no record to prove this. The few people who have knowledge of where donations go refuse to comment.

A British doctor that visited one of the hospice sites said that "If one wants to give love, understanding and care (as Mother Teresa claimed to want), one uses sterile needles. This is probably the richest order in the world. Many of the dying there do not have to be dying in a strictly medical sense." The sad reality is that many of those expecting to receive basic medical care from Mother Teresa's organizations could have lived if there were more of a focus on helping the living, rather than converting the soon-to-be-dead.