However Mother Teresa was a great woman.
She had her critics, according to her Wikipedia entry:
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Her philosophy and implementation have faced some criticism. While noting how little evidence Mother Teresa's critics were able to find against her, David Scott wrote that Mother Teresa limited herself to keeping people alive rather than tackling poverty itself.[27] She has also been criticized for her view on suffering: according to an article in the Alberta Report, she felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.[28] The quality of care offered to terminally ill patients in the Homes for the Dying has been criticised in the medical press, notably The Lancet and the British Medical Journal, which reported an anti-materialist approach that precluded the use of systematic diagnosis, the reuse of hypodermic needles, and poor living conditions, including the use of cold baths for all patients.[29]
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The spending of the charity money received has been criticized by some. Christopher Hitchens and the Stern have said that money that was donated with the intention of it being spent on the keeping of the poor was spent on other projects instead. [37]
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Indian views on Mother Teresa were not uniformly favourable. Her critic Aroup Chatterjee, who was born and bred in Calcutta but lived in London, reports that "she was not a significant entity in Calcutta in her lifetime". Chatterjee blames Mother Teresa for promoting a negative image of his home city.[43] Her presence and profile grated in parts of the Indian political world, as she often opposed the Hindu Right. The Bharatiya Janata Party clashed with her over the Christian Dalits, but praised her in death, sending a representative to her funeral. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, on the other hand, opposed the Government's decision to grant her a state funeral. Its secretary Giriraj Kishore said that "her first duty was to the Church and social service was incidental" and accused her of favouring Christians and conducting "secret baptisms" of the dying. But Parvathi Menon, writing the front page tribute for the Indian fortnightly Frontline, dismissed these charges as "patently false" and said that they had "made no impact on the public perception of her work, especially in Calcutta". Although praising her "selfless caring", energy and bravery, Menon was critical of Mother Teresa's public campaigning against abortion and that she claimed to be non-political when doing so.[42] More recently, the Indian daily The Telegraph referred to her as "the Saint of the Gutters", also mentioning calls for "Rome to investigate whether she did anything to alleviate the condition of the poor or just took care of the sick and dying and needed them to further a sentimentally-moral cause".[44]
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Mother Teresa's Albanian homeland granted her the Golden Honor of the Nation in 1994.[42] Her acceptance of this and another honour granted by the Haitian government proved controversial. Mother Teresa attracted criticism, particularly from the left, for implicitly giving support to the Duvaliers, to corrupt businessmen such as Charles Keating and Robert Maxwell, and to politicians on the right of Western politics, such as U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and United States President Ronald Reagan. In Keating's case she wrote to the judge of his trial asking for clemency to be shown.[29][42]
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Towards the end of her life, Mother Teresa attracted some negative attention in the Western media. The author Christopher Hitchens has been one of her most active critics in both the United Kingdom and the United States. He was commissioned to co-write and narrate the documentary Hell's Angel about her for Channel 4 after Aroup Chatterjee encouraged the making of such a program, although Chatterjee was unhappy with the "sensationalist approach" of the final product.[43] Hitchens expanded his criticism in a 1995 book, The Missionary Position.[54]
Chatterjee writes that while she was alive Mother Teresa and her official biographers refused to collaborate with his own investigations and that she failed to defend herself against critical coverage in the Western press. He gives as examples a report in The Guardian in Britain whose "stringent (and quite detailed) attack on conditions in her orphanages ... [include] charges of gross neglect and physical and emotional abuse", and another documentary Mother Teresa: Time for Change? broadcast in several European countries.[43] Both Chatterjee and Hitchens have themselves been subject to criticism for their stance.
The German magazine Stern published a hostile article on the first anniversary of Mother Teresa's death. The medical press has also published criticism of her, arising from very different outlooks and priorities on patients' needs.[29] Other critics include Tariq Ali, a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review, and the Irish-born investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre.[54]
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Criticism
"The Illusory vs The Real Mother Teresa," by Michael Hakeem, is a review of Christopher Hitchens' The Missionary Position. Published in Freethought Today, August 1996.
Christopher Hitchens' critiques of specific individuals#Mother Teresa Article http://www.salon.com/sept97/news/news3.html Saint to the rich]" in Salon.com, September 1997 and "Mommie Dearest" by Christopher Hitchens 20. October 2003.
"The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa" by Donal MacIntyre in the New Statesman, August 22, 2005
Rotten Library biography
"Mother Teresa: Where are her millions?", Stern 10. September 1998.
"Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict", by Aroup Chatterjee. Meteor Books, India (December 20, 2002)
"Mother Teresa of Calcutta" by Sally Warner
"Mother Teresa's House of Illusions" by Susan Shields
"Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints" by Michael Parenti, CommonDreams.org, October 22, 2007
