The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

Product Description
Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, feted by politicians, the Church and the world's media, Mother Teresa of Calcutta appears to be on the fast track to sainthood. But what, asks Christopher Hitchens, makes Mother Teresa so divine? In a frank expose of the Teresa cult, Hitchens details the nature and limits of one woman's mission to the world's poor. He probes the source of the heroic status bestowed upon an Albanian nun whose only declared wish is to serve God. He asks whether Mother Teresa's good works answer any higher purpose than the need of the world's privileged to see someone, somewhere, doing something for the Third World. He unmasks pseudo-miracles, questions Mother Teresa's fitness to adjudicate on matters of sex and reproduction, and reports on a version of saintly ubiquity which affords genial relations with dictators, corrupt tycoons and convicted frauds.


About the Author
Christopher Hitchens is a journalist living in Washington. He writes the 'Cultural Elite' column for Vanity Fair and the 'Minority Report' column for The Nation. His other books include Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies, International Territory: Official Utopia and the United Nations 1945-95 (with Adam Bartos), and For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports.