Tuesday, June 1, 2010

The Mystery of Mother Teresa And Sainthood - Investigation by: Prabir Gosh

For several years Prabir Ghosh, general secretary of the Indian Rationalist and Scientific Thinking Association, has challenged Hindu "godmen" and exposed their miracles as what he describes as cheap hypnotic tricks better performed by magicians. Now he is challenging the claim of the Missionaries of charity, who say a photograph of their founder, Mother Teresa, when placed over the stomach of 30-year-old Monica Besra, cured her of a tumour.

Read more at: http://www.uniqueebook.com/freee-books/Mother_Teresa_Preview.pdf



Saturday, May 1, 2010

Deposition submitted by Aroup Chatterjee before the committee for beatification/canonization of Mother Teresa: "Mother of All Myths"

Deposition: “Mother of All Myths”


Deposition submitted by Aroup Chatterjee before the committee for beatification/canonization of Mother Teresa February 1998.

The Mother of All Myths

Being a lay person not versed in ecclesiastical procedures, I am not eminently suited to make a formal or technical deposition before the Committee. However, I have had a keen interest in Mother Teresa for the last few years and have researched her operations, perhaps more thoroughly than anyone else in the world. And, as somebody born, brought up and educated in Calcutta, I feel I am in a unique situation to offer evidence to the Committee. The Committee may summon me at any time to appear personally before it to offer evidence. I also put my audio visual evidence at the disposal of the Committee should it want to consult them.

Over the years I have been dismayed at the discrepancy between Mother Teresa’s words and her deeds, and here I present some of them. Mother Teresa had said many thousands of times in her life that she “pick[ed] up” people from the streets of Calcutta. She expounded on it at length in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Her order did (and does) not “pick up” destitutes from Calcutta’s streets. They do not provide an ambulance service for the city’s poorest of the poor. If one rings the Kalighat home for the dying destitute, one is told curtly to ring 102 (the Calcutta Corporation ambulance line) so that a Corporation vehicle would bring the destitute to Kalighat.

I believe that Mother Teresa had deliberately misled the world in her assertions about “picking up” destitutes from the streets of Calcutta in order to bolster her own image and that of her faith. Her failure to provide vehicles (whilst continually claiming to do so) is even more significant because she had been donated a number of ambulance vehicles. These are used mainly (though not solely) as vans to ferry nuns, often to and from places of prayer. I believe that this constitutes an abuse of other people’s trust in her.

Mother Teresa is on record in various publications (written by her friends and followers) as having said that her order fed 4000, 5000, 7000 or 9000 people in Calcutta everyday (the figures are not chronologically incremental). I do not know what she meant by feeding that number, but the fact remains that her soup kitchens (numbering between two and three) in Calcutta did (does) not feed more than 300 people daily (a generous over- estimate). The Committee should also take into account the “food cards” that poor people must possess to obtain ration in at least one soup kitchen. The Committee should note that such cards are not easy to come by for the poor, and that virtually all Christians in a particular slum have food cards, when hardly any of the poor from the other religions have them. This policy gives the lie to Mother Teresa’s assertions that she treated the poor from all faiths equally. On the issue of bias toward Catholicism, I would also like to tell the Committee that worship inside Mother Teresa’s homes is solely Catholic, and non-Catholic worship is not at all permitted therein. This practice should be judged in the context of a minute proportion of the residents in her homes in Calcutta being of the Catholic faith. I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to Mother Teresa’s frequent pronouncement: “I help a Hindu to become a better Hindu, a Muslim to become a better Muslim…..” etc. The practice of denying poor people under her care the right to worship their own god(s) can be judged as harsh and demeaning.

Mother Teresa once said, “If there are poor on the moon, we will go there.” She said many times that she never refused anybody who needed help. In reality however, her order operated strict exclusion criteria in their selection of who to help and who not to. Mother Teresa’s order did (does) not help anybody, no matter how poor or helpless, who had a family member of any kind — what they term a “family case”. (That is one practice he doesn’t like which I agree with. The family should take care of their own first. Too bad we don’t do that here with welfare)

One of Mother Teresa’s slogans had been ,”Bring me that unwanted child.” In her Nobel Prize speech she said, “Let us bring the child back. …….What have we done for the child? ………..Have we really made the children wanted?” If the Committee examines what Mother Teresa had done for street children (in Calcutta), it may find that she fell short of optimal standard. Despite her assertions, she did not operate an “open door” policy at her homes for the poor, including for poor children. A very poor and very ill child would not be offered help unless the parents signed (or thumb-printed) a form of renunciation signing over the rights of the child to her organisation. I have video evidence of such a case happening on the doorstep of Mother Teresa’s orphanage.(Is that charity? “Sign over your child to us or we let them starve!!!”?)

The Committee may also want to interview street children from around Mother House who were repeatedly reported to the police by Mother Teresa’s nuns for “pestering” foreigners who came to visit the “living saint”. I have video interviews with such children, which the Committee may like to consult.

