Mother Teresa is probably the last person I'd expect to be the target of an angry expose.

In this short volume, Christopher Hitchens includes the following points:

1. Much of the publicity around Mother Teresa is revisionistic and dubious, and her displays of humility are an act. How humble is it to claim a personal relationship with Jesus?

2. Mother Teresa is about saving souls, not bodies. Her institutions are unsanitary and poorly operated despite a plethora of donations which should make better conditions affordable. Mother Teresa's statements about the godliness of poverty and suffering appear to be her justification for this.

3. Mother Teresa uses her influence to promote anti-birth control and anti-abortion dogmas, despite the fact that overpopulation and unwanted children are likely factors in the need for her institutions.

4. Mother Teresa is associated with all kinds of dubious individuals, from Robert Maxwell to Michele Duvalier to Charles Keating. She actually tried to advocate for the latter as he was being prosecuted for fraud; when Keating's prosecutor informed Mother Teresa of Keating's activities and encouraged her to return the funds he donated to her cause so that these funds could then be returned to the defrauded individuals, Mother Teresa never responded.

5. Mother Teresa is a font of unhelpful platitudes which do not hold up to scrutiny but are viewed as profound simply because she said them.

6. Mother Teresa and the West feed off each other. The West feels a need to believe they are helping the poor savages of the East; Mother Teresa publicly fills that need for them independent of the degree of help she is actually contributing.

Hitchens' writing is sharp and on-target, and he certainly makes an interesting case. I also appreciated the book's short length. With that, my sense is that Hitchens' anti-religious agenda is the driving force behind this book rather than any actual wrongdoing on Mother Teresa's part.

Mother Teresa's alleged false modesty, while hardly admirable, is certainly no crime. Her embracing poverty and suffering at the expense of those she is officially helping is more problematic; at the same time, it's not as if she's using the donated funds for her own material pleasure. Mother Teresa is a religious figure and does not claim otherwise; it's only natural that she would promote anti-abortion views and consort indiscriminately with despised characters, feeling that God loves everybody. As for the inflated and uncritical view of her platitudes, as Hitchens himself remarks, this is "...an argument not with a deceiver but with the deceived. If Mother Teresa is the adored object of many credulous and uncritical observers, then the blame is not hers, or hers alone."

Whether or not one agrees with Hitchens' claims, they are certainly provocative and well-articulated, not to mention humorous.