Speaking in Illinois Monday, Hillary Clinton touted her relationship with the Roman Catholic Church’s newest saint, Teresa of Calcutta, even though the two had opposing views. “I was fortunate enough to know Mother Teresa. I was fortunate enough to even work with her,” Clinton said, according to CNN’s Dan Merica. “We didn’t agree on everything, but we found common ground.”
What did Clinton work on with Mother Teresa? THE WEEKLY STANDARD has asked the Clinton campaign to clarify what the former secretary of state was talking about and has yet to hear a response. But it is true that when Clinton was first lady she knew Mother Teresa, corresponding with her and even helping open an adoption center in the nation’s capital for the India-based nun’s congregation, the Missionaries of Charity.
The two first met at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, where Mother Teresa was the keynote speaker. In her speech (which you can watch here), Mother Teresa spoke about the evil of abortion. “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself,” said the future saint. The pro-choice president and vice president, and their pro-choices wives, sat silently in the room as the rest of the attendees applauded.
As Hillary Clinton recounted in her autobiography, Mother Teresa persisted with Clinton after the breakfast privately about protecting the lives of the unborn. Here’s an excerpt from Living History about their conversation:
It was on this “common ground” of adoption that Clinton and Mother Teresa worked together. Here’s what Paul Kengor wrote in 2010 for TWS on the subject:
It’s a moving story, but as Kengor point out, it’s unfortunately not the end of it. A reporter for the Christian magazine World, Emily Belz, discovered in 2010 that the home housing the adoption center in the neighborhood of Chevy Chase in northwest Washington had been sold—in 2002. “[I]t remains unclear whether [the home] facilitated any adoptions,” Belz wrote.
A spokesman for Clinton, who was then the secretary of state, responded to Fox News’s inquiry about the adoption center’s closing by saying Clinton “remains very proud of her work with Mother Teresa in opening this home in 1995. Their partnership is a success story to be emulated.”
The Missionaries of Charity remain present in the nation’s capital, with a convent located in a neighborhood in Northeast D.C.—a much poorer part of Washington than tony Chevy Chase.
Update: Clinton appears to have first learned of the closing of the center after the press inquiries following Belz’s story for World. As emails released last eyar after the investigation into her private email server reveal, Clinton and spokesman Philippe Reines corresponded on email in 2010 about the closing. The then-secretary of state complained about the bad look for her. “Why does stuff like this stalk us?” she asked Reines in one email.
As Jeryl Bier reported for TWS, Clinton continued to tout her working relationship with Mother Teresa after learning about the closing of the adoption center:
