The Missionary Position - Summary

Summary

Hitchens condemns Mother Teresa for having used contributions to open convents in 150 countries rather than establishing the teaching hospital toward which her donors expected that she would apply their gifts. He claims that Mother Teresa was no "friend to the poor," and that she opposed structural measures to end poverty, particularly those that would raise the status of women. He argues she was a tool by which the Catholic Church furthered its political and theological aims, and the cult of personality that she developed was used by politicians, dictators and bankers to gain credibility and assuage guilt, citing Hillary Rodham Clinton, Charles Keating and Michèle Bennett as examples.

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