In her famous letter written in 1978 to the then Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai in protest against the curbing of Christian missionary activities, Mother Teresa mentioned that she operated “102 centres” of natural family in Calcutta. The Committee should heed that such centres do not exist. The Committee should also note that in her Nobel Prize speech Mother Teresa had said that in 6 years in Calcutta there were “61,273 babies less” born because of her organisation’s natural family planning activities. There is no basis whatever for this statistic, and it was disingenuous of Mother Teresa to mention it in her Nobel Prize speech.

In the April 1996 issue of the US magazine Ladies Home Journal, Mother Teresa said that she wanted to die like the poor in her home for the dying destitute in Kalighat. This is a very outrageous statement indeed. By then she had had numerous in-patient medical treatments in some of the most expensive clinics around the world. This includes the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California and the Gemelli Hospital in Rome. She also had numerous treatments at Calcutta’s Woodlands and Belle Vue Clinics, which are outside the reach of 99% of India’s population. She also received (on numerous occasions) sophisticated and expensive cardiac treatments at Calcutta’s Birla Heart Institute.

When Mother Teresa died, she was surrounded in her bedroom by sophisticated and expensive cardiac equipment, which had been specially fitted for her. Such privilege is usually granted to kings, presidents and dictators. Whether such exclusive facilities befit a future Saint is for the Committee to decide, but I would ask it to take note of the wide discrepancy between Mother Teresa’s deeds and her pronouncements. In 1984 Mother Teresa (publicly) declined the offer of cataract surgery from the St Francis Medical Centre in Pittsburgh, USA, telling the media that she could not possibly accept the £5000 treatment; but the very next year she had the same surgery (which cost even more) in St Vincent’s Hospital , New York.

I think Mother Teresa (or anybody else) should receive the best possible medical treatment, but she utterly failed giving her residents (at least in Calcutta) the minimum dignity and treatment — despite her vast resources. The residents at Kalighat were denied beds — they were forced to lie on hammocks, known by her order as “pallets”. They were not allowed to get up from their pallets and stretch themselves. They are denied visits from friends and relatives — indeed they would not be admitted in the first place if they had any relatives. They are forced to defecate and urinate communally. They are given only the simplest possible treatments, such as simple painkillers for the intractable pain of terminally ill residents. Gloves and more importantly, needles are routinely re-used when deadly diseases are rife within this population. It has to be borne in mind that the home for the dying in Calcutta is a very small operation, catering to less than 100 people — is it not legitimate to expect a minimum decent standard for these few people? What does the Committee think?

Except for adequate and simple food, the regime in the home is very harsh indeed — some would call it dehumanising; apart from the above points mentioned, I would like to draw attention of the Committee to the compulsory shaving of the heads of residents, including of female ones. The Committee should take cognisance of the particular importance Indian women (however poor or destitute) attach to long hair.

One could perhaps overlook the medical facilities at Kalighat (although the Committee should not perhaps ignore such dismal standards from a woman with such resources) but where Mother Teresa failed was in providing minimum “Love” and dignity for her residents, despite her numerous claims that she did so. Mother Teresa’s motto had been “You did it to me”, implying the suffering of Jesus; she said many times how “beautiful” suffering and pain were. However she had one standard for herself and another one for her residents. She herself had never declined painkillers or anaesthetics.

Mother Teresa, although protesting to live a life of utter humility and suffering, frequently travelled the world in the luxury class of aeroplanes, which is outside of the reach of all but the super wealthy. Granted she did not pay for her travels (the airlines usually did), but I believe her travels were a waste of resources, undertaken as they were mostly for religious purposes. The majority of her journeys — including the last foreign travel of her life that began in May 1997 — were to oversee the vow taking of her nuns. She would also travel frequently to the Vatican to meet up with the pope — indeed on most of her international travels she would break journey at the Vatican, sometimes twice — onward and return. Can the Committee justify such frequent and expensive travels for reasons of religion by a woman who always claimed that she was utterly devoted to the cause of the poor? Occasionally when on board the first class section of an aeroplane, Mother Teresa would ask for food to be given her so that she could take them to the poor. This would impress those around her and would imply that she never did anything that would detract from the cause of the poor — thereby she would manage to camouflage the real purpose of her luxurious travels which were unnecessary, at least for the interests of the poor. I would urge the Committee to take into account Mother Teresa’s affectations which were adopted (perhaps unwittingly) to cause deception and bolster image.

Although always protesting that she knew nothing about politics, Mother Teresa voted in elections in India, as acknowledged by the Catholic author Eileen Egan in one of Mother Teresa’s official biographies Such A Vision of the Street. She also made sure that her nuns all voted. Here again, we are getting a discord between words and deeds.

