Mother Teresa wasn't so very saintly, a new study reports.

Canadian academics trawled through 96 per cent of all originally researched literature on the Catholic icon and concluded that her reputation as one of the holiest women of the twentieth century was the product of hype.

Researchers allege missing funds for humanitarian work and homes for the poor that did not offer the medical care they required, leaving many to die.

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Serge Larivée, a researcher from the University of Montreal, said: "Given the parsimonious management of Mother Theresa's works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

Christopher Hitchens is cited in the report and Hitch spoke out loudly against Mother Teresa in 2003. Here's a taste:

"MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.

"And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go?"