Teresa complains against group

Press, 12 April 1984, Page 11

Teresa complains against group

NZPA-AP New York Mother Teresa of Calcutta has filed a complaint against a foundation which she said was using her name without authorisation to raise funds. The complaint was filed by Sister Mary Priscilla against the Foundation' of Tribute to Mother Teresa. Sister Priscilla is the local superior of the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa. The complaint included a copy of a hand-written note from Mother Teresa to Robert Pearlman, listed as one of the directors of the foundation, accusing it of

committing, “the greatest injustice done to the poor.” Officials of the foundation were not available for comment immediately. “I have come to the conclusion that ‘Tribute to Mother Teresa’ is one more way of the rich using the poor to make money,” she wrote in the letter on file with the state’s LawyerGeneral’s Office. “The money that would have bought food for the hungry child you are holding as your own. I am afraid you are making use of our poverty to enrich yourselves. Don’t do it It is the greatest injustice to the poor if you continue doing

what you are doing.

“I beg you in the name of God and in the name of the poorest of the poor who are dying of hunger and disease, please stop it” Mother Teresa wrote that 21,000 of 46,000 people given shelter from the streets in her home in Calcutta had died of hunger and disease. “When I look at the numbers — in one place only — my heart is full of pain, for if we had shared with them in time, maybe they would not have died in such numbers.

“In your own country, go to 335 E. 145th St, Bronx. You will see the same hunger not only for bread

but for love and compassion. Our poor in the rich countries suffer very much more.

“What we see in the shutins in New York and other cities of the United States is very difficult to explain,” she said.

Sister Priscilla, acting as lawyer for Mother Teresa, said in the complaint that the foundation did not have the consent of Mother Teresa to use her name. She said that unauthorised use of Mother Teresa’s name for its advertising, "would be upsetting to her, inasmuch as it would impede the work of the Missionaries of Charity.”