You have triggered the annual Mother Theresa Scam post.
Mother Theresa died in 1978. Her recent "death" merely marked
the passing of the fourth and final imitator lined up by the
Catholic Church to play the role of the "Saint of the Gutters".
When the real Mother died the Catholic Church was worried.
Through her work in the slums of Calcutta, Mother Theresa had
provided the church with immeasurable positive publicity around
the world.
The Vatican Bank held data showing the saintly image of Mother Theresa
was responsible for the generation of hundreds of millions of dollars
in donations to the church.
Put bluntly, the Vatican Bank viewed Mother Theresa as a goldmine -
as big as, if not bigger, than a major rock or movies star.
Now she was dead and the goldmine was to close. Or was it?
While news of Mother Theresa's death was hushed up - even from the Pope
himself - a proposal was drawn up by the Vatican Bank. It called for a
lookalike to take the place of the dead Mother and continue her world
travel and fundraising.
A highly confidential worldwide search was undertaken and in the end
four lookalikes were found.
But the plan needed the Pope's approval, if not his blessing. The plan
suffered major setback when it was presented to the then Pope Paul VI.
The Holy Father read the briefing note and promptly dropped dead from
shock. Even the new Pope John Paul disputed the fact he had given his
approval.
When shown the letter of authority he claimed he had been tricked into
signing it as routine paperwork. John Paul became agitated and
threatened to blow lid off the scheme publicly.
The handful of senior figures within the Vatican who knew of the plan
decided John Paul was serious in threatening to expose their ruse and
decided he must be killed.
When Pope John Paul II was elected he was told nothing of the scheme and
to this day never knew the woman he greeted regularly on her visits to
Rome or in Calcutta was not the real Mother Theresa.
Apart from the real Mother's death in 1978, the other "Mothers" died in
June 1984, May 1989, December 1992 and of course September 1997.
As the church hierarchy grew more comfortable with the look-alike
scheme, greater risk would be take, such as sending out a number of
Mother Theresa at once to maximise fundraising and publicity.
In almost 20 years the scheme had only one hiccup.
In August 1982 "Mother Theresa" was taping an appearance on the Johnny
Carson Tonight Show in Los Angeles while at the same time she was
appearing at a special mass in Dijon, France.
Through sheer luck nobody uncovered the slip-up.