In the matter of politics, the most serious issue that can raised about Mother Teresa’s actions was over her support of the State of Emergency in India (1975 – 77). This was a time when democratic rights were suspended in India and thousands of activists (both social and political) were detained without trial. Other crimes, much more heinous, were committed by the erstwhile government. The Committee should take particular note of the forced sterilisation programmes (of poor men) that were undertaken during this period. And yet, Mother Teresa issued the State of Emergency a certificate of approval (acknowledged in the above official biography) to help her friend the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The Committee should decide if such action befits a potential Saint. The Committee should particularly consider the way Mother Teresa intervened in politics in this instance and compare it with her (political) intervention during the passage of the Freedom of Religion Bill in the Indian parliament in 1978. In the first instance when human rights were threatened, she aided and abetted the powers that were threatening them; in the second instance when Catholic rights were threatened she made a strident protest. One could not have criticised her if she had remained silent on both occasions.

The Committee should also take into account Mother Teresa’s wooing of the media, which was often selective. There are a lot of media persons (primarily in India) who may testify to that effect. I have interviews with such people which the Committee may like to consult. I am aware that the help of the media is essential in the running of an international organisation such as the Missionaries of Charity and I certainly do not think it was unreasonable of Mother Teresa to enlist such help, but she always publicly maintained that she detested publicity.

The word “saint” in the broad sense implies a person who is uniquely kind and charitable; somebody above meanness and pettiness, somebody who does not publicise their own deeds and achievements, at least does not exaggerate them. Mother Teresa was a kind and charitable person, but whether she was an exceptional in this regard is a matter for the Committee to decide. I strongly urge the Committee to not simply be guided by what she said, but look beyond that. She was an exceptional Catholic — indeed much (if not most) of the resources of her organisation was spent on religious activities, such as in the training of nuns, novices, Brothers and priests, and in the upkeep of establishments which are exclusively nunneries and Brothers’ houses. When Mother Teresa told journalists (as she did very often during her life) how many establishments she ran around the world, she never made it clear that a large number of these housed nuns and Brothers and were not homes for the poor.

In this context, Mother Teresa’s fund raising from people of dubious reputation needs to be mentioned. To give an example, in 1991 she received a very large sum of money from Charles Keating, who had stolen most or all of it from the American public, many of them people of modest means. After Keating’s arrest, Mother Teresa steadfastly refused to even acknowledge requests from the authorities to return the money. Did she think that she was above earthly laws? If the money had been returned, some of Keating’s poor investors who had been deceived could have been repaid. Mother Teresa’s logic was that she was using rich people’s ill-gotten money to help the poor. Such logic is perverse, not only because she was knowingly handling stolen money, but also because much of that money was being spent not on the poor but for the nurturing of her faith.

If the Committee wants to confer sainthood on Mother Teresa for being an exceptional Catholic, then no doubt such honour is deserved. If on the other hand, sainthood is something the Committee would confer on somebody who is also more than ordinarily honest, “humble”, dedicated to the poor, free of falsehoods and above all a person of unique integrity, then in my opinion Mother Teresa falls short of a being a shining example.
Finally I would ask the Committee whether it would do justice to the memory and spirit of Mother Teresa — who had such visceral opposition to abortion in any circumstance — to be called “Saint Teresa of Calcutta”, for Calcutta is one of the world’s most pro abortion cities, where hundreds of institutions (one of them not that many yards from Mother House) offer abortion (virtually) on demand





Thursday, April 1, 2010

Horror at One of Mother Teresa's Orphanage

An investigation at one of the order’s homes in Kolkata by an undercover investigator, who was working there as a volunteer, uncovers more troubling details. He filmed children being fed while their hands bound with what appeared to be strips of cloth. When the undercover worker returned to the home at night, he found children bound to their cots with similar strips, which prevented them from moving more than 2 feet. 


Published Date: 30 Jul, 2005 
Disabled Children Tied,Tethered To Cots, Finds Undercover Investigator

Kolkata, jul 31: An undercover investigation has revealed poor conditions endured by children in a Kolkata care home run by Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa.

Around 50 disabled children, aged six months to 12 years, in the home have their hands bound during meal times and are tethered to their cots at night.

Martin Gallagher, a former operations director of MENCAP, said last week that it was unacceptable for the children to be tied up. “It’s a breach of their human rights,” he said.

Since Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, her charitable order has continued with her work. It has more than 700 centres in 133 countries. Even when Mother Teresa was alive, the standards at some of her homes were criticised. Some workers complained of dirty conditions and claimed children suffered neglect.

A new investigation at one of the order’s homes in Kolkata, called Daya Dan, has raised fresh concerns. An undercover investigator, who was working there as a volunteer, filmed children being fed while their hands bound with what appeared to be strips of cloth.

When the undercover worker returned to the home at night, he found children bound to their cots with similar strips, which prevented them from moving more than 2 feet.

He also filmed children being left unattended in the toilet, at times for up to 20 minutes. Staff seemed to be poorly trained in dealing with disabled children.

