Mother Teresa: a biography

HELL’S ANGEL
On November 8, 1994, the switchboard operator at the British tele-
vision station Channel Four was bombarded by over 200 calls. Many of
the callers were irate viewers who had just finished watching a half-hour
film called 
Hell’s Angel,
produced by Pakistani-born Tariq Ali, a noted and
controversial author and broadcaster. The angel was Mother Teresa, and
the tempest surrounding the film, already generating controversy in pre-
views, showed no sign of cooling down soon.
The film, which featured journalist Christopher Hitchens, made some
accusations, many of which had been noted earlier by the British-born
Hitchens in his writings for such well-known publications as 
Vanity Fair
and the ultraliberal news magazine 
Nation.
Among the many inflamma-
tory statements Hitchens made was that “Mother Teresa has an easy way
with thrones, dominions and powers,” and operated “as the roving ambas-
sador of [the] highly politicized papacy”
1
of Pope John Paul II. In addition,
Hitchens charged that Mother Teresa
lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters,
which is scarcely the essence of simplicity, and she preaches
surrender and prostration to the poor, which a truly humble
person would barely have the nerve to do. . . . In a godless and
cynical age it may be inevitable that people will seek to praise
the self-effacing, the altruistic and the pure in heart. But only
a complete collapse of our critical faculties can explain the il-
lusion that such a person is manifested in the shape of a dema-
gogue, an obscurantist and a servant of earthly powers.
2
The source of the film was actually Dr. Aroup Chatterjee, a Bengali physi-
cian living in London. Dr. Chatterjee, who was born and raised in Cal-
cutta, was dismayed at the discrepancy between Mother Teresa’s work and
the growing cult-like adulation of her in the West. In a letter written to
the production company Bandung, Dr. Chatterjee also stated that Mother
Teresa’s assets totaled more than those of many Third-World govern-
ments; and that in Calcutta, unlike the West, she was regarded as some-
thing of a nonentity. Chatterjee’s greatest objection, though, was in how
closely intertwined Mother Teresa’s work and identity were with Cal-
cutta, another misconception on the part of the West. Chatterjee pointed

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out that there were a number of other individuals and groups doing far
more for the city’s poor than the Missionaries of Charity, and these groups
were completely overlooked.
The production company was more than willing to listen to Chatter-
jee’s proposal. The company had already, in its short existence, voiced
some of the very same grievances that Chatterjee had described. Calcut-
tans were annoyed that Western journalists and filmmakers portrayed
their city as a place that cared little for the poor, the sick, and the dying.
In the 1991 film 
City of Joy, 
for example, Calcutta was depicted as little
more than a dark pit of misery and despair.
The decision to interview Hitchens might at first have seemed odd.
But, in fact, he was already quite familiar with Mother Teresa, having first
met her in 1980. In a 1992 article called the “Ghoul of Calcutta,”
Hitchens described his first encounter with Mother Teresa, whom he de-
scribed as the “leathery old saint.” He had stopped at the Missionaries of
Charity facility on Bose Road and was immediately put off by the home’s
motto “He That Loveth Correction Loveth Knowledge.” Despite his re-
action, Hitchens agreed to go along on a walk with Mother Teresa. Ini-
tially, he was favorably impressed:
I was about to mutter some words of praise for the nurses
and was even fumbling in my pocket when Mother Teresa
announced: “You see, this is how we fight abortion and
contraception in Calcutta.” Mother Teresa’s avowed motive
somewhat cheapened the ostensible work of the charity and
made it appear rather more like what it actually is: an exercise
in propaganda.
3
As harsh as that initial assessment was, Hitchens had an opportunity in
the film to voice even more accusations. Against footage of Mother Teresa
that showed her bent and looking down, Hitchens described her connec-
tion with the deposed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier,
from whom she accepted large financial donations. Footage was also
shown of her laying a wreath at the grave of Enver Hoxha, the ruthless
communist dictator of Albania, and meeting with notorious figures in the
business world. According to Hitchens, Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of
Charity grossed an annual income in the neighborhood of tens of millions
of dollars.
Hitchens also suggested, as had some of Mother Teresa’s other critics,
that if the monies accumulated by the order were kept in Calcutta,
1 2 6
M O T H E R T E R E S A

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chances are the order would certainly make much more of a difference in
working with the poor. Instead, Mother Teresa spread her nuns and their
money very thinly trying to open homes throughout the world. Further,
Hitchens argued, Mother Teresa chose her convent and the church’s
teachings over the work of her clinics.
According to the BBC, the Channel Four program did spectacularly:
approximately 1.6 million viewers tuned in to watch. In the aftermath of
the documentary’s airing, callers phoning the station called the program
insulting, hurtful, offensive, obscene, untrue, obnoxious, shocking, and
satanic. One viewer even went so far as to accuse the head of the station,
Michael Grade, a Jew, of anti-Catholic bias, while both Hitchens and
Tariq Ali were branded as Bolsheviks and Marxist revolutionaries. Other
viewers believe the film was nothing less than the work of a Judeo-Muslim
conspiracy.
The Roman Catholic Church understandably rallied to Mother
Teresa’s defense, denouncing the program as a grotesque caricature of the
woman and her work. Noted Catholic writer and historian Paul Johnson
called the documentary a diabolical and malicious attack by left-wing pro-
pagandists. Another 130 viewers went so far as to lodge a complaint with
the Independent Television Commission, which, after considering the
matter, refused to sanction the station for broadcasting the film.
In Calcutta, several of Mother Teresa’s supporters rallied to her cause,
calling the film biased. As of 2004, the film has yet to be shown in India,
due in part to how expensive the film is to sell, though copies are available
privately. Mother Teresa was undeterred by the controversy surrounding
her. When asked about the film in an interview, she simply stated, “No
matter who says what, you should accept it with a smile and do your own
work.”
4
However, the day after the program was shown, she did cancel a
scheduled visit to Taiwan, but did not explain her reasons for doing so to
anyone.
Despite the backlash against the film and Hitchens, there were those
who applauded what the film tried to do. One reviewer writing for the
Guardian
stated that Hitchens was completely right in questioning what
he called the “cult of Teresa.” Another supporter of the program was the
Reverend Andrew de Berry, who had met Mother Teresa many years ear-
lier when he was a chaplain-in-training. He recalled her telling an audi-
ence that she advised the women of Calcutta to have as many children as
they wanted. De Berry then wrote that the experience stayed with him al-
ways; and undoubtedly many who died on the streets of Calcutta were the
children of mothers who took Mother Teresa’s counsel.
“ T H E M O S T O B E D I E N T W O M A N I N T H E C H U R C H ” 1 2 7

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