One of the first to question Mother Teresa’s handling of Nirmal Hriday
was a young medical student named Marcus Fernandes. Before coming to
Nirmal Hriday, Fernandes was already familiar with Mother Teresa and
her work. His sister had attended Loreto, and through her, he had learned
a great deal about the Missionaries of Charity.
As inexperienced at medicine as he was, Fernandes, nonetheless, was
unhappy with the haphazard clinical practices that he found at Nirmal
Hriday. He made several suggestions to Mother Teresa about how she
could improve the chances for patients’ recoveries. According to Fernan-
des, the biggest problem at Nirmal Hriday was not cancer, tuberculosis, or
heart ailments, but malnutrition. Fernandes suggested that giving patients
rice fortified with vitamin supplements would improve their chances of
survival. He also suggested new approaches to diagnosis along with a sep-
arate area where he could make a more thorough examination of patients.
His recommendations failed to convince Mother Teresa. His widow, Pa-
tricia Fernandes, remarked, “He could not persuade her to treat them with
vitamins. She did not want them treated; she expected people to die and
would simply say, ‘Well, she’s gone to God.’ She was not particularly in-
terested in medicine.”^6
Others who visited or worked at Nirmal Hriday similarly noted Mother
Teresa’s seeming nonchalance over others’ deaths. One visitor recalled
how, when her sisters asked Mother Teresa to try to save a 16-year-old boy
from dying, she simply blessed the ailing young man and said, “Never
mind, it’s a lovely day to go to Heaven.”^7 A young woman volunteer, who
had been thinking of joining the Missionaries of Charity, helped a young
woman with a heart defect enter Nirmal Hriday. Mother Teresa told her
that there was nothing more she could do, it was in God’s hands as to
whether the young woman would live or die.
Dr. Fernandes stayed at Nirmal Hriday for two years, before leaving for
London to complete his medical training. When he returned to India and
again offered his services to Mother Teresa he saw, to his dismay, that
nothing had changed at Nirmal Hriday except that some conditions had
become worse. A great deal of the money that had been donated to Nir-
mal Hriday was being wasted, and the facilities needed improvement. Fer-
nandes was particularly angered by the sight of an X-ray machine that was
now useless and rusting. When he approached Mother Teresa about it, she
told him that there was no one trained to use it. Dr. Fernandes continued
off and on to see Mother Teresa, but after her refusal to pay for his treat-
ment of a skin ailment that had been plaguing her, he severed his associ-
ation with her. He did, however, volunteer his time and services with
other charity and missionary groups in Calcutta. But, when asked, he
74 MOTHER TERESA