Bill, I really don't know enough about Mother Teresa to have a definite opinion. That is, I know the general outline of her life -- who doesn't? -- but that's about it. It all sounds pretty good to me, but you should know that Mother Teresa has her detractors.
Some years ago, Christopher Hitchens did a real hatchet job on her, in a book called "The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice." I did not read the book, but I did read Murray Kempton's comprehensive review, in The New York Review of Books, July 11, 1996. (I remember it largely because of the wicked caricature of Mother Teresa as a vampire on the front page of the issue.)
Unfortunately, the NYRB archive of issues prior to November 1996 is temporarily unavailable, or I would give you the link to the article.
Two follow-up letters (one from Hitchens, the other from Simon Leys, who takes a pro-Mother Teresa position) are available, however. Here are the URLs, if you are interested:
nybooks.com
nybooks.com
If I remember Hitchens' argument correctly (and I may not), his major beefs with Mother Teresa were: 1) she was not interested in her patients as patients -- she never even tried to cure them; she was interested only in "saving their souls" -- i.e., in converting them; 2) she cozied up to (and accepted "donations" from) bad guys, like
the Duvaliers. I am not qualified to assess the merit of Hitchens' argument.
Joan
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