CALCUTTA—In what is widely believed to be the result of clerical error on the part of Heaven's massive soul-evaluation and punishment-allocation bureaucracy, The Calcutta Daily-Telegram reported Monday that beloved missionary caregiver Mother Teresa was condemned to agonizing, eternal torment in Hell following her death last Friday at the age of 87.

After a lifetime of good works, Mother Teresa is currently enduring the searing flames of Hell. Her eternal damnation is believed to be the result of a clerical error.

Widely expected to ascend into Paradise and take her rightful place among the saints to the glorious fanfare of horns and choruses upon her passing, she was instead hurled from the firmament into the bowels of the Lake of Fire.

"We can only assume that some sort of mix-up occurred in the processing phase," said St. Peter, the heavenly official in charge of the Book of Life, in which the names of those chosen to ascend to the Gates of Heaven are written. "Unfortunately, when you deal with over 70 million souls a day, these kinds of mistakes happen. What can I say? I don't know what else to tell you."


Mother Teresa, who for decades inspired the world with her selfless devotion to the starving, disease-ridden masses of Calcutta, was unavailable for comment, as she was being lowered upside-down into a vat of boiling human excrement by a trio of pitchfork-wielding demons. Similar punishment reportedly awaits her for the rest of eternity.

Ever since Monday, heavenly angels, cherubim, seraphim, and other secondary celestial entities have been working around the clock to keep up with the enormous volume of intercessionary prayers arriving daily on Mother Teresa's behalf. Despite the tremendous number of pleas, however, Heaven essentially has its hands tied.


"It's sad that this happened," the archangel Gabriel, a spokesperson for Heaven, told reporters. "But we really can't do anything about it. The whole point of eternal damnation is that it is inescapable, absolute, and irrevocable. If the Lord were to turn around and pull her out of Hell now, he'd be turning his back on millennia of Catholic doctrine, on everything Mother Teresa stood for."

Her arthritic limbs snapping like twigs as her frail, 4'11" frame was rent asunder by the claws of grotesque, multi-limbed demons, Mother Teresa reportedly screamed in indescribable agony as the superheated gases of Hell's unholy furnace blackened and charred her hair and face. According to a New York Times report, her skull has already been used as a drinking goblet by Satan, the Great Deceiver himself, and the esteemed nun's rape at the hands of insatiable, barbed-penis-wielding hellhounds in the near-future is considered "highly likely."


"I can't believe this happened," said stunned Catholic Cristina Fontanez, 38, of Petaluma, CA. "She must have been so shocked when, after a lifetime of good works, she found herself face-to-face with Satan. Instead of being thrust into the living and redemptive light of Jesus' love for all time upon her death, she instead found herself being slit from crotch to sternum and suffering the pain of red-hot instruments of torture repeatedly being plunged deep into her writhing entrails."

Speculation varies as to what could have caused such a miscarriage of heavenly justice. While some contend that Mother Teresa's policy of not administering medication to the sick and dying in her clinics may have caused some in Heaven to doubt her true compassion, others believe that her constant speeches against birth control—a contributing factor to mass overpopulation, poverty and starvation throughout the Third World—may be to blame.


Still others posit that Teresa may have sinned in her heart at some point during her long life, qualifying her for eternal damnation despite a history of good works.

"According to Catholic doctrine, even one moment of lust would be enough to justify Mother Teresa's banishment to the flame," said Archbishop Janiusz Wolsczya of Krakow. "It is possible that after years of celibacy and self-denial, her natural desires for sexual release may have built to a breaking point. I imagine that sleeping alone on that hard cot all those years and donating every ounce of her strength to the care of the poor, she must have been very lonely. The compulsion to masturbate must have been enormous."


Most observers, however, reject these explanations, firm in the belief that the eternal punishment is undeserved, the result of simple bureaucratic error on the part of heavenly officials.

"I promise a full investigation into this matter," the Apostle John, seated at the right hand of Christ Almighty, told reporters. "If any evidence of incompetence or error on the part of the officials who conducted Mother Teresa's afterlife evaluation is found, I assure you there will be serious repercussions."


Despite such strongly worded statements from Heaven, a majority of followers on Earth are calling the promise of a full investigation a case of "too little, too late."

"I feel like this has forever weakened the foundation of my faith," said 73-year-old Giancarlo Rossetti of Milan, one of over 300,000 protesters who crowded Vatican Square Tuesday to call for an immediate reversal of the Mother Teresa Hell condemnation. "She was a good woman, and she does not deserve to have her eyes torn out of their sockets by flaming packs of ravenous demon-dogs."


Satan, speaking from deep within his fortress in the Hell city of Dis, described the late Mother Teresa's soul as "succulent and tasty."