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.^3As 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,
126 MOTHER TERESA