Sep 05 2007
How to Make a Saint
The Telegraph reported today that the Bengali woman who claimed to have been cured of a stomach tumor courtesy of Mother Teresa claimed the Sisters of Charity abandoned her to live in poverty.
Monica Besra claimed in 2003 that she was healed of her tumor after praying to Mother Teresa and pressing a medallion bearing the image of the sainthood-candidate to her side.
Besra’s claim that the Sisters of Charity made promises to her before taking her to testify to the Vatican, and then abandoned her is just another twist to the controversy of Teresa’s canonization process.
It all started when the Vatican made an exception in the case of Mother Teresa and eliminated a 5-year waiting period after the death of a candidate before the start of the canonization process.
More of the controversy came to public attention when it came to Teresa’s beatification (step 4 of the canonization process). To pass this stageTeresa needed to have performed miracle healings post-humously. Monica Besra was the first claim of faith healing related to Teresa. According to Besra,
“My hut was frequented by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity before the beatification of Mother Teresa,” said Mrs Besra, squatting on the floor of her thatched and mud house in the village of Dangram, 460 miles northeast of Calcutta. “They made of lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children’s education. After that, they forgot me. I am living in penury. My husband is sick. My children have stopped going to school as I have no money. I have to work in the fields to feed my husband and five children.”
Even though it was the nuns who tied the medallion to her stomach on the first anniversary of Teresa’s death, the sisters say Besra herself made the miracle healing claim. Now, despite saying the sisters abandoned her she claims her faith is still strong in Teresa.
The doctors who treated Besra gave a logical explanation for the healing, in that the tumor was small, it shrunk and went away with treatment over a period of a year.
Even her husband said the miracle was a hoax. However, after the international press of the matter turned them into celebrities, and on the eve or his wife’s trip to the Vatican, he changed his mind and declared the healing a miracle himself. He said he was proud of his wife for traveling to the Vatican.
I guess now that they were celebrities he believed in the virtue of his wife to bring upon themselves such additional miracles as their kids being able to go to school and his wife taking a trip abroad. Unfortunately this side-effect of the miracle was short lived, and now the nuns are letting them struggle with poverty, the kids can’t go to school anymore and the husband is sick and can’t work.
Now, if the sisters had tied a medallion of Saint Mana around her waist, and then she was healed, by the same logic she would claim I healed her. Or if I go out there and find 100 flu sufferers and then give them a Mana Magic Medallion and tell them in 7 days they’ll be healed, chances are most of them will be healed and what a mighty miracle I make! Of course I would not have the ethos of Mother Teresa (which involves her reputatin as well as the strength of the placibo effect), even though, under the right circumstances I could probably raise just as much money as her from law-breaking citizens. What the nuns forget, but I will make sure to put in the box with the medallion, is the disclosure that while the miracle will be powerful it will be short-lived.
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