By: Praveen Kumar
July 4 2023
No, Dr. Anthony Fauci is not Mother Teresa's son, and there is no evidence she was involved in child trafficking
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
Mother Teresa and Dr. Anthony Fauci are not related to each other. Further, there is no evidence that she was part of any child trafficking activities
Claim ID 4ff19f46
Context
Images of Mother Teresa and Dr. Anthony Fauci are being shared on social media claiming that they are related and that she was actively involved in child trafficking. A viral tweet claims Mother Teresa was a male who fathered Dr. Fauci and was also one of the "biggest child traffickers in his time." The tweet contains a screenshot of various images of Mother Teresa with various people, one of whom can be identified as Dr. Fauci.
These claims have been circulating online for several years. None are true.
In Fact
According to the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s biography states that she was born in Skopje, North Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. Her parents were Nikola and Drana Bojaxhiu, and she was named Gonxha. When she was 18, she joined the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loreto nuns) in Ireland, intending to serve the poor in India. It adds, “Gonxha left her home in September 1928, and upon arrival at Rathfarnham Abbey, was given the name Sister Teresa.” She arrived in India in January 1929.
According to the Vatican’s Holy See website, she came to be known as Mother Teresa in 1937, after she made her final profession as a Loreto nun. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata in 1950, received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work in 1979, and died in September 1997.
A detailed family history of Fauci, compiled by genealogist Bradley Greenland, is available for public viewing. Dr. Fauci, who served as the Medical Advisor to the U.S. President at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the focus of many false and misleading. According to various public sources, Fauci was born to Italian-American parents Eugenia and Stephen on December 24, 1940, in Brooklyn, New York. Dr. Fauci attended Regis High School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Classics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1962. A 2008 obituary by The New York Times shows his parents are deceased.
According to Mother Teresa’s biography by Meg Greene, in 1960, the former traveled outside India for the first time in 1929. This was years after Fauci was born. None of Dr. Fauci’s or Mother Teresa’s biographies indicate that they were related, and there are no records of Dr. Fauci meeting Mother Teresa. We were unable to trace the origins of the viral image showing them standing together with other nuns in a black-and-white photograph.
Further, the claim that Mother Teresa was a man is unfounded.
Despite many controversies surrounding Mother Teresa’s religious views and her handling of the poor and ill in India, child trafficking accusations against her and her institution came up two decades after Mother Teresa passed away. In 2018, NDTV reported that a nun working at the Missionaries of Charity had been arrested for selling babies for adoption. There is no evidence that Mother Teresa herself was ever involved in any child trafficking activities.
The Verdict
Dr. Anthony Fauci and Mother Teresa are not related to each other, and there is no evidence that she was ever part of any child trafficking activities. Therefore, we have marked this claim false.