I’m so proud to have helped report this investigative episode of the new Rococo Punch podcast The Turning: The Sisters Who Left, released through iHeart Radio, about serious and previously unreported allegations of sexual abuse within Mother Teresa’s religious order the Missionaries of Charity.
Thousands of women gave up everything to follow Mother Teresa, joining her storied Catholic order, the Missionaries of Charity. But some found that life inside this fiercely private religious order was not what they’d imagined. Former sisters who worked closely with Mother Teresa describe her bold vision and devotion to charity and prayer. But they also share stories of suffering and forbidden love, abuse and betrayal. If you make a lifelong vow, what does it mean to break it? What is the line between devotion and brainwashing? Can you truly give yourself to God? These are the questions asked and answered in Rococo Punch’s and iHeartRadio’s new, deeply reported podcast series The Turning, which you should listen to all of here.
In episode 7, “Silence,” which I helped report, we meet two former sisters who say they wanted more than anything to be part of the Missionaries of Charity. Along the road to taking their first vows, they allege their mistresses took advantage of the vow of obedience. They claim they were sexually abused by the women tasked with guiding them through the early days of their religious vocation — one in 1987 and the other in 2014.
