Mother Teresa, that clever little devil

HELL'S ANGEL (1994)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

British author with a sharp pen and sharper knives, Christopher Hitchens, came out full force against Mother Teresa in a BBC-produced documentary short called "Hell's Angel." Mother Teresa is normally equated with being a living saint, a woman who championed and supported the poor. Normally she is not considered anything remotely hellish, at least not in character. Hitchens has painted a damning character assassination of Mother Teresa, demonizing her and debunking her saintly demeanor.

From the start, we learn that a BBC reporter, Malcolm Muggeridge, went to see Mother Teresa and witnessed a miracle. The miracle shown in a newly developed Kodak film for the camera apparently shows the divine light, as if Teresa gave off this light supernaturally. In a headlong series of montages with repeated chanting heard on the soundtrack, Hitchens crucifies Teresa relentlessly, from her pro-life and anti-birth control stance, to accepting millions from some corrupt businessmen including Charles Keating (involved in banking fraud and racketeering), to the deplorable conditions of various Missionaries of Charity hospices, to her declaration that the world is being "much helped by the suffering of the poor," etc. The assumption from Hitchens is that Teresa did not believe in giving proper health care to the poor, though she received it herself. The conditions in these places is shown as unsanitary and deemed as such by witnesses, especially when you consider the use of unclean needles, no IV and nothing more than aspirin to curb their pain. Ouch!

"Hells' Angel" is incendiary times Hitchens 140 squared. Most of this short 24-minute film is compelling and there is ample evidence to support that Mother Teresa was a legend, a saint to the Western audience who were deceived by the media-created icon (through no fault of her own) who gave her life to the poor. The late Hitchens himself was an avowed atheist who doesn't blame Teresa as much as the media forces that surreptitiously clouded her with ethereal light. However, he has been quoted as saying the following: “She 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." Although Hitchens speaks such words in the film, Teresa's own admission to such pronouncements in the film, more or less paraphrased, can give one pause. Perhaps it is indicative that Hitchens simply has a problem with how religion is practiced, that it is largely politically motivated, rather than Mother Teresa's innocent embracement of it.