TV Documentary Attacks Mother Teresa, Her Work

LONDON - To most of the world, Mother Teresa has become a larger-than-life symbol of faith, hope and charity for her labors on behalf of the poor of India.

But to Christopher Hitchens, a left-wing writer and a Washington-based contributing editor of Vanity Fair, and Tarik Ali, a radical Muslim, the 84-year-old nun is "a demagogue and obscurantist, and a servant of earthly powers," who lends spiritual solace "to dictators and wealthy exploiters."

That view - presented in "Hell's Angel," an independently produced, highly critical, one-sided TV documentary that aired this week - has stirred a bitter controversy in Britain. Cardinal Basil Hume, the senior British Catholic cleric, has called the Hitchens-Ali production for Independent Television's off-beat Channel 4 a "grotesque caricature" of Mother Teresa. Hume praised Mother Teresa's efforts "to plead with the rich and powerful on behalf of the poor."

But Hitchens asserted that Mother Teresa has "a penchant for the rich and famous, no matter how corrupt or brutal." He said she had accepted support from dictators like Haiti's Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and criminals like Charles Keating, who figured in one of California's savings-and-loan scandals and who received a personalized crucifix from the elderly Catholic nun.

Hitchens pulled no punches in the 30-minute program, which provided no case for the defense of Mother Teresa, who first came to public consciousness 25 years ago in "Something Beautiful for God," a British Broadcasting Corp. film by Malcolm Muggeridge.

The program asserted that Mother Teresa represented only the Catholic right-wing, which opposes contraception. It noted that, when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she had insisted that abortion was the greatest threat to world peace.

Hitchens and Ali also took aim at Mother Teresa's hospices for the dying poor in Calcutta and elsewhere, asking whether they provide sufficient medical care.

Some disinterested observers in recent years have pointed out that many of her nuns at the hospices had compassion but little training in how to handle sick babies or administer sedatives to dying patients.

The British medical journal Lancet, in a recent issue, claimed that patients in the Calcutta hospices receive little more than bed, food and sympathy - while being denied proper pain-killers or other medication.

In Calcutta, Mother Teresa, though a Catholic missionary in a Hindu area, is rarely criticized. As Biplab Dasgupta, a Communist member of the British Parliament, says: "She's part of Calcutta now. Of course we have differences on the philosophical plane. . . . But I appreciate what she's doing for the poor."

The Catholic Media Office accused Hitchens and Ali of factual inaccuracies. "The choice of images and their juxtaposition are all slanted toward a nasty attack," a spokeswoman said.

Dan Hill, a member of Missionaries of Charity here, said: "It's sad that people would attack an 84-year-old woman who has given her life to God and the poor."