Rome is racing ahead with the fast track
beatification of the bent little nun with a white and blue striped habit, known
to the world as Mother Teresa.
The ceremony takes place on the 19th
October. The papal diaz is up and St Peters square is filled with seats and
cordoned off. Indian nuns with doleful, dark brown eyes wander around looking
lost. Notices advertising the event are everywhere. It only remains for the
huge swinging TV cranes to arrive and St Peters will once
again be hosting the “greatest show on earth”.
John Paul II is the most rabid saint making pope of
all time. His Apostolic Constitution Divinus perfectionis Magister of
the 25 January 1983 swept away the 17th century red
tape and made possible this frenzy.
The occasion corresponds with the Pope’s own 25th
year in the papal chair and, because the old nun was seldom without rosary
beads in her hand, clearly visible against her while habit, the occasion
provides a fitting climax to Rome’s year of the rosary.
Protocol swept aside
Mother Teresa of Calcutta embodies “goodness” in the eyes of billions of people from whatever
background. Escriva’s canonisation was a political cause and even Padre Pio
was really a Romanist phenomenon, but everyone loves the little nun. The
lengthy process leading up to sainthood normally takes decades or centuries – a
process in which money undoubtedly talks. But this delay was declared to be
unnecessary when Mother Teresa died in Calcutta on 5th
September 1997 at the age of
87.
The present Pope swept away the obligatory, five year,
minimum interval before the process of canonisation could begin. Archbishop
D’Souza of Calcutta and a diocesan commission started work in
1999, only two years after Mother Teresa’s death.
In support of her cause, the commission dispatched to
the Vatican 35,000 pages of evidence collected into 76
volumes. When she was declared Venerable in the Sala Clementina on 20th December 2002, tickets were already available for the
Beatification.
Problems with the miracle
The Vatican needs one miracle following the candidate’s demise for her
beatification, and another later for the canonisation. This has caused the Vatican problems. Monica Besra claimed
healing from a stomach swelling. “As soon as I stepped into the church, (of
Mother Teresa’s order the Missionaries of Charity, in Kolkata) there was a
photograph of Mother Teresa, and there was a light from the photograph that
came toward me and I was stunned. Later, the sisters prayed for me, and I went
to sleep. When I got up at one in the morning, I found the big tumour had
disappeared”. The delighted physician reporting the event, R.N. Bhattaccharya,
said, “I did not find any reason that without an operation a tumour of such
size would disappear overnight … So I think maybe the Mother’s blessings were
on Monica.” His delight is understandable as he was acting as both Besra’s
doctor and as a promoter of Mother Teresa’s cause.
Prabir Ghosh, general secretary of the
Indian Rationalist and Scientific Thinking Association, has challenged Hindu
“godmen” and exposed their miracles as what Ghosh describes as cheap hypnotic
tricks better performed by magicians. “Now Mr Ghosh is challenging the claim
of the Missionaries of Charity, who say a photograph of their founder, Mother
Teresa, when placed over the stomach of 30-year-old Monica Besra, cured her of
a tumour. Mr Ghosh described the claim as bogus and typical of the process of
cult building in all religious orders. Several doctors have reported to the West Bengal government that Ms Besra
continued to receive treatment long after Mother Teresa died”. Local doctors
say that the illiterate and poor villagers may stop taking rational medical
treatment. Mr Ghosh is pressing the West Bengal Government to take legal
action against the Missionaries of Charity.
Hell’s Angel
When Channel 4 TV screened a protest, Hell’s
Angel, a huge media storm blew up condemning the programme. Naturally Rome found sympathy in all quarters. But
the programme’s indictment has not disappeared. The Diocesan Inquiry team for
the cause of Mother Teresa’s sainthood has requested that, “Hells Angel be
excluded from a film festival supported by the Missionaries of Charity in his
own Archdiocese of Kolkata as a preliminary to Mother’s beatification
celebrations”.
Unfortunately, Hell’s Angel
places the blame upon the nun herself and not on the evil ministered to her
from an early age by the priests. The commentator Christopher Hitchens had, as
a backdrop, a huge Gerald Scarfe portrayal of the nun as if she were the devil
incarnate. The fault really lies with Rome’s priests who worked the nun for decades as a puppet on the public
stage. They used both her and Channel 4. Channel 4 avoided the issue of the
evils of Romanism apart from one reference to the present Pope’s politicised
papacy.
Malcolm Muggeridge converted from
radical socialism to Roman Catholicism on meeting the nun. He introduced her
to a wider UK public in 1969
through a documentary, Something Beautiful for God.
Newly developed Kodak film was used for
shooting in the dark Home for Dying Destitutes and the Orphanage of Abandoned
Children. Cameraman Ken McMillan recalled in Hell’s Angel how amazed he
was when Muggeridge insisted that the ability to film in the dark was a miracle
of the nun’s divine light and not the new film.
The hospice was dominated by a placard,
“I am on my way to heaven”. But Mother Teresa’s earthly care fell below the
standards of Indian state hospitals. Patients were classed as terminal who had
treatable conditions made worse by the hospice environment. The attitude:
“They will be dead soon, what does it matter,” proved lethal to judgement. The
case of a fifteen year old boy with kidney infection was cited by one volunteer
who described the place as “like Belsen”.
