Mother Teresa's Charity Accused of Selling Babies

Police stand outside a home which provides shelter for pregnant unmarried women run by the Missionaries of Charity, in Ranchi, India, July 4, 2018. | Photo: Reuters

Last week, Indian authorities said they busted a baby-trafficking racket in a shelter run by the Missionaries of Charity, the religious sect set up by the world-renowned Mother Teresa, the late Albanian-Indian missionary, in 1950.

The police told the Reuters they had taken two people into custody for allegedly selling infants from a shelter for unwed mothers in the eastern state of Jharkhand. The facility in Jharkhand state is operated by Missionaries of Charity.

"They have said that at least five to six babies have been sold to childless couples," police officer Aman Kumar told the Reuters. "We are investigating to see how the operation was run and how many more children have been given away in the last few years."

According to the child welfare authorities, a nun and another person linked to the charity were selling babies to childless couples for amounts ranging between US$550 and US$1,450.

The police arrested an Indian couple who claimed they paid a little over US$1,500 to a staff member for a baby boy born to one of the home's residents who was 14-days old at the time. The couple lodged a complaint after the worker allegedly took the baby back and kept their money, the Deutsche Welle reported.

A Missionaries of Charity spokeswoman was quoted by the Associated Press saying the charity had stopped giving children up for adoption three years ago and also denied taking money from parents. But the police officer claimed that nearly US$1200 was recovered from the two people who were arrested.

Subramanian Swamy, a senior MP from the ruling nationalist Bhartiya Janta Party has called for Mother Teresa’s Bharat Ratna award to be rescinded if the Missionaries of Charity group is found guilty. "I 100-per-cent support it," Swamy told India Today about the decision to rescind the honor posthumously if the allegations are proven true.

Swamy also alluded to Teresa's proximity to the late U.S.-based financier Charles Keating, who was convicted of swindling millions of dollars from small investors in the 1980s.

Teresa received hefty donations from Keating, and she even wrote a letter to a California Superior Court judge seeking clemency for Keating on account of his "kind and generous to God’s poor," nature, as pointed out by Christopher Hitchens in his book, "The Missionary Position."

The Nobel peace laureate's legacy largely remains contested but she was recently given sainthood after she died in 1997 at the age of 87.

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