Teresa's flights
Sir: It's good to see the tired word 'incredi- bly' employed for a change with accuracy and finesse, making as it does the perfect headline modifier to the absurd article by Parnab Mukherjee ('Two names worried a stricken saint', 21 September). If Mr 'To be sure now, he's like his father.'
Mukherjee is to be credited, the woman calling herself 'Mother Teresa' had to be practically dragged through the doors of the well-appointed Woodlands nursing home in Calcutta. On his account, she would have vastly preferred one of the humble hospices run by her own order, and was afraid that if she chose otherwise she would be met with unbearable calumny from Tariq Ali and myself. Since I wish the old dear a long life and a speedy recovery, I am glad that she allowed herself to be persuaded. Actually, persuading Mother Teresa is not all that difficult. She has checked into many of the finest clinics in North America in her time, and has never submitted to treatment in any of her own establishments, and has never until now felt that she need- ed to justify her choice. We have the word of Parnab Mukherjee, among others, that it took 'a direct personal appeal from Pope John Paul II to persuade her to continue in office' for another gruelling spell as head of her order. I can imagine how arduous that work of persuasion must have been. Other things that she has been talked into doing include the following:
1. Flying all the way to Haiti to receive the Legion d'honneur from the Duvalier family, and making a speech praising the Duvaliers for their love of the poor.
2. Flying all the way to California to receive hundreds of thousands of stolen dollars from Mr Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan — a man who looted the small saver and who (despite Mother Teresa's intercession) is serving a ten-year sentence for the cruellest kind of fraud.
3. Flying all the way to Albania to place a wreath on the grave of Enver Hoxha, the most repellent in a strong field of Balkan despots.
4. Flying all the way to Ireland to demand clerical control over the process of marriage, divorce, abortion, adoption and contraception.
5. Flying all the way to London for photo-ops and endorsements with, from and for Robert Maxwell and Diana Spencer. (She recently told the Ladies' Home Journal that Diana Spencer's divorce was a happy thing for all concerned, which was not her instruction to the poor women of Ireland in the recent referendum.) The faithful believe that she did all these things because she is innocent and unworldly. Well, I disagree. But since I am credited with the power of suggestion over her, can I hope that Mother Teresa will agree to an audit of her order's finances, Will reply to the appeal of the California court for the return of the stolen money, will make an act of contrition about the Duvaliers and Hoxha and will explain why it is that, despite the vast increase in her income from well-meant donations, she has
opened many more convents than clinics and uses these convents to proselytise the most extreme form of Catholic fundamen- talism? Her blessing on me — rather smarmily evoked by Mr Mukherjee — can wait until she or her successor gets round to considering the sort of questions that, thanks to courtiers like himself, are never asked.
Christopher Hitchens
2022 Columbia Road NW, Washington DC 20009, USA
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