Ticket for St Peter
Forced conversion is against Indian Law
and naturally it is vehemently denied by the Missionaries of Charity, but Hindu
groups have much evidence to the contrary. Hitchens says, “In the homes for
the dying, Mother taught the sisters how to secretly baptize those who were
dying. Sisters were to ask each person in danger of death if he wanted a
‘ticket to heaven’. An affirmative reply was to mean consent to baptism.
The sister was then to pretend that she
was just cooling the person’s forehead with a wet cloth, while she was in fact
baptising him, saying quietly the necessary words. Secrecy was important so
that it would not come to be known that Mother Teresa’s order was secretly
baptising Hindus and Moslems.”
“The nun herself is recorded on video
saying: ‘Something very beautiful … not one has died without receiving the
special ticket for St Peter we call it. We call baptism ticket for St Peter.
We ask the (dying) person do you want a blessing by which your sins will be
forgiven and you receive God. They have never refused. So 29,000 have died in
that one house (in Kalighat) from the time we began in 1952’.” And as the
money rolled in, the same arrogant formula multiplied around the world in 156
new Missionaries of Charity convents.
Dictators and swindlers
Mother Teresa had a penchant for using
dictators and swindlers when they were at their peak. The Vatican was the only state to recognise
the corrupt military regime of fat playboy Jean Claude “Baby doc”
Duvalier, in Haiti, who fled to the South of France in 1986. He left the Salesian
priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide to face the wrath of the Vatican simply for wanting to help his people. The old regime had sougth
respectability from Mother Teresa in 1980 when she gracefully accepted the
Haitian Legion in exchange for donations form Haiti. “It was a beautiful lesson for me,” purred the nun.
Robert Maxwell the embezzler of the Mirror
newspaper pension fund had a mutually beneficial trust with her, as did Mr
Charles Keating the fundamental Romanist financier whose savings and loan fraud
was at the time the biggest in American financial history. She was dying when
Lady Diana sought to ally with her, but her death was included by the
Archbishop in prayers at Diana’s funeral.
Yet when the Union Carbide chemical
spill killed thousands of Indian workers she pleaded on behalf of the fat cat
industrialists, “Forgive” rather than sue.
Ardoyne ‘peace mission’
Mother Teresa was born in Skopje on the 27th August 1910 as Agnes
Bojaxhiu.
Under the communist dictator and
Stalinist puppet Enver Hoxha (pronounced Hodger) Albania became a poor atheist state which sent anybody confessing to
worshipping anyone other than the dictator to the camps. The nun went to Albania unofficially three times in the
80’s and with the pope officially in 1993. The Vatican cared less for the orphans than to see Rome regain control following the collapse of communism. Never mind the
persecution over decades of her fellow Romanists under Hoxha, she still laid a
wreath on his tomb and at the monument of Greater Albania.
Ulster readers recall how Rome fielded Mother Teresa twice in
Ardoyne on a “peace” mission, exploiting school children and taking their
collections.
The nun received a Nobel peace prize in
1979. Rome is reaping the
harvest of fifty years of grooming.
Her puppet masters
Mother Teresa’s puppet masters were the
Jesuits. It was none other than the wartime, Jesuit controlled, Pope Pius XII
who was advised to grant permission for her to leave her order and allow her to
inaugurate the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. How the Society of Jesus must
be seething to see the suppressor of their own order, Pope John Paul II,
picking up their kudos.
“Mother Teresa had habitually preferred
Jesuits as retreat preachers, spiritual directors and confessors for herself
and her Sisters. Many Jesuits of Calcutta Province were in close contact with
Mother Teresa … Fr. Celest Van Exem was …the spiritual director to
whom Mother Teresa confided her inspiration and who first sought to discern the
authenticity of her experiences. He was the first to support Mother in
requesting Archbishop Perier to begin the process for her to leave (her former)
Loreto Congregation. He made major contributions to the writing of the
Constitutions of the Missionaries of Charity”.
Jesuit “Archbishop Ferdinand Perier,
Archbishop of Calcutta, … was her confidant and spiritual guide, as well as her
Superior until she became Superior General of the new Congregation. … Mother
had an extraordinary, childlike confidence in the Archbishop as the
spokesperson of God’s will. In turn, he guided her with a truly extraordinary
wisdom and prudence.”
Jesuit boasts
Jesuit “Fr. Julian Henry was a spiritual
friend and close co-operator of Mother … Jesuit Fr. Edouard Le Joly, right from
the beginning and for many years, was giving instructions to the Missionaries
of Charity Novices. He had frequent contacts and dialogues with Mother. He
was spiritual adviser to the novices at Mother House and to the Sisters
preparing for their final profession.”
Also Jesuit “Cardinal Trevor L. Picachy
was spiritual guide, confidant, confessor and retreat director to Missionaries
of Charity Sisters. He was one of the most influential of her spiritual
directors, in whom she confided a great deal. He gave much support and
cooperation when he was Archbishop of Calcutta. He helped her in times of
depression and low spirituality.”
Hell’s puppet indeed.