When questioned about why the children were tied to their beds, a nun in the order said: “It’s a terrible thing to do, but there might be a reason. I’ve not been to that home and not heard anything about that at all.”

Donal MacIntyre, who conducted the investigation for Five News, said he was shocked by what he had found.

“There are strategies for looking after disabled children that minimise stressful situations,” he said, “but, as a result of poor training and lack of resources, staff are resorting to shocking practices.

“Unless the Missionaries of Charity improve their standards, they risk damaging not only the health of those in their care but also the reputation of one of the world’s most remarkable women.” Sister Nirmala Joshi, now superior general of the order, was not available for comments.
Yes, they are tied: Sister

The Times of India India's leading news paper, independently confirmed the story. Sister Nirmala, superior-general of the Missionaries of Charity, was abroad. In her absence, Mother House spokesperson Sister Christie responded to the queries. She confirmed: “Daya Dan has 59 children. Of them some are spastics. These children are tied up, but for limited periods only. This is done for their safety. These children can easily harm themselves.’’






Monday, March 1, 2010

Responding To Ignorance



I received the following email today, it is regarding my work and investigative report of Mother Teresa's international charity which is fraught with medical negligence and financial fraud. I usually don't get a lot of these, but I was not going to just ignore this one. Take a look at the message sent to me and my response to this individual:
 
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxx
To: xxxxxx@xxxxxx
Sent: Tue, Jan 11, 2011 3:34 am
Subject: New Contact Message
 
I am outraged. You do not have any say in how the Missionaries of Charity operate, especially when some of your photographs of India's "poorest of the poor" are being SOLD to fund your own personal life as an "independent artist". Disgusting. Have you ever even cleaned and bandaged a wound with maggots crawling in it? Have you ever changed a woman who is on her period and blood is all over her clothing? Have you ever been defecated on?? Think of it. And then think of Indian life. You just don't get it do you. Try a little humility and empathy before you LASH OUT and try to make a buck. OH, also try taking care of the poor for more than 2 months.
 
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
xxxxx,
 
Try READING more about me before lashing out ignorantly.
 
I currently live in Kolkata, I work in the slums everyday with the poorest of the poor, I make seriously little money through my photos, I've managed to save some money by working hard for a while back at home before returning to India to positively change the lives of people in serious need. Here's the link to my own charity: http://www.facebook.com/responsiblecharity
 
I've cleaned blood, mucus, I've been defecated on by the destitute of India, picked live maggots out of wounds for hours and cremated more than a dozen men and women while working with the incredibly archaic and often inefficient Missionaries of Charity. Damn right I have a right to question how these monsters operate and shame on you for blindly adoring these nuns and  thinking you are actually doing something good by keeping your mouth shut.
 
I usually don't answer stupid mail such as yours, don't get a lot if anyway, but you actually epitomize a big part of the problem, the volunteer who continues to glorify this fraudulent and outdated organization, while actually hurting those they claim to help by keeping them in these museums of poverty.
 
If you want to truly make a difference, start by demanding that the Missionaries of Charity report every single dollar they have received in donations until today and how all the funds have really been applied, if they do so, the world will discover they've been quite busy propagating their religious dogma while "patching" some of the issues of poverty instead of looking for viable solutions to END poverty with the millions and millions of dollars received from their unsuspecting donors.
 
Again, READ. You will discover hundreds of links from reporters, volunteers, journalists, some doctors, nurses and even nuns who themselves have left what is essentially a cult.
 
The monumental negligence of this organization is in fact impossible to ignore.
 
Hemley Gonzalez
STOP The Missionaries of Charity



Monday, February 1, 2010

Sodomy "Common" in Mother Teresa's Orphanage


Neurologist, Dr Franco, worked as a volunteer at Deepashram, established by Mother Teresa in 1995, for six months and complained to the Vatican Embassy about sexual abuse of children at the home, citing that it was “common” for the older boys to sodomize the younger boys at night when no one was on guard. Attendants dismissed the allegation and no further action was taken by the Vatican.

Neurologist: Sodomy "Common" in Mother Teresa's Orphanage
Posted August 25, 2005

Sanjeev K Ahuja
Gurgaon, August 23, 2005
Hindustan Times

The Deepashram orphanage at Gurgaon - for mentally and physically challenged children - has found itself in a controversy after an Italian neurologist complained to the Vatican Embassy about sexual abuse of children at the home.

The neurologist, Dr Franco, had worked as a volunteer at Deepashram, established by Mother Teresa in 1995, for six months a couple of years ago. Brothers Contemplative - the male wing of Missionaries of Charity - manages the home, which has 66 boys aged between 12 and 26.

Franco registered his complaint at the Apostolic Nunciature, Chanakyapuri. Second secretary of the Apostolic Nunciature, Father Tomasz Grysa, said they received the "communication from Dr Franco" in February this year. The case has been referred to the hierarchical superiors of the Missionaries of Charity Brothers, Father Grysa said.

