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(CNS photo from Reuters)
Arts & CultureVantage Point
James Martin, S.J.
In the wake of her death, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, one of the holiest women of our time, was reduced to a walk-on in the life of the Princess of Wales.
Politics & SocietyVantage Point
Paul Farmer
How would a health intervention inspired by liberation theology be different from those with more conventional underpinnings?
FaithVantage Point
Thomas J. Shelley
In These Pages: From June 3, 1995
FaithVantage Point
John W. Donohue
Saints are known for their holiness. That doesn’t mean they were easy to get along with.
FaithVantage Point
James Martin, S.J.
From 1995: To its members Opus Dei is nothing less than The Work of God. To its critics it is a powerful, even dangerous.
FaithVantage Point
Paul Farmer

Graham Greene's The Comedians is surely the most famous novel set in contemporary Haiti. The book, published in 1965, introduced the English-speaking world to the methods of governance of président-a-vie Francois Duvalier. Following the novel's publication, both Greene and his book were banned in Haiti. Papa Doc was furious with the expose, certainly, but he was also vexed by the ethnographic detail of the novel. Trained as an anthropologist, the dictator knew that careful observers like Greene are always more difficult to discredit. Duvalier did his best, however, going so far as to produce a glossy bilingual pamphlet, Graham Greene Demasque, which depicted the writer as "unbalanced, sadistic, perverted ... the shame of proud and noble England." Although Greene would later term this assessment "the greatest honor I've yet received," Duvalier was not joking. The Comedians, travelers to Haiti were warned, was a book that even the luggage-rifling thugs at the airport could recognize.