[GOANET] Mother Teresa

[Eddie D'Sa]

MOTHER TERESA is being fast tracked for the ultimate honour by the Vatican 'saint factory'. Christopher Hitchens, one of her trenchant critics, had produced a TV documentary about her called Hell’s Angel  (1994) and wrote the book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Verso 1998) where he dismissed her as a religious fundamentalist. Interestingly, the Vatican invited Hitchens  to act as the Devil’s Advocate and a few nights ago, he was debating with John Donahue of the Catholic Defence League in Washington.   Hitchens summarised his objections yesterday (2 Jan 03) in the Mirror (London). - M Teresa received millions of pounds in charity, some of it from dubious sources like the Duvaliers of Haiti and swindler Charles Keating. She never built any hospitals but claimed to have built some 150 convents. Was this what the money was for? - She seems to have spent more time travelling and posing with the rich and famous than treating the sick & lepers. - To her, contraception and abortion were not just immoral but threats to world peace! -  When she was sick, she made sure of being treated at top US clinics, not in Calcutta.   Vijay Prashad, Associate Prof at Trinity College, Hartford, CT had written about M Teresa in the Goan Overseas Digest in Jan 1998. He noted with insight that to M Teresa (and to church leaders), poverty is 'beautiful', its causes not to be challenged. She was not averse to moving with the makers of poverty like Reagan or Thatcher. Like the popes she remained subservient to power. For example, how did she & Pope JPII view the Bhopal disaster (1984)? As a product of capitalist greed? Hardly. They called it a ‘sad event’ that resulted from ‘man’s efforts to make progress.’