At the orphanage, volunteers did not rule out the possibility of sexual abuse of younger inmates by the older ones. Brother Benedict, a volunteer from Rome, said: "If any case of this kind is reported to us, the guilty boys are punished."

Abdullah, a 15-year-old inmate, said it was "common" for the older boys to sodomise the younger boys at night when no one was on guard. He accused a 24-year-old of sodomising a 12-year-old. "Bahut se bachche yahan par ganda kaam karte hain," he said.

Brother Benedict and attendants dismissed the allegation. Abdullah was shifted from the children's home at Majnu Ka Tila to Gurgaon as he was a troublemaker, Brother Benedict said.

Another volunteer at the orphanage, Dr Wanda Toso from San Raffele Hospital in Milan, told HT that Franco had also told her about child abuse at Deepashram. She, however, did not have any personal confirmation from the boys as she did not speak Hindi.

"I have not been able to interact with the children," Toso said.

Friday, January 1, 2010

The Total Amount of Donations Received by Mother Teresa's Charity Remains a Mystery


A 1991 audit of the UK operation revealed that only 7% of the total income of about $2.6USD million went into charity work. The rest was remitted to the Vatican Bank. And this audit was just for ONE year in only ONE country; this organization is 61 years old as of today with 700+ houses in 100+ countries. 


Regarding the financial matters of the Missionaries of Charity, in an interview, when asked how much money they have received in donations, the head nun of the organization a the time condescendingly replied: "Countless, countless, only god knows"

      

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Mother Teresa's Spiritual Adviser: A Convicted Pedophile

Donald McGuire, Mother Teresa's 'spiritual adviser' was a convicted pedophile. How many more are working inside this organization today? 

Court deposition information below courtesy of Peter Jamison

One of the Jesuit order's most notorious convicted pedophiles

A new lawsuit sheds light on the S.F. years of Mother Teresa's spiritual adviser – who is also one of the Jesuit order's most notorious convicted pedophiles.

Case #John Doe 129

McGuire at Doe 129’s baptism in 1978.
John Doe 129

McGuire was known for captivating audiences with his talks on theology.
John Doe 129

In 1985, McGuire plays with Doe 129 at the boy’s home.
John Doe 129

McGuire, Doe 129, and Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity convent in San Francisco in 1991.
John Doe 129

Known for his conservatism, McGuire liked women to wear long skirts in his presence.
Justin Page

The Missionaries of Charity convent in Noe Valley as it looks today.
John Doe 129

Father Donald McGuire and John Doe 129 at the boy’s first communion in 1982.
Subject(s):
Peter Jamison on pedophile priest Donald McGuireTwo decades ago, an 11-year-old boy from the Bay Area was honored with an invitation most devout Catholics would envy. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize for her work among the developing world's poor, was celebrating Mass at her order's convent in Noe Valley. The ceremony was part of a retreat led by one of the famed humanitarian nun's close spiritual advisers, a Jesuit priest and former University of San Francisco professor named Donald McGuire.

It was at McGuire's bidding that the 11-year-old came to serve as an altar boy that morning at St. Paul's Convent, a boxy building of yellow stucco that rises from a tree-lined block near the intersection of 29th and Church streets. (The convent houses local novices in the international Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa in 1950.) The priest was close to the boy's family: He had baptized the boy, and offered his mother spiritual and psychological counseling over the years. Indeed, within church circles, McGuire was something of a celebrity himself.

Steeped, as are all Jesuits, in the cerebral traditions of Catholicism, McGuire dazzled his many admirers with his command of ancient history and literature. He could speak eloquently about philosophy and theology, and deployed his rhetoric to powerful effect during multiday religious seminars based on the teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuits' founder. He had silvering brown hair and a round, red Irish face that often creased into a puckish smile. He liked to give advice. And he liked to hear confession.

On that morning almost 20 years ago, however, McGuire's interests were more profane than sacred. Following a morning Mass, he asked the boy to retire with him to a private chamber reserved for the priest at the convent. While the nuns and Mother Teresa milled about, McGuire closed the door to his room and asked his favored altar boy to join him, in his cot, for a nap. The boy lay down. The priest lay on the outside of the narrow bed and then reached across the boy's body and into his pants.

So said the boy in a recent interview with SF Weekly. Now 30, he is suing the Jesuits for turning a blind eye to McGuire's repeated acts of child molestation. His lawsuit was filed this winter in Cook County, Ill., home of the Chicago Province of the Jesuits, where McGuire kept his primary residence.

The boy — who is identified in court documents only as John Doe 129, and requested that SF Weekly not publish his name or hometown to spare him the stigma attached to childhood sexual abuse — is accusing the Chicago Province of negligence and fraud in failing to keep McGuire away from children. He and his attorneys allege that over a period of about 10 years beginning in 1988, McGuire forced the boy to massage the priest's genitals and watch him masturbate, among other acts of abuse.

