SOURCE: Mukherjee, Parnab. “Two Names Worried a Stricken Saint.” Spectator (21 September 1996): 27–28.

In the following excerpt, Mukherjee discusses Mother Teresa's deteriorating health and Hitchens's criticism of the ailing nun in The Missionary Position.

Christopher Hitchens lives in the United States and writes for Vanity Fair. He calls her ‘an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitable losers in the lottery.’ He also calls her ‘fanatical’ and ‘a fund-raising icon for clerical nationalists in the Balkans.’ He wrote a book about her under the title The Missionary Position.

Tariq Ali lives in London. Hitchens helped him make a television documentary about her called Hell's Angel, shown on Channel 4 in the autumn of 1994. The ‘elderly virgin’ whom Hitchens describes as someone ‘who rushed for PR-type cover’ and indulges in ‘metaphysical caresses’ is more popularly known here as ‘Mother.’ She is Mother Teresa, the living...