had the benefit of an almost unprecedented public forum. But while
speaking out against abortion in Great Britain, Ireland, and the United
States, she remained noticeably silent on the topics of unlawful deaths,
murders, and oppression in such political hotspots as Ethiopia, Haiti, and
Albania, where she kissed the hands of ruling dictators and willingly took
their money and their awards.
Her refusal to acknowledge the deep problems of poverty emerged in
Hitchens’s description of a 1981 visit that Mother Teresa made to Ana-
costia, an African American ghetto in Washington, D.C. At that time,
the Missionaries of Charity intended to establish some sort of operation
there, though many of the area’s residents did not want to give the im-
pression that their neighborhood was helpless and poor like many of the
Third World areas in which Mother Teresa worked. Just before a press
conference, a group of African American men visited Mother Teresa:
They were very upset.... They told Mother that Anacostia
needed decent jobs, housing and services—not charity.
Mother didn’t argue with them; she just listened. Finally one of
them asked her what she was going to do here. Mother said:
“First we must learn to love one another.” They didn’t know
what to say to that.^7Hitchens’s book, like the film, had its detractors and admirers. George
Sim Johnston, writing for the American conservative publication The
National Review,called Hitchens’s work “unresisting imbecility,” and
added that “the only good that will come from this book is the prayers the
nuns of Mother Teresa’s order are no doubt saying for its author.”^8 The
New York Times Book Reviewfound that Hitchens’s book is, “zealously
overwritten, and rails wildly in defense of an almost nonsensical proposi-
tion: that Mother Teresa of Calcutta is actually not a saint but an evil and
selfish old woman.” Yet the reviewer concluded that Hitchens had a
point: “Ultimately, he argues, Mother Teresa is less interested in helping
the poor than in using them as an indefatigable source of wretchedness on
which to fuel the expansion of her fundamentalist Roman Catholic be-
liefs.”^9 TheSunday Timeswas even more succinct: “Veteran lefty kicks old
nun; old nun forgives; lefty doesn’t want to be forgiven.”^10
Mary Poplin, a journalist writing for Commonwealmagazine, visited
Calcutta in 1996. She was there to write about Mother Teresa and her
work; she also took the opportunity to ask Mother Teresa about the
Hitchens’s book. According to Poplin’s account, when questioned about
the charge that Mother Teresa was one of the wealthiest women in the
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