Doe 129 is not the first to accuse McGuire, now an ailing 79-year-old, of such misdeeds. In 2006, the priest was convicted in a Wisconsin court of molesting two teenage boys he had taught decades earlier at a prominent Jesuit high school in the Midwest. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Illinois sentenced McGuire to 25 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of traveling abroad with a teenage boy to sexually abuse him. (For his part, McGuire still insists he is innocent and has appealed his latest conviction.)

While the federal case rested on molestation charges involving only one boy, investigators believed McGuire had abused dozens during his career. In fact, Jesuit leaders first received complaints about the priest in 1969, although he was not officially defrocked until last year. Some of the ex-priest's alleged victims — many of them now grown men — and their family members were permitted to address U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer during his sentencing hearing. Their statements, not surprisingly, were emotionally charged. The Arizona father of two boys McGuire allegedly molested said he would like to hand down his own sentence on the ex-priest using a baseball bat.

One of those who traveled to Chicago to speak out was the mother of the altar boy allegedly molested at the Missionaries of Charity convent in San Francisco. "I told the judge that I thought that he deserved the maximum sentence," she said. "Even we, as adults, couldn't stand up to someone who was Mother Teresa's confessor. Can you imagine children that have no voice?"

Doe 129's lawsuit is just one of multiple pending civil cases against McGuire nationwide. But it is the first to draw attention to the strong San Francisco ties of the man who is arguably the most prominent convicted child abuser in the Jesuits' 470-year history. Interviews with McGuire's former colleagues, associates, and admirers cast light on the pivotal phases of his life that took place in this city — it was in San Francisco that he began his working relationship with Mother Teresa — and suggest that the disgraced ex-priest committed acts of abuse here for which neither he nor his superiors have ever been held to account.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 1976, Father Joseph Fessio, a Jesuit instructor at the University of San Francisco, was busy recruiting students and professors for a new classics program. Called the St. Ignatius Institute, it would focus on a traditional "great books" curriculum, functioning as an autonomous college within the university. As he organized the institute, Fessio got a call from a well-known Jesuit teacher from the Midwest who was interested in joining. His name was Donald McGuire.

Fessio had heard of McGuire. By reputation, he was "very dynamic" and "a very exciting teacher," Fessio recalls, known for his orthodoxy and loyalty to the church. The truth, as documents unearthed in McGuire's subsequent criminal and civil cases would later reveal, was more complicated. As a matter of fact, at the time he came to USF, McGuire's Midwestern superiors had already received complaints that he had sexually molested two boys at Loyola Academy, a Jesuit high school in Illinois. (The same incidents eventually led to McGuire's first criminal conviction in 2006.)

Fessio, now an editor at Ignatius Press, a San Francisco–based publishing house, said in an interview that he didn't know about the skeletons in McGuire's closet back then. But once McGuire moved to San Francisco and began teaching freshman seminars in ancient Greek literature and history, it didn't take long for Fessio to notice that his new colleague had a dark side.

"He loved the classics, and he communicated that to the kids. That was the positive side," Fessio said. "There was a negative side. He seemed like he had to have people around him. He needed to have an audience. ... For all of us, our failings are pretty well interwoven in our personalities. There was a talent, but it was kind of a dangerous talent, and I was always a little bit reserved toward it."

McGuire was mercurial, quick to turn on colleagues or friends, and inclined to nurse grudges. He was also prone to bragging — even about his own piety. "Joe, I can pray circles around you," Fessio recalled McGuire once saying to him. "It was a weird claim."

Father Cornelius Buckley, a former history teacher at the St. Ignatius Institute, said he was troubled by the strangely intense attachments McGuire cultivated among select groups of students. (In contrast to his strained relations with other teachers, McGuire was always wildly popular with those enrolled in his classes, former colleagues say.) Those students who followed the Greek professor's banner "seemed to be more involved with him than they were with the program," Buckley recalled in a telephone interview from Santa Paula, Calif., where he is now chaplain at Thomas Aquinas College.

McGuire taught at the St. Ignatius Institute for four years. Jesuit records from that period show that Buckley wasn't the only one vexed by McGuire's closeness to his students. Father Alfred Naucke, an official at the California Jesuit Province, said his office's files on McGuire indicate that USF officials frowned upon the priest's practice of inviting students into his private room. (Those students were most likely boys, since women would not have been permitted to enter the university's Jesuit residences.)

In May 1981, then-USF Dean David Harnett wrote a letter to California provincial officials, obtained by SF Weekly, explaining that McGuire would not be rehired for the following academic year. Among the reasons Harnett cited for the priest's sacking were "highly questionable acts on his part" and "interactions with a student." Reached by telephone in Philadelphia, where he now lives in retirement, Harnett said he did not recall the letter or the circumstances of McGuire's departure. Father Joseph Angilella, academic vice-president of the university at the time, declined to comment on McGuire's firing or whether it was linked to incidents of abuse involving USF students. "It's unfortunate you have that letter, but I'm not going to add to it," he said. "This material is confidential in terms of the decision that was made. I assure you that nothing that happened during these times has anything to do with the present legal matters that are happening in the Midwest."

Doe 129's attorneys plan to depose California Jesuits, including some formerly associated with USF. However, university records — as opposed to those kept by the California Province — illuminate almost nothing about McGuire's time as a professor in San Francisco. Apparently, that's because they no longer exist. When Doe 129's lawyers requested the school's personnel records on the priest from the four years he taught at the St. Ignatius Institute, they were told that the file on one of the church's most notorious predators had been thrown out.

In an e-mail response to questions about McGuire from SF Weekly, USF spokesman Gary McDonald offered this explanation: "USF retains employee records for seven years after an employee leaves the university, and USF has few employee records dating back 30 years, including those of Donald McGuire."


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McGuire's ouster from the university's St. Ignatius Institute did not signal the end of his career. Far from it. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, he took up the life of an itinerant spiritual adviser. Based at a Jesuit residence in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, McGuire trotted the globe, leading the Ignatian spiritual retreats that had become the hallmark of his ministry. The retreats typically involved daylong prayer and ritual interspersed with talks from a priest. During these trips, observers say, McGuire was often accompanied by teenage male attendants who he said helped him manage his diabetes.

It was during this time that McGuire first met Mother Teresa. Fessio said he introduced the pair after the nun had asked him during a visit to San Francisco to recommend a priest who could lead retreats for the nuns of her order. Despite the two men's prickly relationship while academic colleagues in the late 1970s, Fessio suggested she seek out McGuire.

From the beginning, Fessio said, Mother Teresa's opinion of McGuire was "very high." Though he was probably not — as he liked to boast — her most esteemed spiritual adviser and confessor, observers of the pair agree that she respected McGuire, and would occasionally confess her sins to him.

Judie Hockel and her husband, Jack, often hosted McGuire's retreats in Northern California at their Walnut Creek home. The couple met him through their oldest son, who was a student at USF during McGuire's time there. (On his subsequent trips to the Bay Area, McGuire often stayed at a house attached to a Carmelite monastery adjacent to the USF campus.) Even now, Judie Hockel, 70, finds it hard to reconcile McGuire's charisma and intellectual heft with his acts of abuse.

"Everything seemed to combine together to give him a really superhuman ability — it probably was superhuman; Satan is pure intelligence, and maybe that's where it came from — to make you feel that you were liked by God, that you were worthy of being loved by God, that Christ was calling you to be closer to him," she said. "Catholicism is an adult religion. I certainly would not want to deny the significance of faith, but a lot of times people need a grasp of the rational thought. They're not getting the depth or the richness of Catholicism from the pulpit these days, and Donald McGuire filled that need in many people's lives."

In contrast to other Jesuits, who tend to occupy the liberal end of the Catholic spectrum on political and cultural issues, McGuire was a staunch conservative on doctrinal questions, including those involving gender and sexuality. Brigid Crotty, a 40-year-old Napa resident whose family became close to McGuire in the 1980s, recalled that the priest demanded that women wear long skirts in his presence.

Looking back, Hockel said she could pick out "red flags" that signaled an unstable personality. "There was always a chaos that surrounded his presence," she said. Meetings started late; appointments were not kept; people were made to wait, or to indulge McGuire's eccentricities. He was something of a control freak, forcing his hosts to cater to strict demands regarding his schedule, accommodations, and diet.

"He always wanted a salad with his meal," Hockel said. "He always wanted four ounces of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I can't believe every time he came I actually made an effort to squeeze orange juice. You look back ..." She paused. "I think deep down inside he enjoyed the coronation that we laypeople gave him, because we felt so lucky that we had this time with this brilliant, devout prophet."

It was this later phase of McGuire's life, as a traveling Jesuit guru, that federal authorities investigated as they built their case against him. They discovered that the priest, while he preached the virtues of intensely orthodox Catholicism to his followers, was subverting the traditions of his calling in startling ways. According to a sentencing memorandum filed by federal prosecutors after McGuire's conviction, one of his primary means of "grooming" young abuse victims was the ritual of confession.

For example, when the primary victim in the case confessed to McGuire at the age of 13 that he masturbated, McGuire "seized on it" and said the boy had an "addiction" that could send him to hell, according to court documents. He then demanded to "inspect" the boy's penis using a magnifying glass and baby oil.

Doe 129 said he was never abused in the confessional. But he does recall other strange twists on McGuire's vocational interests. During a visit to the Jesuit residence in Evanston, Doe 129 said, McGuire began masturbating in front of him in a private upstairs room. The classics scholar had allegedly preceded this exhibition with a discourse on how gay sex was a common practice among the ancient Greeks.

