Mother Teresa, "Hell's Angel"

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa

Controversies concerning Agnes Bojaxhiu's {Mother Teresa's} activities

Until the 1990s, Mother Teresa's activities were treated in the mass media with relatively little criticism. This tendency in reporting is generally believed to be the result of a trend started by BBC reporter Malcolm Muggeridge, who portrayed Bojaxhiu as a modern day saint in his TV documentary Something Beautiful for God and best-selling book of the same title. The strongest attack against her came in 1994, when Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali wrote the scathing Channel 4 documentary Hell's Angel. The next year, Hitchens published The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, a 100-page pamphlet which repeats many of the accusations in the documentary.

Hitchens views Teresa's organization as a cult which promotes suffering and does not help those in need. He states that the impression the general public has about Mother Teresa's work is the opposite of reality, and that this is more the fault of the mass media than of Teresa herself. In his view, the idea that someone, somewhere is helping the poor of the world appealed to western viewers and quieted their conscience.

Hitchens cites Teresa's own words on poverty as evidence that her intention was never to help people. {...}

"Mother Teresa, what do you hope to accomplish here?"
"The joy of loving and being loved."
"That takes a lot of money, doesn't it?"
"It takes a lot of sacrifice."
"Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?"
"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

Hitchens states that Teresa was always perfectly honest that her goal was not to heal people, but to help them in their endurance of suffering....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa