"If you were there, you would have said, 'What hypocrisy'"

Yes I probably would have.

Turns out that soon to be saint, Agnes Bojaxhiu, better known to you and me as Mother Teresa, didn't so much suffer a "long dark teatime of the soul" but rather a full on loss of faith, pretty soon after founding her so-called "hospital" in Calcutta in the 1940's.

So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

Quite frankly Agnes, yes you did.

So why did she carry on? Well why do I carry on being a computer programming bod after twenty years? Quite simply this is what I know what to do and it's a bit late to suddenly make a change into being a ship's captain or a painter and decorator. I had a long chat once with a vicar who admitted that he's lost his faith years ago. When I asked him what made him continue working for the church he said "It's a comfortable life, nice house, don't have to work too hard and the pension is terrific".

Trouble with Agnes was that I think that the brainwashing had taken too much of a hold and though it was apparent to her that nothing was there, "I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear", she just could not help keeping on keeping on. Maybe she reasoned if she went out all balls to the wall and tried really, really hard and stuck really, really firmly to the doctrine of Mother Church she might start hearing the little voices in her head again. She certainly believed in that most pernicious of lies that suffering is somehow virtuous; conditions in her "hospital" have widely been reported as dreadful and the treatments, cold baths for everyone, aspirin the only treatment for cancer patients, useless or worse than useless; added to this that she spent her whole life vehemently arguing against letting women take control of their bodies (the one thing along with education that's been proven as a cure for poverty).

Mind you she could just have realised that it was all complete arse and decided to milk it for all she could get. Over the years she received millions in donations but conditions and treatment stayed the same at her flagship "hospital" although up to 500 other such "hospitals", all bearing her name, were set up with the money (very modest and humble, not!) and that money sometimes came from some very dodgy sources including the Duvaliers of Haiti and corrupt banker Charles Keating (in the latter case when the auditor wrote suggesting that maybe Agnes would like to return some of the money stolen not a single cent was given back). Gullible twerps like that simpering cunt Malcolm Muggeridge and latterly Diana Spencer giving her the oxygen of publicity were, quite literally, a godsend. Come to think of it she's about as saintly as the Borgia Popes.

Still it didn't do any good. The little voice in her head never came back, even when lying in a nice, expensive Californian hospital (no backstreets of Calcutta for her) at the end; once you lose it it's gone for good.