There is reason to believe that Doe 129 was not McGuire's sole local victim during his post-USF decades of world travel. A colleague of McGuire's within the church said in a recent interview that he received a complaint from a Bay Area family that McGuire was molesting their teenage son in the years after the priest left the university. The church official, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal from his superiors, said he had passed the complaint on to McGuire's Jesuit higher-ups. (Doe 129 confirmed that he was not the complainant.)

Likewise, Crotty said her father, Fran Crotty, a former administrator at a North Bay Catholic school, was informed "in no uncertain terms" sometime in the last few years by a local man that McGuire had abused his son in the past. Reached by telephone, Fran Crotty declined to comment. "I'm not at liberty to discuss anything concerning McGuire," he said.

Stephen Komie, McGuire's Chicago-based lawyer, said in an interview that his client continues to maintain that the allegations leveled at him are lies intended to wring money from the church — and that his criminal convictions are simply by-products of accusations that drove the civil suits against him. "Father McGuire has always said that these are stories made up for the financial benefit of the persons who are bringing the case," Komie said.


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It is true that the interplay among abuse victims, private attorneys, and law-enforcement officials in McGuire's case has at times been complicated. The victim whose complaint led to McGuire's federal conviction — his identity was withheld during the trial, and he is named in court records only as Dominick — originally consulted a private attorney known for representing plaintiffs in priest-pedophilia civil suits in Southern California. That attorney's name is Kevin McGuire, and he is Donald McGuire's nephew.

Kevin McGuire said he urged Dominick to take his allegations to federal authorities, and accompanied him to the U.S. Attorney's office on the day he filed a complaint. "I traveled in the same Catholic circles that a lot of these same victims traveled in," he said. "I realized it was my obligation to turn my uncle in. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do."

Kevin McGuire is also representing Doe 129, who claims he is motivated by desire to hold the priest's superiors to account, rather than the prospect of financial gain. The litigation "certainly hasn't made my life any easier, and it's certainly not fun, and I certainly question whether there's any justice that can be done," said Doe 129, who still lives in the Bay Area. "I'm just really disgusted and furious about the fact that they knew about this for so goddamn long, and didn't do anything about it. If you had a carpet-cleaning business and a guy was a rapist, you wouldn't let him out and about working for you."

In response to questions from SF Weekly about Doe 129's lawsuit, Chicago Jesuit Provincial Edward Schmidt (the regional head of his order) said in a statement that the province was "aware" of the suit. "Because this matter involves a court action, we do not plan to make any further comment about these particular allegations at this time," he said.

Kevin McGuire said his uncle's time as a professor in San Francisco, and his later trips to the Bay Area and around the world, were encouraged by superiors as a "pass-the-trash" strategy to keep the predator priest far from his home base. "USF was a place where the Chicago Province sent Father McGuire to get him the hell out of their hair," he said. "That's why this guy was allowed to roam around the country. They wanted him everywhere but Chicago."

And he said that while there's no evidence Mother Teresa herself was consciously covering up for the priest whose piety she admired, the nun, who died in 1997, should have known something wasn't right.

"I think Mother Teresa had plenty of evidence in front of her that something was wrong," Kevin McGuire said. "When you see Father McGuire seven to nine times a year at your retreat houses or nunneries around the world, and he's constantly with teenage boys who are essentially his slaves, and to have these boys in your bedroom — yeah, I think that's plenty of notice to anyone with oxygen in your brain. I don't care how holy you think your confessor is. Something's wrong."


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While Doe 129's lawsuit moves forward in Illinois, McGuire, who according to his lawyer is legally blind and suffers from diabetes, has begun serving his 25-year prison sentence at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. His federal conviction is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. (In May, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals denied his request for a new trial in that state related to his earlier abuse charges.) Absent a successful appeal, Komie said, his client "is not going to survive this prison sentence."

As the disgraced priest faces his earthly end, he has resolutely declined to embrace a concept at the very core of Catholicism: repentance. McGuire, the great confessor, has never admitted guilt in any of the instances of abuse for which he stands accused or convicted. He has also taken what could be interpreted as a less-than-Christian stance toward the victims who have chosen to speak against him.

"I want my accusers to be sentenced," he said during the postconviction phase of his first trial in Wisconsin in 2006. McGuire took advantage of his opportunity to address the judge prior to sentencing to profess his innocence in a rambling soliloquy in which he compared himself to Socrates, St. Thomas More, and Jesus. "I am humbled when I think of the company of saints I'm called to join here," he said, according to a trial transcript.

Earlier that day, McGuire said, he had meditated on his life. "I plead with the Holy Spirit to enlighten me, show me, in what way am I not living truthfully," he said. He added that he had resolved "to be more truthful, more like Jesus. I don't know how other people live, but that's the only way I can live." He continued, "Your Honor, I did all of this with the image of Christ crucified before me. I've never been closer to the crucified Christ, never in my life. It's a terrible experience, but it's glorious."