Hitchens Slammed Vatican in Final Interview

With barely two months left to live, Christopher Hitchens gave one last interview, to fellow atheist Richard Dawkins, taking the opportunity to bash the Catholic Church and totalitarianism. In the New Statesman interview, Hitchens' harshest words were for the Catholic Church, saying that every fascist government in Europe in the 1930s was really an "extreme-right Catholic party." "Almost all of those regimes were in place with the help of the Vatican and with understandings from the Holy See," railed Hitchens.

Hitchens, who died last week at the age of 62, said his biggest fight was against totalitarianism, whether it be on the left or right. "The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy," he said, "the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes—and the origins of that are theocratic, obviously." And, of course, to the end, Hitchens made no apologies for the vigor of his opinions. "Stridency is the least you should muster," he said. (More Christopher Hitchens stories.)