The Turning: The Sisters Who Left · iHeartPodcasts and Rococo Punch

S1: Ep 7 - Silence

June 29, 2021·53 min·4 clips

When Batild wrote to the Missionaries of Charity about her abuse, the Superior General responded by asking: 'Is it really true, or is it because you are so hurt in life that you can't help hurting others?'

The warning comes first. The episode then steps into silence as a religious practice, with Scripture and Mother Teresa's words setting the tone before the story tightens around Eli Anastasia. He once loved quiet prayer. After leaving the Missionaries of Charity in 2014, he says quiet became hard to bear because the memories came back, especially at night. Noise helped him get through it. The host follows him from Poland back to Russia, then to another chance with the order in India. At first, it felt like a miracle. That hope matters, because Eli Anastasia says obedience and fear of being sent away shaped what happened next. The chapel is where the pressure builds. He describes being invited to night adorations by his mistress and worrying that saying no could cost him his place. Then the story moves to Mother's Room, where Mother Teresa had stayed, with a bamboo screen and curtain instead of a door. The details are heavy. When Eli Anastasia cannot say everything aloud, the narration turns to a 2019 letter he sent the Missionaries of Charity. In it, he says his mistress framed the alleged abuse through sacrifice, salvation, chastity, and being special. Calcutta leaves him with another troubling sign. He remembers the mistress pointing to another nun in a way that made him think there may have been someone before him. Then comes the question that sticks: would he betray her? The episode lets that pressure linger before turning to responsibility. By the end, Eli Anastasia separates holy silence from silence that protects harm. Truth, not concealment, is where he says God stands.

As heard by us

A quiet, devastating account of how devotion and silence can be bent into coercion.

Silence hangs over Eli Anastasia Damidova, a former Missionaries of Charity nun, as he describes how a practice that once felt like prayer turned frightening after he left the order.

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Why you'd press play

When silence stops feeling holy and starts feeling like a threat.

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