Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, feted by politicians, the Church and the world's media. But what, asks Christopher Hitchens, makes Mother Teresa so divine?
In a frank expose of the Teresa cult, Hitchens details the nature and limits of one woman's mission to the world's poor. He probes the source of the heroic status bestowed upon an Albanian nun whose only declared wish is to serve God. He asks whether Mother Teresa's good works answer any higher purpose than the need of the world's privileged to see someone, somewhere, doing something for the Third World. He unmasks pseudo-miracles, questions Mother Teresa's fitness to adjudicate on matters of sex and reproduction, and reports on a version of saintly ubiquity which affords genial relations with dictators, corrupt tycoons and convicted frauds.
Hitchens definitely had his problems, but critiquing Mother Teresa for all the absolute shit she did was not one of them. Because of his proximity to the other horsemen and as a result of some of his other views, I was expecting for there to be some major issues here.
But it's a good starting point for anyone who wants directions in critiquing the harms and impacts of Mother Teresa or, in general, the church system that supported her bullshit.
