Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Supposed “facts” posted on social media are actually complete fiction.
If you’re not familiar with the phenomenon of people, both knowingly and unknowingly, spreading memes full of falsehoods to all their friends, then please allow me to welcome you on this, your first ever day on the interwebs.
It’s a wondrous place but it can be a cruel mistress at times.
So with that in mind, let’s examine a meme that’s making the rounds, one that puts forth two lies for the price of one – that Dr. Anthony Fauci is the son of the late, sainted Mother Teresa and that in life she used her work with children as a front for a child-trafficking business.
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Both claims are linked to a little-known website called Dark Outpost. A quick scan of the site’s front page offers a wealth of headlines rooted in wild conspiracy theories with no basis in truth. But what about these two particular claims?
First, despite what some might consider a facial resemblance, Dr. Anthony Fauci is most definitely not the son of Mother Teresa. Fauci was born to Stephen and Eugenia Fauci in Brooklyn on Christmas Eve, 1940.
Mother Teresa was working as a teacher at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, India, at the time if you’re looking for her whereabouts that day.
As for the child-trafficking allegation, as we often see with internet lies, this one has a root in the smallest kernel of truth but it has been spun into a deeply-insidious direction.
In 2018, two people who worked at Missionaries of Charities, the order founded by Mother Teresa in 1950, were apprehended and charged with selling infants to adoptive parents. NPR reported on the incident at the time.
However, there is zero evidence that the operation involved Mother Teresa, and she’s got an airtight alibi in the case: She had been dead for 21 years, having passed away in 1997.
Hopefully, armed with these facts, you can bravely march once more into the breach that is the worldwide web and face down the deceivers. Happy browsing.
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