Christopher Hitchens - Penn & Teller TV - Aroup Chatterjee - Richard Dawkins - Samini Najmi & Rajini Srikanth - Mother Teresa: For the Love of God TV -
Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually said, in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.’ What? How can a woman with such cock-eyed judgement be taken seriously on any topic, let alone be thought seriously worthy of a Nobel Prize? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion. Mother Teresa, Nobel Prize acceptance speech
[Mother Teresa] was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions. Christopher Hitchens, Mommie Dearest, cited Slate 2003
I would describe Mother Teresa as a fraud, a fanatic, and a fundamentalist. Christopher Hitchens, author The Missionary Position
The Theresa cult is now a missionary multinational with an annual turnover in the tens of millions. It concentrated in Calcutta, that could certainly support a large hospital and perhaps even make a noticeable difference. But Mother Teresa has chosen instead to spread her franchise very thinly – to her the convent and the catechism matter more than the clinic ... She lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters which is hardly the essence of simplicity. And she preaches surrender and frustration to the poor ... She takes on the grim and tedious tones of the zealot and the fanatic. Christopher Hitchens, Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa
Everything everybody thinks they know about her is false ... She was corrupt, nasty, cynical and cruel. Christopher Hitchens
MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been – she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself – and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility? Christopher Hitchens, article Slate October 2003
When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as ‘Mother’ Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of ‘Devil’s Advocate’, in order to fast-track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono. Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Widely and uncritically accepted … the saintliness of an Albanian nun … extravagant adulation … so how did this auction of hyperbole and credulity get started? Christopher Hitchens, Hell’s Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Channel 4 1994
This profane marriage between tawdry media hype and media superstition. ibid.
Mother Teresa’s cult of death and suffering depends for its effect on the most vulnerable and helpless. ibid.
For someone whose kingdom is not of this Earth Mother Teresa has an easy way with thrones, dominions and powers. ibid.
An ally of the status quo … a trusted ally of the conservative forces. ibid.
The ghastly Mother Teresa – what’s motherly about her? Hideous virgin and fraud and fanatic fundamentalist – shrivelled old bat. Christopher Hitchens, AAI 2007
She was a friend of poverty, a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud. Christopher Hitchens, re Mother Theresa
Mother Teresa was known for her home for the dying in Calcutta, India. It sure ain’t no hospital. Penn & Teller, Bullshit! s3e5: Holier Than Thou, Showtime 2005
Old Mother Teresa in this 1991 photo op with Baby Doc’s wife claimed that the Duvaliers loved the poor, the poor loved them, and most outrageous of all: ‘It was a beautiful lesson for me.’ ibid.
As with most bullshit follow the money. ibid.
But what I find somewhat disturbing is that she remained inactive when children were hurt or killed, or were at the risk of being orphaned ... this did not sit comfortably with her ‘Child First’ philosophy. But then, for her the unborn child was far more important than the actual child. Having gone through hundreds of her speeches I have wondered, when compared to the unborn child if the actual child mattered to her at all. Aroup Chatterjee, Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict, 1998
Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually said, in her speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, ‘The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.’ What? How can a woman with such cock-eyed judgement be taken seriously on any topic, let alone be thought seriously worthy of a Nobel Prize? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Mother Teresa is the quintessential image of the white woman in the colonies, working to save the dark bodies from their own temptations and failures ... The Euro-American-dominated international media continue to harbour the colonial notion that white peoples are somehow especially endowed with the capacity to create social change. When nonwhite people labour in this direction, the media typically search for white benefactors or teachers, or else, for white people who stand in the wings to direct the nonwhite actors. Dark bodies cannot act of their own volition to stretch their own capacity, for they must wait, the media seem to imply, for some colonial administrator, some technocrat from IBM or the IMF to tell them how to do things. When it comes to saving the poor, the dark bodies are again invisible, for the media seem to celebrate only the worn out platitudes of such as Mother Teresa and ignore the struggles of those bodies for their own liberation. To open the life of someone like Mother Teresa to scrutiny, therefore, is always difficult ... Mother Teresa’s work was part of a global enterprise for the alleviation of bourgeois guilt, rather than a genuine challenge to those forces that produce and maintain poverty. Samina Najmi & Rajini Srikanth, White Women in Racialized Spaces
But few people know the woman behind the public image. Her work has sparked bitter controversy. Mother Teresa: For the Love of God I? captions, Sky Documentaries 2022
She was a charlatan. Pure and simple. ibid. Tariq Ali
The nuns were not delivering special care. Needles were used over and over again. They were blunt. They were washing in cold water. They weren’t sterilised. And I saw very disturbing treatment of newly arrived patients … The indifference to suffering. The indifference to pain. ibid. visiting doctor
By 1980 Mother Teresa had become a global icon. But private letters reveal her struggle with her new found celebrity. Mother Teresa, For the Love of God II? captions
Mother Teresa became the flagbearer of the political right. ibid. Dr Aroup Chatterjee
Several of the things that the Missionaries of Charity require of their members are very similar to the things that cults require. ibid. ex-nun
As a reporter the first thing you ask is, What are you doing with the money? ibid. investigator
While the bank account was getting higher and higher the funds didn’t find their way out into the poor. ibid. ex-nun
In her final decade she would face doubt, criticism, scandal. Mother Teresa: For the Love of God? III, caption
She lends spiritual solace to dictators and to wealthy exploiters. ibid. Hitchens
The picture begins to emerge of someone who is both sly and fraudulent, and loves being promoted. ibid. Tariq Ali