LONDON -- To most of the world, Mother Teresa has become a larger-than-life symbol of faith, hope and charity for her labors on behalf of the poor and starving of India.


But to Christopher Hitchens, a left-wing writer and a Washington-based contributing editor of Vanity Fair, and Tarik Ali, an MP in the British Labor Party, the 84-year-old nun is "a demagogue and obscurantist, and a servant of earthly powers," who lends spiritual solace "to dictators and wealthy exploiters.''


That view -- presented in "Hell's Angel," an independently produced, highly critical, one-sided television documentary aired this week -- has stirred a bitter controversy.


Cardinal Basil Hume, the senior British Catholic cleric, has called the Hitchens-Ali production for Independent Television's off-beat Channel 4 a "grotesque caricature" of Mother Teresa. Hume praised Mother Teresa's efforts "to plead with the rich and powerful on behalf of the poor."


But Hitchens, in the program, sees things differently, insisting that Mother Teresa has "a penchant for the rich and famous no matter how corrupt or brutal." He said she had accepted support from dictators like Haiti's Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and criminals like Charles Keating, who figured in one of California's messiest savings and loan scandals and who received a personalized crucifix from her.


Hitchens scorned her saintly reputation, calling her work a "profane marriage between media hype and medieval superstition."


The program asserted that Mother Teresa represented only the Catholic right-wing, which opposes contraception. It noted that, when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979, she had insisted that abortion was the greatest threat to world peace.


Hitchens and Ali also took aim at Mother Teresa's hospices for the dying poor in Calcutta and elsewhere, asking whether they truly provide sufficient medical care.


Some disinterested observers in recent years have pointed out that many of her nuns at the hospices had compassion but little medical training.


The British medical journal Lancet, in a recent issue, claimed that patients in the Calcutta hospices receive little more than bed, food and sympathy -- while being denied proper pain-killers or other medication.


Mother Teresa was born Agnes Goxhu Bojaxhiu in 1910 to Albanian parents in Skopje, now in Macedonia. A merchant's daughter, she trained as a nun in Ireland and arrived in India in 1928. In 1948, she set up her mission in the slums of Calcutta, among the poor, sick and dying. Her Missionaries of Charity now have 500 centers in about 100 countries, feeding half a million families a year.


A tiny, stooped, bird-like figure, she has traveled widely, raising money and being honored by presidents, princes and private personages.


But Hitchens claims Mother Teresa, -- instead flying around the world and being feted by the rich and famous.


In reply, the Catholic Media Office accused Hitchens and Ali of factual inaccuracies, stating, "The program causes upset and disquiet among many Catholics who hold Mother Teresa in very high regard."